Sweet E’s Sees Soaring Back-of-House Productivity by Switching from Pen and Paper to Shopify POS (2022)

Founded out of Erica Tucker’s home kitchen in 2009, what began as a passion for baking for good friends immediately blossomed into Sweet E’s Bake Store, which nowadays serves shoppers all over Los Angeles and the United States. 

“I’m from Texas and grew up baking with my mother and grandmother. I have beloved baking decadent desserts for my relatives and friends for as lengthy as I can recall,” Erica states.

Currently, Sweet E’s delights buyers with common sweets, extravagant custom made cakes for celebrations, emblem cookies for corporate activities, and additional. Sweet E’s has an founded bakery in the vicinity of Beverly Hills, and a booming ecommerce small business to assist on-line orders, retail store decide-ups, and local deliveries. 

Till lately, Erica and her group didn’t have an ecommerce internet site and used pen and paper to consider wander-in and cellphone orders. This not only designed it challenging to maintain keep track of of orders and have a holistic check out of product sales, but the business enterprise was earning no product sales via on line orders. To support her aspirations to develop Sweet E’s into a countrywide model, Erica understood one thing had to modify. 

She enlisted the assistance of Shopify Experts Pacific IQ to set up Sweet E’s on the net store and migrate her bakery from pen and paper to Shopify POS. Considering the fact that shifting the whole business enterprise to Shopify, Sweet E’s has:

• Significantly simplified back-of-dwelling operations 
• Acquired a holistic see of on line retailer, pop-up, and bakery sales 
• Viewed a 41% enhancement in its repeat customer rate 
• Lifted conversion rates by about 5x considering that launching up coming-day retail outlet pickup for on the web orders

Obstacle: Taking orders using pen and paper 

Prior to acquiring set up on Shopify, Sweet E’s Bake Store did not have an on the web existence and tracked orders with pen and paper. That meant getting orders above the cellphone, crafting down customers’ names, contact and shipping and delivery data, and manually trying to keep monitor of what experienced to be designed when.

“That manufactured organizing what food items inventory to buy genuinely tricky due to the fact all we had to do the job with was scattered on a bunch of parts of paper,” Erica states. “The far more orders we bought, the more intricate it was to hold every little thing arranged. Looking back on how inefficient that procedure was, it hurt us and created fulfilling orders more difficult than it experienced to be.”

Not only was this guide procedure inefficient, but it also didn’t give Erica and her group the information they desired to increase the business enterprise. “We did not have centralized reporting to help us have an understanding of our small business improved. We did not know what products we marketed most, when our peak promoting period was, or who our repeat customers have been. We had no crystal clear watch of our small business,” she suggests.

Although the pen-and-paper approach was slowing Sweet E’s down, Erica and her group could even now get by. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic greatly shifted client buying actions, she saw it as a prospect to pivot, commence accepting on the web orders, and modernize how she ran her small business.

The pandemic actually compelled us to rethink how we did organization. I saw it as an possibility to reset Sweet E’s from a tech standpoint, improve our procedures and workflows, and guarantee we could offer our products and solutions in a way consumers want to shop.

Resolution: Unifying its gross sales channels with Shopify 

COVID-19 pressured Erica to rethink Sweet E’s complete business enterprise design. She partnered with Shopify Specialists Pacific IQ to create Sweet E’s ecommerce site and get the bakery set up on Shopify POS. Now, the full organization operates on Shopify. 

“When Erica came to us, she desired steering on how to make her small business much more resilient in the new atmosphere she uncovered herself in,” describes Sean Clarke, Founder of Pacific IQ. “During COVID, success solutions like shop pickup and shipping grew to become critical, as did shopper retention. By switching Sweet E’s from pen and paper to Shopify, Erica has an infrastructure that permits her to make out the on the internet component of her enterprise, expand and keep her buyer base, and assure her bakery can support an inflow of on the net orders efficiently.”  

For Erica, viewing all orders in one location has dramatically improved again-of-dwelling operations for kitchen team. “With Shopify, employees can see all of our orders, no matter whether they occur from a cell phone connect with, an email, an online purchase, or a walk-in client. Every single purchase we get is in just one spot. We see what we have to have to make, when the order requirements to be fulfilled by, delivery addresses or pickup instances, and any notes the buyer left. Transferring to Shopify actually helped streamline our production.”

