As a professional bakery naples fl or home baker, opening your own bakery is the ultimate fulfillment of your dreams. You get to do what you love, which is whipping up sweet treats, every day. More importantly, you earn income as you make your favorite cakes, pastries, and desserts for other people’s enjoyment.
Owning a bakery, however, is not only about baking treats that you and your customers love. Regardless of whether you open a small shop or a large one, if you want to run a smooth and profitable business that will stay open for a long time, you need all the help you can get.
Aside from hiring reliable, hardworking employees, investing in a first-rate bakery POS system allows you to run an efficient, productive business. With this piece of technology, you will get help in handling various aspects and operations of your shop.
If you are a bakery owner, your POS system will help you in the following ways:
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Improve inventory management
Since your sweet treats are your main selling products, running out of items to sell because of a lack of ingredients is a huge mistake that you should avoid at all costs.
When customers can’t buy the pastry or dessert they want, they will take their business elsewhere. This will mean the loss of sales. If they tell others how disappointed they are for not getting the item they want, you stand to lose these potential patrons as well.
A POS system will enable you to stay on top of your baking supplies. You can set it to alert you when inventory levels are low. When you receive this information, you can replenish your stocks immediately.
If you choose the right software, the system may even automatically order from your supplier based on established parameters on your behalf.
With lower chances of running out of baking ingredients, you won’t have any excuse to fail to sell your customers their favorite baked goods. And when they are happy, they will keep coming back and encourage others to visit your shop. These will translate to higher sales and profits.
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Stay on top of all in-shop orders
Once your bakery becomes busy, managing orders can become more difficult. If you want to keep providing excellent customer service, you need to stay on top of all of these orders.
A POS system enables you to receive and track all orders easily and efficiently. It helps you avoid serving the wrong items to a customer or overcharging or undercharging them.
With the right software, you can quickly view current orders and tick them off as they are served as well. Additionally, you get to see any items that are ordered in advance and prepare them beforehand.
A POS system helps you prevent confusion and delays with can lead to chaos and loss of business for your bakery.
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Manage custom orders better
If you accept made-to-order cakes, pastries, and other sweet treats, you need to have an efficient ordering system. You can use your POS program for this particular aspect of your business.
By using your POS, you can receive orders electronically. You, therefore, minimize the risks of errors arising from hand-written advance purchases. You will also be able to accommodate special requests effectively, such as vegan or gluten-free desserts.
Additionally, you can integrate these special requisitions with your bakery’s production system. With this feature, your employees are informed when they should work on the order and when it has to be completed. They can then include or prioritize this in their daily tasks.
Moreover, a POS system helps you keep track of deposits or partial payments for these orders.
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Get accurate, real-time reports
A bakery POS system gives you a complete view of your business. With this software, you gain access to data and reports that give you an idea of how your shop is performing.
The right program will give you up-to-date sales and profit reports. You can even see which employees are performing best in terms of selling.
Moreover, it can provide you data about sales taxes and other tariff-related information which you can include in the annual reports you must submit to government agencies.
A good POS system can also be used as an employee time monitoring tool. It will give you details on when a worker clocked in and out, which is highly useful when making payroll. It will allow you to make changes in schedules as well.
All the reports you get from your software make it easier for you to see and analyze data and uncover trends that you can use to improve your business further.
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Bulld better customer relationships
The right bakery POS system helps you record and track customers’ buying histories and preferences, giving you better insight into their shopping behavior. The more things you know about your consumers, the more you can personalize their purchasing experiences.
This, in turn, will help you and your team build and strengthen your relationship with them.
Additionally, you can use your POS to create a loyalty program. With this perk, you can entice more customers to visit your shop and encourage your current patrons to keep coming back.
If baking is your passion and you want your bakery to be one of the most successful, well-known brands around, you won’t go wrong with getting a POS system at the onset.
Author Bio:
Ahmad Alzaini is the co-founder and CEO of Foodics, a fast-growing food tech startup. A businessman by nature, Alzaini is an app aficionado, developing businesses in Saudi Arabia within several industries. Today, Foodics has extended to new markets across the MENA region, processing over 1 billion transactions, and offering the latest technology in POS and restaurant management.