January 14, 2016 - 9:54am
planning + production software?
hello bakers!
i am running a small micro bakery from home and doing all my order planning and daily schedules in spreadsheets for now but am running into issues and the whole thing is not very safe (in terms of me making computation mistakes).
For the moment i have:
> a tab with weekly orders per bread and per client
> a tab with refreshments based on tomorrow's production needs
> a tab with recipes
Do you have a software you would recommend?
Thank you!
xx alex
Share
and paper.
I have a paper sheet I fill out every day (one sheet per day) for orders for each customer (easy as I only have half a dozen regulars) then I enter the totals into the spreadsheet for the sourdough calculations - write the calculations back onto the sheet and that's that.
at the end of the week, I hand the daily sheets to my bookkeeper (wife!) and she sends out the invoices.
As a computer software engineer, I do keep meaning to make this more automatic, but what I do now is relatively simple and seems to work OK and I'm only baking 150-200 loaves a week.
Where are you based?
-Gordon
Thanks Gordon!
I am based in London UK and am doing about the same numbers (200+). i just thought that since there are some many of us (and food businesses) doing pretty much the same calculations there ought to be a simple software available out there.. doesnt sound too complicated, and would be more secure than my formulas. i like your simple approach though maybe a bit time consuming for me (since i also have to do deliveries and accounts myself :-)
thanks! xx
A question for both of you, since you are baking the same quantity: what's your schedule like? I assume you are working a 'normal' job in addition to the baking schedule. How do you get those 150-200 loaves made, in addition to the usual work week?
... well that's what I keep telling myself.
The key for me is overnight fermentation - sourdough or yeasted. I also work from home most of the time, so I'm not very far from the "bakery"...
I'm also self-employed and work from home, so that takes a lot of the pressure off too.
I start at about 3pm - by then I have all the orders in (which are more or less static most of the time). Then I work out how many loaves of each type I'm making, use a spreadsheet to work out how much levian to make up, then go and mix up the levian. I'll also weigh out the flour for the mixes at that point too. If I'm making wholemeal I mix up the flour & water & leave it to autolyze. (for 5 hours, although 1 is more than enough - it's just convenient)
Then at about 8pm I'll start the mixing & kneading. Get it all mixed/kneaded by 9pm then clean up.
Next morning - depending on the load, get up between 5am and 6am. The 5am start is only 2 Saturdays a month right now when I have a market to prepare for.
But then it's essentially scale/shape/prove the dough then bake when ready and usually out the door by 9am. 40-50 loaves is possible in that time with the ovens and various proving times.
There is some time planning involved, so I know how long the different doughs take to prove so work out the best order for them to be shaped. I usually start from my planned finishing time and work backwards from there. It's a bit like making a Gantt chart. The limiting factor for me is oven space although there is also a limit to the number of loaves I can shape/proof at a time. My aim is to be done shaping by 6:30am if I've had a 5:30 start.
But even with the best plans, sometimes it can go a bit weird. This morning the overnight yeasted wholemeals and sourdough spelts were ready way before I was expecting, so I had little choice but to put them in the oven - fortunately I had plenty of time (and a hot oven!)
Sometimes I can fit in 1 (or 2) small lots of traditional yeasted loaves in the morning - e.g. baguettes I make using an overnight poolish but that's essentially a yeasted dough (don't make sourdough ones right now as they don't sell well). And things like sticky buns and croissants - the croissants are made up the day before and left in the fridge overnight, and I sometimes do that with the buns too. Right now it's how X bun season, but for the small quantities I'm making right now (made 24 this morning) it's just as easy to do it in the morning - otherwise I'll make up an overnight dough with a fraction of the yeast and plan it into the mornings scale/shape/prove schedule.
I'm only baking 5 days a week right now (Tue-Sat mornings) but on Mondays I make up pastys, quiches and some other stuff for a market I go to on Tuesday mornings. The dough gets mixed earlier on a Monday as I go to the local pub quiz at 8:30pm.
-Gordon
hello! I am now baking full time 7 days a week as it was too tricky to balance working part time (but ever changing working days) and making bread with some sort of consistency.. a bit risky, but the only way to know is to try :-)
my schedules still vary based on the amount of breads i need to do each days (varies a lot) which determines the time i wake up to bake (have limited oven space) etc.. but i usually mix my wheat sourdough bread in the morning (around 9am after end of baking), then the 100% ryes (in tins) which takes me until mid afternoon (baking the ryes) and always refresh my starter around 6pm. the convenient thing for me is that since i am still working from home i can combine this schedule with doing admin and other bread related stuff. I am not sure if this answers your question, let me know if you have more specific questions! happy baking! xx
Take it steady there. I was doing 6 days baking and cut it down to 5 a few months back as it was just becoming too much. Saying that, my 6th day (Mondays) is now occupied making up pastys, quiches, etc. for sale on the Tuesday market I do and tonight (Sunday) is usually gluten free cake making after the weekend big clean but tonight I've got enough in the freezers to carry me through...
And I've just had a local shop now want 50 pastys a week off me (frozen) so trying to work that in in a low-impact manner....
-Gordon
If you are able to justify the purchase of this scale there is no need for any kind of software. If I was in the phase of business where growth is the upper most important factor I would buy this scale. You could almost hire an idiot to scale your batches.
