Get a rise from your bakery sales

Looking to improve your bakery sales? We share the ingredients for bakery success.

The overall value of In-Store Bakery sales currently sits at £1.2bn, but is declining slightly YoY (-1%, Kantar, 2018). This has been driven primarily by the decline of in-store bakery bread sales.

The state of affairs within Cakes & Pastries is much sweeter however, growing +2.3% YoY (Kantar, 2018). Convenience stores take a healthy 13.5% share of all sweet bakery sales, with independent convenience stores seeing growth of up to 11% this year. The impulse nature of these products align nicely with the small store format and shopper-friendly store layouts seen within convenience stores.

Are you in-store bakeries worth it?

In short, yes! In-Store Bakeries are a known footfall driver- 3rd behind tobacco and newspapers. They bring valuable Top-Up Mission shoppers into the store. 60% of bakery shoppers are on a top up mission (HIM, 2018), and the presence of an in-store bakery has been seen to act as a catalyst for increased basket spend. Lastly, in-store bakeries can deliver very high margins. Country Choice bakery products can return up to 40% margin for retailers.

How can you improve your sales?

• Bake little and often.

Get to know your customer base to gauge demand throughout the day and the week, and then adapt your bake schedules to meet their requirements.

• Review your range and placement.

With the popularity of cakes and pastries, ensuring you have a well-balanced range of cakes, pastries and bread is important. Test and track the success of different range combinations at different times, in different layouts and store positions. Here is our suggested planogram for a 1m Tower Swan Bakery Unit:

• Consider longer life products.

The inclusion of wrapped or longer-life products such as our thaw & serve roll range and wrapped cake bars can provide all-day availability whilst limiting potential waste.

• Availability

Did you know that 47% of all bakery sales occur after 2pm? But often during this time shelves are empty, if not almost depleted. By ensuring availability throughout the afternoon and into early evening, retailers will quickly see a rise in sales.

• Acting on Impulse

To maximise impulse sales, look to link coffee with sweet treats in the afternoon to tempt weary workers, or position impulse confectionery near a till point or queuing system to capture impulse sales.

With these simple activities, we hope you will see a rise in your bakery sales and develop a profitable category in your store.

Where next?

Why not browse our Swan Bakery concept pages