Outfitted with Shopify’s unified shopper reports and advertising instruments like Klayvio, Erica can also interact with shoppers put up-buy, foster loyalty, and increase buyer life span value. “Shopify permits me to see who is a repeat buyer versus who is a very first-timer. I know what products and solutions prospects like, their life time commit, and even when their birthdays are. All the information and facts I will need to preserve shoppers coming back again is under one umbrella,” Erica points out.

“Now, with this info, I can establish newsletters and share promotions with my prospects in a way that just was not achievable in advance of. Considering that upgrading to Shopify and employing Klaviyo, our repeat shopper fee has enhanced by 41%”

Many thanks to Sweet E’s modernized front-of-dwelling and back-of-house operations, Erica even started off supplying up coming-day achievement for orders in the greater Los Angeles area—a benefit her purchasers recognize and that sets her aside from other nearby bakeries. 

“Right now, our order cutoff is at 11:59 p.m. for the next working day. I’m only in a position to do that with the assistance of Shopify,” Erica states. “When our workers comes at 5 in the early morning, they see all the orders they require to make that day in Shopify POS and can prioritize manufacturing primarily based on direct instances and when the order is scheduled for pickup or delivery. Shopify will help us give a effortless purchasing expertise for shoppers and have a seamless output approach on the back stop.” 

Shopify assisted us to pivot our complete company design to something a lot more successful which is in line with how our consumers want to purchase. All that was doable thanks to the support of Shopify. We were being capable to customise our ecommerce web page and POS program to produce a modern day bakery procedure.

Final results: Selling how prospects want to get and skyrocketing conversion rates  

Now, when a craving strikes or there is a celebration to prepare, Sweet E’s shoppers have a lot more solutions for positioning and getting orders.

“I’ve savored bringing ecommerce into our business and earning it experience like a natural extension of our retail products and services,” Erica claims. “Customers want to get items online now, so remaining equipped to promote how clients want to store and take care of it all from Shopify has been worthwhile. Featuring in-retail outlet pickup or local supply for on the web orders wasn’t possible right before, and now it is a single of the principal methods we provide our products and solutions.” 

Since launching with Shopify, Sweet E’s conversion fees have skyrocketed by over 500%. “People want convenience, and now that we’re presenting a greater acquiring experience, we’re observing that reflected in our outcomes. We’re providing extra than at any time prior to, on-line and from our bakery,” clarifies Erica. 

Shopify didn’t just make in-individual and on the web orders less difficult for Sweet E’s. Equipped with Shopify POS Go and no additional components, Erica can get Sweet E’s on the road and provide baked merchandise at situations, pop-up outlets, or marketplaces. 

“With pop-ups, there’s by now so considerably to put together and believe about: stock arranging, baking the inventory, marketing and advertising, transport, your kiosk placement and layout, you identify it. In its place of technology getting yet a further issue to fear about, I just carry POS Go with me and have all the things I need,” Erica points out. 

For Erica, currently being in a position to very easily see and interpret profits knowledge has helped Sweet E’s turn out to be far more profitable than at any time. “I have more management more than my enterprise, production, and advertising than I’ve at any time had. We can observe our sales simpler and obviously see what our bestselling and most financially rewarding goods are,” she says.

Erica also notes that Shopify’s user-friendly interface has been a sweet reduction. “My beloved point about using Shopify POS is that it is easy and uncomplicated to use.  I can effortlessly prepare all my staff members to use Shopify. I can manage solutions, operate experiences, and maintain a pulse on my business myself,” she states.

And when she desires an more hand to do issues that are outside of her consolation zone, Erica leans on her Shopify Spouse Agency, Pacific IQ. “They’re valuable consultants who support me set up systems, make more economical workflows, pick the correct applications, and get almost everything managing to satisfy my business’s requires,” Erica suggests. 

With every little thing managing on Shopify, I have more control than I’ve at any time experienced. We employed to expend the bulk of our time on day-to-day functions and purchase management. Now, I’m investing that time focusing on what buyers want and in fact growing the organization.