Running wholesale bakery deliveries: orders, bake lists and early-morning runs

Wholesale is how many small bakeries pay the bills. Retail is lovely, but a dozen cafés taking bread six days a week is steady income you can plan around. It also brings its own headaches: late changes, working out the bake, getting bread to twenty doors before they open, and invoicing all of it.

This guide is for bakeries with one van and a handful to a few dozen wholesale accounts. It covers the whole loop, from order to invoice.

Before you take on wholesale accounts

A few things to settle before you say yes to that new café:

• Your wholesale price list. Wholesale prices need to cover ingredients, labour, packaging and delivery. A loaf that's profitable over your counter can lose money once a van, a driver and an early start are involved. Our delivery cost calculator helps you work out what each drop actually costs.
• A minimum order or delivery charge. A café taking four croissants on a Tuesday may cost you more to reach than the order is worth. See how to price delivery rounds.
• Delivery days and areas. You don't have to deliver everywhere every day. "Town centre daily, villages Tuesday and Friday" is a perfectly normal offer.
• Payment terms, agreed up front and written down (more below).

And the paperwork: if you're starting a new food business you need to register with your local council. Gov.uk says you must register at least 28 days before trading, and that applies to businesses that distribute food as well as make it (gov.uk: register a food business).

Orders: standing orders plus changes

Almost all bakery wholesale is standing orders: the same café, the same products, most days of the week, with different quantities at weekends. Set each account up with quantities per weekday, and record anything different as a change for that date only. We cover this in detail in standing orders for wholesale customers.

The biggest source of stress is changes arriving after you've planned the bake. Set a cut-off that works with your process. If doughs are mixed in the afternoon for an overnight prove, the cut-off has to be before that, typically early afternoon the day before. Tell every account, put it on your price list and on invoices, and hold to it.

From orders to a bake list

Every evening (or afternoon) you need to know two things:

1. Totals per product. 64 sourdough, 120 croissants, 30 seeded. This is what you bake. Add your retail counter and a small allowance for mishaps.
2. A packing list per customer. What goes in each crate or bag, ideally in delivery order so the first drop's crate is the last one loaded.

Working these out from a spreadsheet each night is where errors creep in, especially when one café's change was sent by text and never made it into the sheet. If both lists come straight from the same standing orders and changes, they can't disagree with each other.

A practical tip: produce the bake list at the cut-off time, not before. A bake list printed at noon with a 2pm cut-off will be wrong.

Getting bread there before opening

Most cafés want bread before they open, which squeezes every delivery into a narrow early window. Some ways to make that work:

• Agree drop arrangements. A key safe, a lockable box or a back door left on the latch means you don't need someone there at 6am, and you can deliver whenever your route reaches them.
• Order the route around hard opening times. Earliest openers first, then fill in around them. Our route planning guide explains how.
• Split by area and day. If you can't reach everyone before 8am, move the late-opening accounts (lunch places, delis) to the end of the run.
• Take a photo at each drop. When bread is left unattended, a timestamped photo ends "it never came" disputes quickly.

Packaging, crates and returns

Decide early whether you use returnable crates or disposable bags. Crates are cheaper over time but go missing. If you use them, count them out and back, and note it on the drop. A café holding fifteen of your crates is a cost you're carrying.

Waste and sale-or-return

Some cafés will ask for sale-or-return. Be careful. It moves all the risk of over-ordering onto you, and it removes the café's reason to order accurately. If you do offer it, limit it: a small percentage, or only on new lines for a trial period. A better approach for most is firm orders with easy changes before the cut-off, so the café orders what it needs.

Keep a simple log of your own waste per product per day. If seeded loaves come back or go unsold every Monday, adjust your counter bake, and look at whether one account is consistently over-ordering and then complaining.

Invoicing and getting paid

Weekly invoicing is common for café accounts. Monthly suits larger accounts with their own accounts departments. Either way:

• Invoice from what was actually delivered, including any short or failed drops, not from the standing order.
• Put your payment terms and bank details on every invoice.
• Make paying easy: a card link or Direct Debit gets you paid faster than "please transfer".

Our guide on getting paid on time covers terms, Direct Debit and your rights under the late payment rules.

A typical day

Time	What happens
Early afternoon	Cut-off. Bake list and packing list produced from orders.
Afternoon	Doughs mixed for tomorrow based on the bake list.
Overnight / early morning	Bake. Pack crates per customer in reverse delivery order.
Early morning	Driver runs the route, photo at each drop, notes any problems.
End of week	Invoices from what was delivered. Payments chased.

When to use software

With five accounts, a notebook works. Past ten or so, with changes every day, the nightly sums and the Friday invoicing start eating real hours. Wholesale bakery software ranges from big production systems to simple order forms. RoundSorted sits in the middle: standing orders, café changes by link, a bake list, the delivery run and invoices, without recipe costing or production planning. See RoundSorted for wholesale bakeries.