Planned featurePlanned
Pre order bakery drops and bread subscriptions
A pre order bakery model means customers commit before you bake: you open a drop with a fixed menu, a cutoff and a pickup day, then bake exactly what was ordered. Farinu does not have a drops or subscriptions feature yet; it is planned. Today you can already run pre-orders in Farinu as customer orders with deposits and balance payments, free for up to 50 orders a month and unlimited on Team, priced from your costed recipes, and this page explains how, plus what the planned feature will add.
Why home bakers move to pre-orders
Baking first and hoping it sells is the most expensive way to run a small bakery. Every unsold loaf is ingredients, packaging, oven time and your hours thrown away, and at micro bakery volumes a few leftovers can wipe out the margin of the whole bake.
Pre-orders flip that. You publish what you will bake, people order and often pay a deposit, the list closes at a cutoff, and you bake to the list. Waste drops close to zero, you know your income before you turn the oven on, and you can plan shopping and oven slots for the exact quantities.
The hard part is not the idea, it is the admin: collecting orders from WhatsApp, Instagram and texts, tracking who paid, adding up how many of each item to bake, and remembering who picks up when.
How to run pre order bakery drops in Farinu today
Until the planned feature ships, you can run each drop with features that are live now, up to 50 orders a month on the free plan and with no limit on Team. It takes a few more taps per customer, but every order, deposit and balance is in one place instead of scattered across chats.
- Cost each item on your drop menu in Farinu (ingredients, packaging, labour, machines and overhead) so you know the real cost per unit before you set a price.
- Put the drop prices in a price list, for example a retail list for direct customers.
- Save each customer once, with their WhatsApp number; a delivered order with a balance due then shows a WhatsApp reminder link.
- Create one order per customer with the pickup date as the delivery date and the lines they chose, then confirm it; the price comes from the price list.
- Record the deposit when it arrives, and the balance at pickup; the order shows what is still owed.
- Use the production plan to turn the week of confirmed orders into batches and a shopping list, log what you bake, and check the sales log and monthly P&L to see what the drop actually earned.
Worked example: a weekend sourdough drop
This is an illustrative example with made-up numbers, not data from a real bakery. Say you open a Saturday drop with two items and close orders on Thursday at 8 pm. You take a 50% deposit to hold each order.
Because you bake to the list, you buy flour and boxes for 40 loaves and 24 buns, not for a guess. If you had baked 50 loaves on spec and sold 40, the 10 extra loaves at 2.10 USD each would have cost 21 USD in ingredients, packaging and time for nothing.
| Item | Orders | Cost per unit | Price | Revenue | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country sourdough loaf | 40 | 2.10 | 9.00 | 360.00 | 276.00 |
| Cardamom bun | 24 | 0.85 | 4.00 | 96.00 | 75.60 |
| Total | 64 | - | - | 456.00 | 351.60 |
What the planned drops and subscriptions feature will do
The goal is to remove the per-customer typing from each drop and make repeat orders automatic. This describes the plan, not something you can use yet, and details may change before it ships.
- Drops: a menu, a quantity limit per item, an order cutoff and one or more pickup slots.
- A total per item when the cutoff passes, so you know exactly what to bake.
- Bread subscriptions: a customer orders the same items every week or every two weeks, and the orders repeat on their own.
- Deposits and balances that work like today's custom orders, feeding the sales log and monthly P&L.
- Helpers can see the orders and quantities to bake, but never your costs or margins.
Bread subscriptions: what to decide before you offer one
A bread subscription gives you steady, predictable orders, which is why many micro bakeries add one once their drops fill up. Before you offer it, decide the cadence (weekly or every two weeks), whether people pay per pickup or up front for a block of weeks, how they skip a week, and what happens on holidays.
Price a subscription from your real costs, not by discounting your drop price by feel. If a loaf costs 2.10 USD to make and sells for 9.00 USD, a 10% subscriber discount still leaves 6.00 USD of margin per loaf in this example. Knowing that number is what costing in Farinu is for.
Questions
- Can I take pre-orders in Farinu right now?
- Yes, as customer orders, up to 50 a month on the free plan and unlimited on Team: one order per customer with a delivery date, lines from a price list, a deposit and a balance payment. A dedicated drops page with a cutoff and per-item totals is planned, not live.
- Does Farinu have bread subscriptions?
- Not yet. Recurring subscription orders are part of the planned feature. Today you would create each week's order for a subscriber yourself.
- Can customers place orders themselves?
- Not today. You or a helper enter orders in Farinu, usually from what customers send you by WhatsApp or message.
- How much does it cost?
- The free plan includes costing for up to 10 recipes and up to 50 orders a month with deposits. Unlimited orders, the sales log and the monthly P&L are on the Team plan. Create a free account and we will tell you when drops and subscriptions ship.
Related pages
Get told when pre-order drops ship
Create a free account to cost your drop menu and run up to 50 orders a month with deposits, and move to the Team plan for unlimited orders. We will let you know as soon as drops and subscriptions are ready.