The early days of Three Mills bakery are a far cry from the bustling hybrid cafe-bakery that's become one of Canberra's hottest food destinations.
Three Mills have transitioned to working in a basement, cool room shared with chefs, bartenders, an events team, and a coffee crew to now working in their own beautiful space in Majura.
The classic story of starting small with a passion for a great product, the vision for the bakery was to produce incredible sourdough (and pastries) using traditional long ferment techniques, house-milled flour, and local ingredients. Originally A. Baker, when Justin and the team moved to the new space, it was time for a new name. Three Mills is named for the fact that they work with three different grain suppliers, and mill in house to create their world class products.
Now, the focus on quality means Three Mills has a reputation that speaks for itself, and is one of the most in demand wholesale bakeries in Canberra. But with this growth, a number of new business processes needed to be implemented. Of the new challenges in growing the business and Head Baker Justin King said "Jarrod and I, we have no experience and were just guessing. Ordermentum gave us the chance to finally implement 48 hour cut off times."
One of the biggest challenges was planning production as the wholesale orders began flowing in. Three Mills turned to Ordermentum to completely streamline their information flow - from orders to production.
As their customers put their orders in through the Ordermentum app, the software is able to instantly generate production reports with exact quantities, as soon as cutoff closes.
Because there are over 90 products, this process was an admin nightmare before Ordermentum, having to put together manual spreadsheets simply wasn't scalable. "We just go through and it will regenerate the production sheets from the invoices, so therefore whatever is on the invoice, we make. It's also been great for reducing waste."
This has allowed the bakery to implement a 48 hour cutoff and save countless hours calculating product reports manually in excel. It's also meant cashflow has improved and the admin of orders has reduced. All of which allows them to realise their combined vision of incredible product quality, and excellent customer service.
"We like to know our customers, know what they want."
While they still need staff to look after Ordermentum and the business processes, automating the admin means they can really focus on a standout service. "We'll try and do anything for anyone, any requests they have."
"That's our goal, to beat everyone on customer service."
Make customer service your main aim too and get rid of unnecessary admin. Request a demo with Ordermentum today.
