My sister owns a fairly popular bakery in my state. I used to work there before I got my present job and I can tell you that food service business is an exhausting one. It will physically and mentally exhaust you.
[this image is totally unrelated to my post but I have an opportunity to upload my picture on the chain so here you go😁]
As the manager of the bakery one time, I was the one going to the market, taking inventory, selling to customers and also helping with production when I was less busy. It was quite the job😂. One thing we have been unable to achieve is proper tracking of business activities. We used to take record of production and sales every day, but somehow, theres no 100% effeciency in monitoring the business.
The first time I was asked to manage the business was when she and her husband went on a vacation and I was left to take care of things. It was easy for me because I was already doing most of the things A manager at the bakery should be doing.
The bakery was really small when all that happened, so if we really put our yome into it, we were able to track expenses, production and sales. We often had issues with inventory as it was always stolen. We got to find the thief eventually.
The issue now is that she intends to travel out of the coutry again and is pleading with me to come and manage the bakery while she’s gone as theres no one else she trusts to handle her #business. It’s awesome to be spoken of like that and I must say I felt great when she said that. But the thing is, I have commitments that will suffer if I go back to the bakery. Fair enough she has more hands now and I would only have to do the management part of the business, It is best there is a system that can function adequately without either of us ( I am not trying to run away from helping. I am certain that I will have to do it anyways).
A business is supposed to grow to a point that it can function without the business owner always present watching every move made. I think the bakery is at that point at the moment. I have been thinking of how to track the business but I just can’t come up with anything. Heres an idea of what I should be able to track: if one bag if flour produces 109 loaves of bread, and a loaf costs $1.50 then we should be able to say we are expecting $163.5 per bag. The inly issue is that we don’t make just bread. There’s more like doughnuts, meat pies, and more that are produced from one bag of flour. How do we track all these.
There’s also food, because the bakery sells food too so you can call it a bakery/restaurant. How fo we monitor inventory, track production and sales all at the same time? I have searched for any resource I can use but I havent seen any that meets our need.
This is one of the major woes of a small business owner. If you take a day off, you do it at the expense of your business.
I am still thinking of ways to track finances, inventory, production and sales. Hava you had any similar business experience? How did you tackle it?
Thank you for reading.
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