The ability to figure out how to start an online bakery and turn it into a successful venture is more than just having mouth-watering products.

It involves creating a user-friendly website for customers to order your baked goods.

👋 In this guide, we’re going to help you understand how to show off your tasty treats online, make it easy for your customers to buy them, and make sure everyone loves shopping at your online bakery.

These days, your bakery’s website is like your shop’s front window on the internet. It’s the first thing your customers see. And just like in a real shop, first impressions are super important. It’s a fact that a third of people will stop visiting a website and won’t do business with it if the site doesn’t look nice or isn’t easy to use.

So let’s get into how you can start your own online bakery this year, and make your dream of having a bakery come true.

The basics of an online bakery

You might think the basics are donuts and mixers, but before those come into play, you need a solid business plan to start your bakery business.

Just like having delicious offerings isn’t enough to bring in potential customers, having a business name isn’t guaranteed you get customer orders. A business plan gives you a roadmap to guide your business from a startup to an established small business.

📈 According to Harvard Business Review, who conducted the study, entrepreneurs who write formal plans are 16% more likely to achieve viability than identical non-planning ones.

They’re onto something. Having a path drawn out makes the journey much smoother. It will help you identify your mission and why you want to open a baking business. Also, it makes it easier to home in on your ‘why.’

For example:

• Do you want to bring a taste of Italy to your neighborhood?
• Do you want to add more joy with your cupcakes?
• Is this a stepping stone to a food truck business?

Once you know the ‘why’ behind your business, it will make it much easier to deal with the challenges ahead.

Here are some things to be clear about in your business plan:

Market research

You first need to understand the market you’re in, inside and out. This includes identifying your target customers, analyzing your competition, and understanding the baking industry’s trends.

📈 According to a report by Grand View Research, the global bakery products market size will be USD 251.1 billion by 2025.

While it’s a good time to get into the baking business, you must carve out the space that works for you. Consider what type of bakery you want to have.

• What kind of products will you offer?
• Who will be your target audience? Parents ordering for birthday parties or a broader customer base?
• Will your cupcakes be gluten-free or not?

These are all things you need to think about. Also, who is your competition? They’re probably one click away, so take time to see how to differentiate yourself from them. You can probably browse social media to glimpse what’s currently working in this market.

Estimating startup costs

It’s important to understand the costs involved in starting an online bakery. These include baking equipment and ingredients expenses, website development, marketing, packaging, and delivery. You need to pre-calculate the overall costs of your small business to see how much you can sell your baked goods for.

📈 A recent survey showed that the average startup costs for a bakery ranged from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on the business’s size and scope.

While starting an online bakery might reduce some overhead costs associated with a physical store, such as rent and utilities, you should still carefully account for all potential expenses in your business plan.

By conducting comprehensive market research and crafting a detailed business plan, you’ll have a strong foundation to build your online bakery. This groundwork will help your online bakery survive and thrive in a highly competitive online market.

Next, let’s look at setting up your WordPress website. This will be the online storefront of your bakery, and it plays a critical role in attracting and retaining customers.

Setting up your WordPress website

As you start learning how to start an online bakery, one vital tool will play a significant role in your success – your website. This is where WordPress comes in. WordPress is a highly versatile and popular content management system.

It’s the backbone for almost half of all websites (42.4%) worldwide as of 2021. Its user-friendly design, extensive feature set, and huge community of users make it an excellent choice for managing your online bakery.

Couple that with WooCommerce (which we’ll review in the next section), and you’re on your way to having an online bakery business.

Before logging in to your WordPress site, you must purchase a domain name and hosting. Read our food ordering website guide for more information.

As you set up your WordPress website, consider what features you want your website to have. These can play a huge role in how you set it up from the get-go. For example, do you want to offer local pickup, delivery, or both? Knowing this detail lets you design your website to fit your vision.

Before we go through some of these options, let’s first look at how you can make your online store more appealing.

Picking your bakery website design

Once you’ve established the basic structure of your WordPress website, the next step in starting your online bakery is selecting a visually appealing WordPress theme.

We recommend you take some time to pick a design that fits your vision. It needs to be aligned with your target market and brand image. Consider your business needs first so that you can select the right theme.

If you’re just starting with WordPress or working within a tight budget, many free themes, such as the WooCommerce Storefront, are available. This theme offers a clean, intuitive, fully responsive design, so your cupcakes look great on any device.

However, if you want to add more features and design, you can buy advanced themes like Kadence starter templates. Kadence themes provide a broad range of customizable features to make your website stand out.

