How much should a bakery bake: by sales hours, not by feel

How much should a bakery bake? Start from the average sales on the same day of the week over the last four weeks, split by hour. Bake in small batches following the hourly curve, set a last baking time for each product, and measure two things: what is left at closing and what is missing from the display at peak time. If you count only the leftovers, you miss the sales you lost.

You know exactly how much is left at the end of the day. You probably do not know how many customers looked at an empty tray at five in the afternoon and walked on. Both are the same planning mistake: a full tray at closing is raw material already burned, and an empty tray at peak time is a sale that did not happen. If you measure only the first, you tend to bake less and less, and then run into the second.

You do not need an algorithm to start. The sales of the previous weeks are a better starting point than the baker's feeling, and the sheet you keep will show you where the feeling is wrong.

How much should a bakery bake: three numbers for each product

Take a sheet of paper, or a spreadsheet, and open a row for each main product: bourekas, challah, croissants, cookies. For each day, write down three numbers.

The first is how much sold. The second is how much was left at closing. The third is the most important and usually forgotten: at what time the product ran out, if it did. "Short at peak" means the tray was empty or almost empty at the hour when the most people pass by.

Here is a sample calculation, with numbers we made up for illustration only. A tray of bourekas holds twenty-four units. The raw materials per unit cost three shekels and the display price is eight shekels, so five shekels of profit per unit before wages and other expenses. If six units were left at closing, you lost eighteen shekels of raw materials. If the display was empty for forty minutes at peak and ten customers walked on, you lost fifty shekels of profit. The leftovers hurt more because they are in front of your eyes. The second loss is hidden, so it repeats every day.

A rule of thumb you can apply in the very first week: if a product runs out before peak time twice in the same week, increase the morning bake or add a small bake before the peak. If more than a few units were left twice in the same week, reduce it. Changing one tray at a time is enough. Do not jump from three trays to five.

You can write the numbers by hand, but it is easier to pull some of them from the register's sales log. The KupaLi Register (₪79 per branch per month + VAT) includes reports for any period and data export, so you can see how much sold and move the data to a spreadsheet. And if part of the gap starts already when goods are received, it is worth reading about stock losses and shrinkage too.

From the sales curve to baking times

After a week or two of recording, you will see a curve. In a neighborhood bakery it might look like this: a wave in the morning, quiet in the middle of the day, a small wave in the afternoon. The hours are different for everyone, so there is no point copying a schedule from another bakery. Your curve is what decides.

Three operational rules come out of the curve.

First, bake a little before each wave and not a lot in advance. A tray that comes out of the oven an hour before the peak looks fresh when customers arrive. A tray that came out three hours earlier looks different, and sells differently too.

Second, set a last baking time for each product. After that time, no new tray goes in, even if the display looks thin. A full tray at closing adds nothing for the customer, and for you it is a cost already out of your pocket.

Third, some days have a different curve, so do not mix them with regular days. Friday (Shabbat eve) and holiday eves are the obvious candidates, and it is worth checking in your data whether their peak comes earlier. A rainy day may also change the picture. Open a separate row for each type of unusual day, and the next time it comes around, start from the number and not from a guess.

On regular days, an average of four similar weeks works well. For holidays you do not have four similar weeks. You have last year. If you did not keep the numbers, start keeping them now, and in the meantime bake carefully and add small batches during the morning.

End-of-day sale: when to lower the price and by how much

Even with good planning, something is left. The question is not whether to lower the price, but when and by how much. And you decide that in advance, not by the mood of whoever is behind the counter.

Set a time. For example, half an hour before closing, or when fewer than a certain number of units are left. The same time every day, so the team does not have to decide.

Now the math, and notice what it leaves out. Once the bourekas are baked, the three shekels of raw material have already been spent, so any price above zero is better than the bin. The floor price is not meant to cover the raw material. It is meant to protect the midday sales. Say that in our example three regular customers learn to wait: instead of paying eight shekels at noon, they pay four shekels at six. From each of them you took in four shekels less, twelve shekels less a day in total, without selling a single extra unit. So check the price against what happens at noon. If midday sales dropped after you started, the price is too low or the time is too early.

Physically separate the discounted products from the regular display: a separate tray, a basket or a shelf with a clear sign. If they sit next to the regular ones, regular customers discover that they can wait until six in the evening and buy cheap. On setting a minimum price that does not hurt profit, it is also worth reading the guide to floor prices.

Two alternatives to a simple discount: a ready-made "end of day" bag at a fixed price, which makes things easier for the team and the customer, and donating what is left. Selling a product that was frozen and thawed, keeping cream products and donating food all depend on Ministry of Health requirements and the terms of your business license. Check them with the authorities before you start, and not on a holiday eve.

A discounted product also needs a price visible to the customer. Before you print new signs, check what the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority publishes today on price display in a business that sells to consumers. The rules change. This is a general explanation and not legal advice.

Cafés and cream cakes: a product with a shorter shelf life

In a café the method is the same, but there is one difference. A cream cake and a cheesecake do not behave like bread. Their shelf life is shorter and they need refrigeration, so it is harder to sell a tray left in the evening at a discount without hurting the quality.

For this, define two types of product. The first is stable: pastries, cookies, bread. You can apply everything said above to it. The second is sensitive: cream cakes and chilled products. Bake smaller quantities of these, without big stock in the morning hours, and decide in advance how long you are willing to keep them, subject to Ministry of Health guidelines and the license terms. Anyone who looks at the sales numbers of a cream cake in a quiet week will sometimes find they bake more than they sell, and that is exactly where the three numbers help.

In a café you can also add a small end-of-day deal, such as coffee and a pastry at a combined price after a certain hour. That way the leftover pastry sells without announcing a discount, and the coffee that comes with it recovers part of the waste. Check the math by the cost of the pastry, not by the display price.

A trial week: how to check that it works

You do not need to change the whole bakery in one day. Pick one product, the kind that sells a lot and is left over a lot, and run a new baking schedule on it for a whole week.

Write down three things a day: how many units were left at closing, at what time the product ran out and how much sold. At the end of the week, compare with the week before. If leftovers went down and sales did not, the planning works. If leftovers went down but the product ran out earlier, you cut too much and lost sales. If nothing changed, a one-tray change is probably too small.

Change one variable at a time. If you changed both the baking quantity and the discount time, you will not know what worked. And only after one product has settled, move on to the next.

Do not throw away the sheet at the end of the week. The argument "I think we baked too much" ends the moment there is a line on paper. And when you hand responsibility for baking to someone else on shift, this sheet is the training.

This is a general explanation. The rules on price display and food change, so it is worth checking against the official publications of the Consumer Protection Authority and the Ministry of Health, and if needed with a legal advisor.

In short

• Set a baseline: the average of the same day of the week over the last four weeks, by hour.
• Write down three numbers for each product: sold, left over and the time it ran out.
• Bake in small batches before each wave and set a last baking time for each product.
• Set a discount time in advance, and separate the discounted products from the display so you do not teach customers to wait.
• Test one product a week and change one variable at a time.

Sources

• KupaLi pricing page