Micro bakeries
Micro bakery software for sourdough and small-batch bakers
Micro bakery software should answer one question before anything else: what does each loaf really cost you, and what do you keep when you sell it? Farinu costs your recipes down to the bag and the oven hour, suggests a price from your target markup, turns pre-orders into a bake plan and adds up your month, so a sourdough business run from a home kitchen or a small unit can see whether it pays.
Why micro bakery software beats the spreadsheet
Most micro bakers start with a notebook and a spreadsheet. It works until flour goes up, you add a seeded loaf, a cafe asks for a wholesale price and Saturday's pre-orders arrive by message. Then the sheet is out of date and nobody knows which loaf actually earns money.
Farinu keeps the numbers connected. Change the price of one ingredient and every recipe that uses it, every suggested price and every margin updates at once.
- Recipe costing with ingredients, packaging, sub-recipes such as your levain, labour, machines and overhead
- Suggested prices from a target markup, and price lists for retail and wholesale
- Margin alerts when an ingredient price rise pushes a product below your target
- Customers, custom orders with deposits and balance payments, a sales log and a monthly P&L
Cost a sourdough loaf the honest way
The common mistake in a sourdough business is counting flour and salt and forgetting the bag, the oven and your own hours. Here is an example batch of 8 loaves of about 900 g, with illustrative prices. Your numbers will differ; the method is the point.
Labour is the biggest line even though only active time is counted, not the two days of fermentation: mixing, folding, shaping and baking. With a 70% target markup, the suggested price is the cost times 1.70, so 5.27 × 1.70 = 8.96, rounded to $9.00, a margin of about 41%. If you sell at $7, you still cover your time, since labour is already in the cost, but you are below your 70% markup and keep about $1.73 a loaf instead of $3.73.
| Cost line | Per batch | Per loaf |
|---|---|---|
| Flour, salt and levain (sub-recipe) | $4.98 | $0.62 |
| Bag and label | $2.80 | $0.35 |
| Labour, 1.5 active hours at $20 an hour | $30.00 | $3.75 |
| Oven, 1 hour at $1.20 an hour | $1.20 | $0.15 |
| Overhead share (rent, insurance, market fees) | $3.20 | $0.40 |
| Total cost | $42.18 | $5.27 |
| Suggested price at 70% markup | $72.00 | $9.00 |
Read next: Recipe cost calculator for bakers, Escandallo: what it is and how to make one for your bakery
From pre-orders to a bake plan
Micro bakeries live on pre-orders and market days. In Farinu each customer can have a WhatsApp number and each order a delivery date, a deposit if you take one, and the balance still owed.
The production plan takes every confirmed order for the week and turns it into whole batches per recipe and a shopping list that compares what you need with what is in stock. When you bake, you log the session and its batches, and stock goes down on its own.
- See how many batches of each loaf Friday needs
- Know which flour or seeds you are short of before you shop
- Track who paid a deposit and who still owes the balance on pickup
Read next: Bakery production software that plans your week from your orders, Order management for bakeries
Retail, market and wholesale prices
A loaf sold at the market and the same loaf sold to a cafe twelve at a time need different prices. Price lists hold one price per product for each channel, such as retail and wholesale, and when an ingredient price rise pushes a list's price below your target, a margin alert names the product.
Read next: Bakery price list software, one list per place you sell, Software for bakeries that sell wholesale
Is your sourdough business paying?
Log what you sell each day, from a market stall or a pickup slot, and Farinu builds a monthly P&L: income, what the bakes cost, and what is left. Paid orders count as sales; deposits kept on cancelled orders and refunds count in the month they happen.
When the price of flour, butter or seeds goes up, a margin alert tells you which products fell below your target markup and what price would restore it. You accept the new price or dismiss the alert; nothing changes without you.
Read next: Bakery profit tracking that does the math for you, An ingredient price tracker for bakers that tells you what to charge
Helpers, AI import and starting free
If someone helps on bake days, give them the helper role: they log production, sales and orders but never see costs or margins.
You do not have to type every recipe. The AI assistant imports recipes from a photo of your notebook or from a spreadsheet, and an MCP server lets you ask Claude or ChatGPT about your bakery. Rules for selling bread from home vary by place, so check your local requirements; Farinu handles the numbers, not the permits.
- Free plan: costing for up to 10 recipes and up to 50 orders a month
- Team: unlimited orders, sales, stock, helpers and the AI assistant
Questions
- What is the best micro bakery software for a sourdough business?
- The one that tells you the real cost of each loaf and keeps pre-orders, production and sales in one place. Farinu is built for home and micro bakers rather than shops with tills, so it starts with recipe costing and margins.
- Can I count my time in the cost of a loaf?
- Yes. You give a labour position, such as baker, an hourly rate and add its active minutes to each recipe, and labour becomes a cost line like flour, so the suggested price pays you for your hours.
- Does it handle my levain as an ingredient?
- Yes. Make the levain a sub-recipe and use it inside your loaves; its flour and water are costed through to every loaf that uses it.
- Is there a free plan?
- Yes. The free plan covers costing for up to 10 recipes and up to 50 orders a month. Unlimited orders, sales, stock, helpers and the AI assistant are on Team.
Related pages
Find out what each loaf earns
Create a free account, cost your first sourdough recipe and see the price your markup suggests.