Here are two templates you might find interesting for your online bakery business:

• Soap Shop: This is a clean, minimalistic, and product-friendly template. Its food-focused layout makes it easy for visitors to browse your offerings, enticing them with mouth-watering visuals of your baked goods.

• Gourmet Burger: If you offer more than just baked goods, the Gourmet Burger theme may be your best bet. Its clean, modern design is versatile enough to accommodate a diverse range of products.

Take some time to browse through the premium and free templates, and once you settle on a theme, you’ll be ready to set up the WooCommerce plugin.

Install and set up WooCommerce

With WordPress installed, you’re halfway there to an online presence that shines. The other half is installing a plugin called WooCommerce. Whether your cupcakes are created in your home kitchen or have a dedicated working space, you’ll want to display your creations in all their glory.

WooCommerce will ensure your baked goods are properly displayed in the ecommerce space. Whether you want to sell at farmer’s markets, grocery stores, or on social media platforms, you want your loyal customers to see what they’re ordering.

With WooCommerce, you can sell anything from anywhere. Here’s how to set it up:

Installing WooCommerce

To install WooCommerce, log into your WordPress website, then continue with these instructions.

1. Go to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for ‘WooCommerce’ in the search box.
3. Once you find the WooCommerce plugin, click Install Now and Activate.

After the plugin is activated, WooCommerce will guide you through the initial setup process.

Setting Up WooCommerce

While setting up WooCommerce, you’ll be guided by the user-friendly WooCommerce Setup Wizard. It will assist you in customizing various aspects of your online store, ensuring it aligns with your specific requirements.

Let’s take a closer look at the primary settings that WooCommerce will walk you through:

• Store Setup: In this section, you’ll provide the basic information about your store. This includes details such as your store’s location, the currency you’ll use for transactions, and whether you’ll sell physical or digital products.
• Payment: Next, you’ll set up your preferred payment methods. WooCommerce supports various payment gateways, including popular options like PayPal, Stripe, and offline payment methods.
• Shipping: If your business involves selling physical products, you can customize your shipping options. This includes defining shipping rates, specifying units of measure, and determining additional shipping-related settings.
• Recommended Add-ons: WooCommerce will suggest optional add-ons to enhance your store. These add-ons are designed to expand your online business and can be tailored to meet your needs.

Once you’ve completed this, WooCommerce will be ready for you to start adding products and customizing your store to reflect your brand identity.

The next step is adding an online ordering system plugin to your website.

We recommend leveraging the power of Orderable, a robust WooCommerce plugin designed to streamline online ordering processes for your bakery business.

Introducing Orderable: Your bakery’s best friend

Orderable is designed to make your online bakery business stand out and create happy customers. You can create menu layouts, offer delivery and/or pickup with specific time slots, and so much more.

Here are a few reasons we recommend Orderable for your baking business:

Lead time management

This is probably the most beneficial feature of Orderable for your online bakery: setting up product lead time. Lead times are crucial in the baking industry. Your products are made fresh and often require certain preparation and baking times. With Orderable, you can define specific lead times for each product or an entire category.

For example, if you know that a particular type of bread takes three hours from mixing to baking to cooling, you can set this as your lead time. This way, when customers place an order, they know their fresh bread won’t be ready for pick-up or delivery for at least three hours.

This feature helps set realistic customer expectations, enhances the overall customer experience, and reduces the pressure on your baking and delivery teams.

Improved customer experience

In addition to managing lead times, Orderable offers several features that directly contribute to an improved customer experience. For instance, it enables customers to schedule their delivery or pickup, select their preferred payment methods, and get real-time updates on their order status.

Imagine a customer planning a weekend brunch and wanting to serve fresh croissants. With Orderable, they can schedule their order days ahead and set their preferred delivery time, ensuring they have warm, fresh pastries exactly when needed.

Real-time updates keep customers informed about their order status, building trust and transparency, leading to repeat orders and loyal customers.

Seamless integration and ease of use

You might think you need to do fancy coding to get all the desired features, but that’s not true. Orderable connects directly with your WooCommerce store, making it easy to manage product listings, orders, and customer details in one place. You can easily set everything up in a few hours and return to your award-winning recipes.

Think of Orderable as your assistant in your baking business. By setting appropriate lead times, enhancing customer experience, and providing a user-friendly interface, Orderable might be the key to your online bakery’s success.

If you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on setting up Orderable, you’re in luck! In the next section, we’re going to do it together.

