How Wholesale Bakers Operate

A wholesale bakery is different from a retail bakery in many ways. As the name suggests, the former cater to other business customers, i.e. they are in a B2B business. They will not deal directly with the 10 customers, but instead sell other bakeries, stores, restaurants, et cetera who in turn distribute these products to the retail customers.

A retail baker on the other hand, may or may not have their own production facility. Those who don’t own a kitchen, will buy from the wholesale bakery and sell to the retail customers. This often proves to be cost-effective and efficient, so these bakeries prefer to remain as retail bakeries.

The production facility:

The bakers have one or more large kitchens wherein the production happens. These kitchens are equipped with state-of-the-art ovens, furnaces and other baking equipment, which are fast, reliable and efficient. Stringent quality controls are implemented by the wholesale bakers to detect defective products. The kitchen is kept clean and hygienic, so that there is no contamination in the food.

Product line:

Bakers wholesale will typically manufacture a wide variety of items like breads, pastries, cakes, etc. which have a high demand in the market. They have large kitchens which take care of the production in batches. These wholesale bakers are very particular about maintaining the delivery schedule, because a slight delay in one production line will have a cascading effect in the delivery of all the other production lines as well. They accept and deliver orders placed to them by various retail bakers on a daily basis. The wholesale bakers themselves will not have a retail outlet, and act as a production house for several retail bakers.

Orders:

Wholesale bakeries generally have regular clients and the steady order flow. Their business customers can contact them over phone lines which are installed in the wholesale bakery in order to modify the orders for the day. A few of the wholesale bakers also entertain retail clients who can purchase the products from our designated counter in the baker’s wholesale office.

Since the bulk of the product is sold to the same customers every day, the wholesale bakers were operated with a reasonable surety about the level of production they need to maintain for the day. This gives them a steady cash flow and profitability. Newer clients are added by the salespeople who are employed with them. They try to get in touch with business customers and win them over asclients.

Delivery:

After the production of the bakery items, the bakers wholesale will deliver the products to the customers in larger vans and other vehicles which are specially designed or modified for delivery purposes. Sometimes the delivery happens several times in a day in order to ensure that a steady supply of fresh bakery items remains with the retail bakers throughout the day.

Operating as a wholesale baker is advantageous in terms of cost efficiency and surety of business. However, like other manufacturing facilities, it is a capital intensive business which can yield good returns on investment if managed well.