How Automation is Revolutionising the Wholesale Bakery Industry

According to Global Industry Analysts the global market for bakery products is expected to exceed $570 billion by 2024. So it’s no surprise that many bakeries are already implementing automation solutions to improve production and meet increasing customer demand.

Automation has always played an important role in the bakery world. We’ve seen commercial bakeries using bread-slicing machines, mixers, and dough systems to speed up production and cut costs. Automation doesn't just apply to baking equipment, though, but also to your regular business processes and your most repetitive admin tasks. In fact by automating these you are guaranteed to improve your efficiency and save yourself valuable time and money.

The number of wholesale bakeries in Australia that are leveraging tools and software to automate their order collection, invoicing and give them greater visibility and control over their stock levels, is increasing. These automation tools come in a variety of forms - from mobile apps and inventory systems to accounting software and order management platforms. In Sydney, Luxe Bakery is using mobile order management system Ordermentum to reduce costs and eliminate their repetitive and mundane admin tasks.

According to Luxe Bakery’s general manager Justin Chapman, Ordermentum has enabled them to cut down costly data entry mistakes and packing errors, and even cope with tedious invoicing.

"We've gone from 100 active customers now to 400 active customers. 100 invoices per day was a big day for us 3 years ago, and now we're doing close to 250 per day,” he says.

Here at Ordermentum we think it's pretty cool to see how wholesale bakeries are using lots of different automation platforms to revolutionise their business and take it to the next level. We see that automation lets them minimise labor costs, make better use of their resources, and improve order efficiency and accuracy.

Here are some other ways automation is transforming the bakery industry: 

1. Automation gives bakers an increased level of inventory visibility

Gone are the days of creating a list of all your products in a spreadsheet and doing an inventory count every time you receive and fulfil an order. With inventory management software, your stock levels will be updated automatically as products are sold, and from there, you can easily track stock-outs and excess stock, know exactly what products you have on hand and, if you’re managing multiple bakery stores, where exactly they are located.

2. Automation saves bakery owners dollars

Do you often find that you've consistently got your staff working overtime to meet big orders? Or that you're  hiring additional staff just to keep up with your huge workload? Whichever of the two, you're incurring labor expenses and that can be your biggest cost.

By implementing automation tools that can do the admin heavy lifting for you, you will find you won't need to pay staff to work overtime or make extra hires. These types of automation platforms can schedule and automatically perform the repetitive admin tasks that need to be done on a daily basis. This is efficiency at its finest. When you begin producing more products with less labor, it makes your bakery capable of taking on more orders - which means greater profits for you!

3. Automation decreases ordering and production errors

It's obvious that most mistakes in the ordering and production process are due to human error - no matter how pedantic you are! The typo of entering 100 cupcake orders when it should be 1,000 can disappoint your customers and give them an easy reason to switch to a different supplier.

Again, this won’t happen if you’re using an effective digital ordering solution. With an automated ordering process, you and your staff will no longer need to manually enter any data. The wholesale orders placed by your customers will automatically appear in your production system and sync with your accounting and inventory platforms. This can save you money and time as well as streamline your overall ordering process.

SO WHERE DO YOU START WITH AUTOMATION?

The first step is to look at your bakery’s current processes. Review them and identify if there are steps that can indeed be automated. For example, if you think that your ordering process is the one with the most repetitive tasks that require extensive labor, then perhaps it’s time to embrace  an order management system.

Order management systems or OMS can automate your tedious admin duties, freeing you up to spend more time on things that add more value to your bakery.  Depending on the type of order management system you implement, you can have your customer order reminders, invoices, and reporting automated.

If you're keen to implement automation in your bakery business,  we can help! You can book a free demo with us to see how our dedicated tool can take care of your most time-consuming tasks and make your ordering and payments process as seamless as possible.

Or - check out these case studies to learn more.