Installing Orderable

Ready to showcase your baked goods and start generating sales? Orderable offers two versions of the plugin: a free version and a paid version, both with the same installation process.

To unlock a wealth of customization options right at your fingertips, we highly recommend installing Orderable Pro. With Pro, you’ll have access to features like order bumps, product labels, time slots, and much more.

Let’s dive into the step-by-step instructions for installing and setting up Orderable (don’t forget to ensure you have already added products to your WooCommerce store):

Install Orderable: Begin by purchasing the plugin from the Orderable website.

Once you purchase the plugin, follow these simple installation steps:

1. Click on the Upload Plugin button.
2. Select the .zip file of Orderable from your computer and click Install.
3. Once the installation is complete, click Activate.

Repeat this for both the free and the Pro version of Orderable. Now that it’s activated, it’s time to customize it.

Setting up Orderable

Once you’ve added products to your online store through the WooCommerce plugin, you can customize Orderable to suit your products’ needs.

Customize Orderable

Once Orderable is installed, go to the plugin settings within your WordPress dashboard. Here you can go ahead and set up your shop hours.

1. Go to Orderable > Locations and click on the location you want to edit. Scroll down the page, and you’ll find some settings for your store.
   1. Open Hours: in this section, you can choose the days and times you want your bakery to be open. It’s flexible so that you can add multiple timeslots per day.
   2. Services: here, you can select delivery or pick up as an option and customize the hours for each in the Service Hours section (you can have different hours for each if you’d like).
   3. Order Options: underneath this you’ll see some settings for ASAP delivery, lead time, preorder days delivery calculations, and more. All of these settings will likely be crucial for your bakery business.

Customize menu layouts

Create menu layouts that work for your brand. Orderable has ready-made layouts available to get you started.

1. Navigate to Orderable > Product Layouts and find the Add New button at the top of the page.
2. Give your layout a name, and within the Layout Settings section, you’ll find several options:
   1. Categories – Choose the specific product categories from the provided dropdown menu to add to this layout.
   2. Display – Continue by selecting your desired layout type from the Display dropdown. You can opt for either a Grid or a List format, and each selection will generate a preview at the bottom of the page.
   3. Sections – Utilize this dropdown to determine how you prefer showcasing each category. Each option serves to enhance customers’ navigation within your product layout.
   4. Images – Activate the display of product images in your layout by selecting the checkbox adjacent to Images.
   5. Clickable Card – Enabling this feature allows customers to click on the entire product ‘card’ rather than solely relying on the Select button.
   6. Labels – if you have Orderable Pro, you’ll be able to add product labels to your products. This way, you can let customers know which products are gluten-free, vegan, Halal, and so much more.

3. Once you have fine-tuned your layout, scroll back up to the top of the page and locate the blue Publish button within the Publish section on the right-hand side.
4. Click this button to finalize and make your layout live.

Once you’ve made your product layout live, you’ll need to add it to a WordPress page of your choice. Our product layout guide will walk you through how.

Making sales and keeping customers happy with Orderable

Regarding boosting sales and customer satisfaction, Orderable has many features that can feed directly into your marketing strategy. These will add credibility to your business name and spur word-of-mouth because you will operate above the competition.

Here are things that make happy customers and also generate revenue for you:

Commission-free structure: means that all profits go directly to you – a stark contrast to other online food ordering platforms that charge a hefty fee. This way, you don’t add a markup to your goods for your customers to eat up.

Checkout tipping and order bumps: encourage larger orders by offering order bumps and checkout tipping. For example, if a customer purchases a birthday cake, you can add an order bump for a dozen cupcakes that match the style of the cake.

Product add-ons: allow customers to customize their orders, leading to a higher average order value. For example, you can offer birthday candles or balloons if someone buys a birthday cake.

App-like design: make the ordering process smooth and enjoyable. Your customers are probably going through your baked goods on their phones and will be glad at how easy it is to order.

WhatsApp & SMS notifications: inform your customers about their order status and give them peace of mind.

All of these features will make your home-based bakery stand out. You might be the new business in town, but customers will happily hand out their credit cards to you.

Learn how to start an online bakery today

Starting an online bakery in 2024 is exciting! To make it as successful as possible, leverage WooCommerce and Orderable to your advantage. You can establish a profitable online bakery that delivers value to customers and stands out in a competitive market.

Remember, an online bakery is not just about baking delicious products; it’s about creating a user-friendly, efficient website where customers can easily place their orders.

With the tips in this article, you’re ready to take the first step in this exciting endeavor.