How to Increase Your Bakery Sales 

Now that you’ve started your bakery, you’re already looking for ways to improve those sales. Profit is what makes your bakery something viable and keeps you afloat, so it’s important to know what exactly you need to do to make sure those sales go up. How can you increase your bakery sales?

To increase your bakery sales, you need to keep your items fresh, consider holding events, use a food delivery service, offer samples or discounts, create specialty and made to order items, work with both your community and your customers, and market everything that you do. 

But it’s not always that easy. What should you do to keep things fresh, and what sales can you create?  What discounts will bring in the most potential customers? Read on to find out more about some ideas to bring in additional profit to your bakery. 

Keep things fresh—whether it’s always having freshly baked items for sale or changing up your menu every so often, make sure you offer the freshest and newest items. 

How to Increase Your Bakery Sales

What do people want? They want both their tried-and-true favorites and variety. How can you provide both and attract more sales? Figure out your best-selling items, whether it’s simply through talking to your customers or checking through your receipts, and make sure you always keep those items on the menu. But what about the others? You have the opportunity to create a rotating menu or a seasonal menu through those other offerings. Make sure your customers know about your products by publicizing not only what you have, but that you’re making those changes. 

Hold an event or two at your bakery. 

If cafes and coffeeshops can do it, why can’t you? Consider creating events or meetings that can be held at your place. If you’re considering an open mic night or even live music, you can keep open for extended hours and provide discounted items—and some of them, if you’re holding it later or outside of your normal hours, might actually be on the day-old pile for the next day if you don’t. You can get rid of some of those items that didn’t sell during they day and make additional money off of the people who come in. You never know who might end up becoming a repeat customer. 

You can also start holding classes at your bakery. Whether it’s a decorating class or baking, you can encourage people to come in to learn from your expertise. Not only can you charge for these events, effectively increasing your profits, but more than likely people will walk out with a few items of their own. 

Use a food delivery service to take your items to different parts of your community. 

Whether it’s DoorDash, Uber Eats, or GrubHub, food delivery apps have taken the world by storm, and you can leverage their success by jumping on board. It’s up to you to get your bakery on the map on these apps, so open yourself up to these programs to allow more people to order your items. The more people that you reach, the more likely they’ll become repeat customers. 

How to Write the Best Bakery Description for Facebook

Offer your customers free samples, discounts, or sales. 

While this is something that many retail stores do, you can do it just as well in your bakery. You can stand outside of your bakery and entice people walking by with free samples—while not always successful in larger communities, you can still find that right person who’s going to make your bakery their one stop shop for all things sweet. 

You can also add any discounts or sales to your rotation. Can you create some sort of combo, or sell your donuts or cookies by the dozen with one free? Consider creating a special where veterans get items for less on patriotic holidays, or create a happy hour where seniors get a percentage off. 

Create specialty and made-to-order items. 
How to Increase Your Bakery Sales

While many might not want to get into the custom cakes, cookies, or cupcake business—you may find it extremely profitable. Creating event cakes and items are not for the faint of heart and can bring an additional stressor to your bakery, but if you’re already know for your decorating skills, it’s an easy transition to make. Make sure you’re focused on providing the best items you can for both your made-to-order items and your traditional bakery items. Both need your full attention, because if one quality slips, you may have customer complaints. 

Become a part of your local community. 

People love small businesses, and you can take advantage of that fact by getting involved in your community. Whether it’s through networking or even hosting your own event to bring those business owners into your bakery, make sure you start talking to those around you. You never know what advice they can provide as you develop your small business. 

But how does that improve sales? Easy—you can start collaborating with those other business owners to sell your items at their events or even as a benefit. Work with a local non-profit to do a fundraiser or work with a coffee shop to create your own combo meals. You can also work with local restaurants to see if they would be interested in adding your baked goods to their menus. Already, many restaurants outsource their desserts, so you can work with other small businesses to provide those desserts to a possibly untapped market. You don’t have to be at odds with other retail stores—in fact, especially if you’re working in a small community, you can work together to boost both of your sales. 

Best Business Strategies for Your Bakery

It’s all about the marketing. 

No matter what you do, the most important thing that you can do to increase your bakery sales is market. You need to have at least a website and a social media page or two, and those need to be synchronized—anything you post on one, you have to post on the other. You can create your own website and run your own social media pages, but make sure you stay consistent in your marketing and in your branding. 

What are some great ways to market your bakery offerings?

  • Create giveaways, whether online or in person. Small or large scale, you can promote your items through a giveaway or a contest. Using your social media, you can get customers engaged by encouraging them to comment on a post or share it to get an entry.
  • Use social media to share recipes or hacks. People love being in the know, so you can use your social media pages to share some insider looks into your bakery. Consider making a series of how you make your items and they can see behind the curtain. 
  • Start a blog or vlog series. Looking to engage more people? Consider taking that social media hack tip a step further and show your customers how you make your items. Not only will they know exactly your process, but they’ll know the ingredients you’re using in their favorite baked goods. 
  • Create a photo contest. Looking for engagement online? Encourage your customers to take photos of their favorite desserts and post them on your social media pages. Much like the giveaway function, you can have people vote on their favorites and reward the winner. This is another great way to engage with your customers while staying on the top of all those social media feeds. 
  • Advertise in the local newspaper or local magazines. With the advent of social media it may feel antiquated, but there are plenty of potential customers that don’t have social media that you can reach through traditional marketing. 

Make sure your customers know that you value their opinion. 

How to Increase Your Bakery Sales

While it can sometimes be hard to solicit customer advice, make sure you start that relationship early. Because you’re a small business, you have the opportunity to meet with your regulars—something that no big company could ever achieve. Use that to your advantage and talk to the people you see most about what they like and even what they don’t like. The best thing you can do with that feedback? Actually, use it, especially if it’s something you can benefit from—not only can you see an increase of sales, but you can make your customers happy and feel valued that you took their advice. That will only keep your customers coming back, and in the long run, that’s going to help your profits the most.  

Five Main Bakery Problems and Solutions

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits to starting a bakery?

While there are many benefits, the main benefits are that you can show off your prowess for baking and offer those items at a fair price to customers. You can also benefit from a relatively simple business model while serving a previously underserved niche in the community.

What items sell the best in a bakery?

Cakes, cookies, breads and rolls, cupcakes, sandwiches and wraps, and yeast-raised donuts are all the best-selling items in a bakery, while you should avoid certain items like cookie bars, mini pies, and turnovers. You can also sell more regional items depending on where your bakery is situated. 

To learn more on how to start your own bakery business check out my startup documents here

This blog post is provided for informational purposes only. The information contained is not intended to constitute legal advice or to substitute for obtaining legal advice from a qualified attorney.