The bakery has long held a place in Thai hearts as a category of food business. People buy from one for a snack or a dessert, or pick up something savoury to stand in for a meal. If you are new to this and want to start a bakery business in earnest but do not yet know what it takes to open one successfully, here are six keys to planning a bakery that works.
1. Flavour and ingredient quality come first
If you want to open a bakery café that succeeds, sells well and keeps customers coming back for good, nothing matters more than flavour and the quality of your ingredients. You can sit on a busy corner with people passing all day and decorate the place beautifully, but if the cakes are not good, customers will come once and never return. Worse, they may tell everyone around them not to bother with your bakery, which costs you the chance to win over new customers as well. So give flavour the attention it deserves: take the time to get your recipes right, be sure they genuinely taste good, and use only quality ingredients. Do that and your bakery already has a chance of winning customers over.
2. A varied menu, with seasonal specials to draw people in
There is an enormous range of baked goods in the world, and no end of ways to categorise them — sweet and savoury, breads, pastries, cakes, pies — with endless room for invention. If you want customers coming in every day, the variety of your menu matters: rotate it so your regulars never get bored. You might keep one signature item on sale every day to give the shop its identity, and stir up interest with seasonal specials — mango or marian plum in the hot season, say, or in the cool season a switch to bakes built around cool-climate fruit such as strawberries.
3. Drinks on the side lift your sales
A bakery does not have to sell only baked goods. Strengthen your offer and give customers more to choose from with a range of drinks — tea, coffee, fruit juice, soda — all of them easy to sell, easy to make and cheap to produce, and another way to lift your takings. And if a passer-by drops in for a drink and notices your bakery counter looks worth trying, they may well come back for that too.
4. Give the shop a clear design concept: comfortable to sit in, good to photograph
In an age where social media and content rule, opening a bakery café that lands means paying attention to how the shop looks. Decorate it well, with a story that fits its name and concept, and lay it out so the baked goods are shown off and easy to pick up. That makes customers want to drop in often — to work, or to sit and talk with friends over something good to eat. And if you are lucky enough that someone photographs the place for social media and it gets shared until the shop is widely known, that is marketing in itself. One investment in the fit-out, and it pays for itself many times over.
5. Sell through several channels, and market the shop properly
Opening a bakery is like opening any other food business: you want several ways for people to buy, because that is what builds sales substantially. Beyond the shopfront, delivery through the apps, or posting out dry goods that keep well, adds just as much profit. And do not overlook online marketing — paid social media advertising, working with influencers, a LINE Official Account, and a loyalty programme.
6. Design packaging that is both practical and attractive
The last key is choosing packaging that suits each kind of bake, so customers can take things home without worrying that they will be ruined on the way, and so anything bought as a gift is sure to please whoever receives it. Design it attractively and in keeping with the shop's concept: a sticker carrying your logo and contact number on the box builds your identity and advertises the shop at the same time.
Now you know what opening a bakery takes. The shop is ready, the equipment is ready, and every kind of bake is ready to serve. Do not forget the buying experience either — give customers an effective front-of-house sales system from Qashier. It has every function a retail shop needs, accepts payment through a wide range of channels and is easy to use, which suits anyone new to selling and will help your bakery grow quickly. For more information, contact our LINE Official: @qashier.th or call 02-544-0267