Amongst waving palm trees on a breezy Cairns street, Baked on Red Hill makes bread and pastries the traditional way. Owner Jeremy Mason is passionate about handcrafting his bread, but when it comes to his ordering systems he wants to remove the human touch as much as possible.
“Anything that uses a human is going to make mistakes, so with our old paper-based and spreadsheet system, there were things that slipped through. With Upstock we’re now reliable when it comes to getting customers what they want.”
As his business expanded from his bakery shop to supplying cafes and hotels, Jeremy’s existing production processes started getting a bit stale. Keeping up with the data entry and mental load of knowing what to bake and when was a time and energy sap.
“One of the big things that came out of using Upstock was production list generation. Now a lot of that manual processing stuff is streamlined – push of a button, bang, production lists have been created. Now my guys have a better and quicker idea of what needs to be produced.”
And one of the biggest wins is having almost everything in one place. Jeremy was already using Upstock to supply to and buy from fellow Cairns business White Whale Coffee Roasters when it clicked that going all in with Upstock would streamline everything and give him a better sense of where his business stands day-to-day.
“Upstock allows a lot more tracking and a lot more data analysis. You’ve basically got it all there. You can pull up your production list, and you can pull up your sales. You can marry that up to your other programs. It's very easy to track and manage.”
Making the transition to Upstock was also much easier and faster than Jeremy expected.
“The more we looked at it, the more I went, yeah, this is gonna work. And then, it was an easy transition to Upstock. Now I just sit down, hit a couple of buttons, and it's done, as opposed to before, it was two or three hours, and I had to find that window to do it.”
More from our chat with Jeremy Mason
What’s your business and your brand?
It's about community. It's the whole idea of riding your bike with the basket up to the shop, grabbing a loaf of handcrafted bread and sitting there and having a coffee. We’re right near the school and the community come and grab a pastry, grab a coffee in the morning and we’ve got a lot of construction around the place, we've also got the holiday park down the road. It's a meeting place. In this day and age where communities get further and further dispersed, it's an opportunity to get people together. The other side of the business is our wholesale customers; a few hotels, cafes and restaurants. A lot of them are morning-orientated so obviously bread's a big part of breakfast.
Why did you start using Upstock?
I’m a chef who worked in restaurants and hotels and I’d always been really into proper bread, so I started out the business by setting up a makeshift kitchen in my laundry and things grew from hobby to wholesale customers. Before we know it, we've got a heap of wholesale customers. And while it wasn't the old pen-and-paper scenario, things needed to be streamlined and accurate. My friends at White Whale Coffee Roasters raved about Upstock and I could already see how it worked from the buyer's point of view because I was using it to buy coffee for the bakery shop.
What’s your favourite thing about Upstock?
The time frame. I enjoy the fact that I sit down, hit a couple of buttons, and it's done, as opposed to before, it was two or three hours, and I had to find that window to do it.
See all the benefits of Upstock for bakeries
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