Are you hitting a wall in the development of your business and struggling to exceed your current results? Unfortunately, this is a problem encountered quite frequently by self-employed professionals: the difficulty of passing a certain sales milestone. However, this situation is not irremediable. On the strength of numerous successful bakery openings in France, in this article, BRO gives you some advice on how to improve your bakery business.
How to improve bakery business? A few applicable tips
Monitor your KPIs carefully
Obviously, the first rule of how to improve your bakery business is to set KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your business. If you don’t have a background in business management, you’ll need to look into this as a manager. Indeed, beyond the quality of your products and manufacturing processes, running a business also requires an analytical eye for all its working processes.
In the case of a bakery, certain KPIs can be interesting to monitor and improve over time to increase your profitability and, thus, enable you to grow:
- Average basket ;
- Margin on each product;
- Customer satisfaction rate…
It’s only by paying close attention to optimizing these key values that you’ll be able to improve your overall profitability over the long term.
Control your production chain at every stage
In addition to monitoring KPIs, if you’re wondering how to improve your bakery business, another essential step to consider is optimizing your production chain. There’s no point in maximizing the margin on a product if it takes too long to make, and affects your other preparation times.
So it’s imperative to provide your bakers and service agents with smooth, optimized work processes. Think about workstation layout solutions that limit wasted time (unnecessary travel, inaccessible utensils…) and optimize production over the reduced number of working hours associated with baking.
Of course, the production chain doesn’t stop at product preparation in the workshop, but extends to every stage of the process: from optimizing the storage of your cold room to save time on deliveries, to optimizing the layout of customer-side serving cabinets.
Social networking fads
Today, the way we consume is partly conditioned by what we see on the internet, and particularly on social networks. If you’re wondering how to improve your bakery business, social networks can be a real source of new customers, especially if you’re located in or near a big city.
You’ll need to look at trends that can change rapidly. Trendy products, decorations, aesthetics, flavors… Follow the trends on social networks and display these trendy products in your shop window to attract new young customers and try to keep them loyal.
Adopt new products
And since we’re talking about attracting a new clientele, an excellent solution for this is obviously to vary your product range. And in this sense, you can choose to adapt to different diets. For example, you can offer a range of nut-free products for allergy sufferers, or a range of sourdough products for those with gluten intolerance.
As a premium product, sourdough bread can bring real added value to your establishment, setting you apart from your direct competitors if you’re the only one to offer it. Going a step further, a complete range of sourdough products could enable you to win the loyalty of a new clientele and sustainably increase your customer flow… and your average basket, since these are products that can be promoted on sale.
Use consultants to develop your business
But if all these approaches answer the question “how to improve bakery business”, they may seem complicated to put in place, or you may be unsure of how to activate one of these levers. With this in mind, you can call on the services of a consultant specialized in this field.
BRO, an organization specialized in supporting bakery professionals, can intervene on site anywhere in the world to advise, guide and direct you on the right steps to take to develop your business.
From the optimization of your work processes to the layout of your space, we provide you with a consulting service from A to Z, so that you have all the keys you need to accelerate the development of your bakery.
So, if you’ve been wondering how to improve your bakery business, you now have a solid foundation on which to build your business. Would you like to benefit from the support of professional consultants? Contact us now!