Gerhard
Formula Control Scale - FC6300 - Batch Demo
thanks Gerhard, but as an artisan surdough baker this looks a bit too tech for me and my issues are more with orders etc.. and i am still veryyyyy far from having the budget for this as well am sure :-) thanks though! xx
I need to get better at this too. I currently bake twice a week for a 'mailing list' of customers, and once a week for my own little bread shop (Saturdays). However, I'll soon be supplying a farm stand or two as well and have other expansion plans. I'm working off of pretty simple spreadsheets just to track orders and shop sales, and I have another spreadsheet where I track all my formulas (based on baker's percentage) so I know how much dough to make for a defined number of loaves of a defined weight. That helps a lot.
I'm now thinking of a spreadsheet where I can enter the duration for all the steps (i.e. mixing, autolysing, resting, fermenting, proofing, etc.) and then work back from the time when it needs to be ready.
My limiting factors are fridge space, oven space and my own ability to mix. I can mix 4 loaves of a fairly wet dough by hand at a time, but more than that and my little arthritic hands can't manage. I'm looking at investing in a 20 litre mixer.
Gordon, how many ovens do you have? How many loaves can you fit into your oven(s) at one time?
I have 3 ovens. One is a standard 68l domestic electric fan oven, the next is a 3 grid GN1/1 size oven (Lincat EC08) and the third is a Rofco B40.
If you head on over here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44346/microbakeries then a few posts down I've put a longer explanation and some photos a bit further too.
I have a printed "daily" sheet with my customers on it and bread types - I fill out boxes with quantities of each bread for each customer, then use a spreadsheet which has all my recipes on it - I enter the quantities there and it works out the sourdough I need to make up for that load. I'm working on some better software for my own use - I'd release it but it won't be written on a system that's as general purpose as it could be.
-Gordon
hey gordon, thanks for this. looks from the images that you are uk based.. I am in East London (E5 9EF) if you are around and want to come hello let me know.. happy baking! xx
Deepest Devon here!
Cheers,
-Gordon
I am really surprised that no simple low cost software exists for a small mom & pop bakery. I have days, over several years looking, testing, sampling software. Some I signed up to and tested for a year or so. None of them I considered suitable for a small 1 or 2 person business.
Except:
Artisan Baker from Edward Mospan. He released this software many years ago now on a beautiful web site, with a support group, full manual and sold licenses for (not sure now) 12 or 25 pounds. I bought one. Edward was brilliant at providing support.
After a few months he released it F.O.C and a few months after that he totally disappeared. Sad as I wanted to ask him to try to add a module for my customers to place orders.
Still to this day I still use it. It has several functions, although I do not use many of them, like purchasing, stock control and so on.
What I use for is to enter all my recipes, create products. From this it creates costing and can suggest retail pricing based on ingredients, labour and overheads.
I use the Order system to enter my customers orders for any particular day. On that day it will print out a list of ingredients to way out for each loaf type and of course Invoices.
The only part that does not work is a minor one relating to a pick list for packing the bread. I did actually discuss this with Edward and in one release he fixed it.
As I have said, I used many high priced systems, which to be fair are designed for high volume multi-branch operations with staff to operate it. For ease of use and simplicity Artisan Bakery is the best there is out there that I could find and now its free.
If Edward Mospan reads this or someone knows him (I am sure he must have been a baker or a baker advised him), there is market for this at far more than his original price.
Google Artisan Bakery, Edward Mospan and the software download will pop up. It runs on Windows, although I run on a Windows emulator. As I said it has a full and very explicit manual. But I am willing to help if you really get stuck.
I am really surprised that no simple low cost software exists for a small mom & pop bakery. I have spent days, over several years looking, testing, sampling software. Some I signed up to and tested for a year or so. None of them I considered suitable for a small 1 or 2 person business.
Except:
Artisan Baker from Edward Mospan. He released this software many years ago now on a beautiful web site, with a support group, full manual and sold licenses for (not sure now) 12 or 25 pounds. I bought one. Edward was brilliant at providing support.
After a few months he released it F.O.C and a few months after that he totally disappeared. Sad, as I wanted to ask him to try to add a module for my customers to place orders.
Still to this day I use it. It has several functions, although I do not use many of them, like purchasing, stock control and so on.
What I use it for is to enter all my recipes, create products. From this it creates costing and can suggest retail pricing based on ingredients, labour and overheads.
I use the Order system to enter my customers orders for any particular day. On that day it will print out a list of ingredients to weigh out for each loaf type and of course Invoices.
The only part that does not work is a minor one relating to a pick list for packing the bread. I did actually discuss this with Edward and in one release he fixed it.
As I have said, I used many high priced systems, which to be fair are designed for high volume multi-branch operations with staff to operate it. For ease of use and simplicity Artisan Bakery is the best there is out there that I could find and now its free.
If Edward Mospan reads this or someone knows him (I am sure he must have been a baker or a baker advised him), there is market for this at far more than his original price.
Google Artisan Bakery, Edward Mospan and the software download will pop up. It runs on Windows, although I run on a Windows emulator. As I said it has a full and very explicit manual. But I am willing to help if you really get stuck.
Hello Martin,
after reading this post i downloaded the file and installed it.
Now it askes for the account details, offcourse i don't have an account.
Do you know how or where i can activate an account for this holy grail small bakery software?
kind regards,
Pieter