- Bakeries lose money in two directions at once - baking too much and throwing it away, or baking too little and turning customers away. The difference is knowing what actually sells, by day and by hour.
Bake to the numbers, not to a guess
Bakeries have a production problem, not just a selling problem
Most POS software assumes you make food when it is ordered. A bakery decides at 4am how much to make, and lives with that decision all day. That makes historical sales data far more valuable here than in most food businesses.
What bakeries wrestle with
Production, waste, pre-orders and two kinds of customer.
[01]
Baking the wrong quantity
Too much and it goes in the bin at closing. Too little and you send regulars away. Both are invisible without daily sales history.
[02]
Short shelf life
Unsold stock is not carried over, so waste is a direct daily cost that most owners never see totalled up.
[03]
Custom orders and deposits
Cakes ordered for a date, often with a deposit. Tracked in a notebook, these get missed or mispriced.
[04]
Retail and wholesale together
Walk-in customers and shops buying at trade prices need different pricing from the same stock.
How Orderly helps
- Sales history by item, day and hour so tomorrow's bake is based on evidence
- Waste tracking that puts a shilling figure on what gets thrown away
- Recipe costing down to flour, sugar and packaging
- Pre-orders taken online with dates and deposits recorded properly
- Separate retail and wholesale pricing from one stock list
- Photo-led online ordering - cakes sell on the picture
| If you are | Plan | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A single bakery or counter | Orderly Growth | Till, online ordering with photos, and daily sales history |
| Managing production and waste | Orderly Pro | Recipe costing, waste tracking and full inventory |
Bakery questions
Yes. A professional, mobile-friendly site on your own domain, with your menu, photos, story and ordering built in.
Marketplaces typically take 15 to 30 percent of every order and keep the customer details. On a KES 3,000 order that can be up to KES 900 gone, on demand you already owned, from repeat customers who would have come to you anyway.
Not necessarily. The smart model is hybrid: use marketplaces for discovery, then move known customers to your own channel where you keep the margin and the relationship.
You do. Names, phone numbers and order history sit in your account, so you can build real loyalty instead of renting access to your own customers.
Yes. Take and confirm orders, and send updates, on the channel Kenyans actually use.
Yes, on Orderly Pro and Enterprise - your own branded customer app for iOS and Android.