Guides & tips
Good practices, tricks and tips for running a pastry shop or bakery - from the experience of craft bakers.
Articles in Guides & tips
How to run a bakery: night shifts, wholesale, deliveries and the numbers to watch
A bakery runs to a different rhythm than a pastry shop: the night shift, regular customers, the morning route and crates that come back or do not. Eight areas you need to keep under control, and a routine for the day, week and month, from a Polish perspective.
How to run a pastry shop: 10 areas you need to keep under control
Orders, costs, prices, ingredients, production, team, takings, break-even point, food safety and invoices. What to check in each of these areas every day, once a week and once a month, from the practice of our pastry shop in Poland.
KSeF for pastry shops and bakeries in Poland: receipts, invoices for businesses and wholesaler invoices
When pastry shops and bakeries in Poland must issue invoices in KSeF (Poland's National e-Invoicing System), what happens with receipts and invoices for receipts, how to receive invoices from wholesalers and what changes on January 1, 2027. Based only on materials from the Polish Ministry of Finance.
How many servings in a cake: a chart by diameter, tiers and weight
A 21 cm cake gives 20-24 servings, and three tiers of 16/22/28 cm give 110-120. A full servings chart for cakes from one to six tiers, converting weight into the number of guests, and how not to promise a customer more slices than the cutting will give.
Sheet cake costing: the cost of a tray, a slice and the price, step by step
What does it really cost to bake a tray of apple pie, and how much should you charge per slice? A worked example: ingredients, fixed costs, electricity, packaging, the cost of one slice and the price from the margin. Plus a trap few people remember: a baked tray weighs less than its ingredients.
The summer production schedule: weddings, heat and staff holidays all at once
Summer in a pastry shop is not the quiet season. It is weddings, christenings, First Communions and heat all at once, plus a team that also wants a holiday. How to build a schedule so nobody gets jammed.
Wedding and tiered cakes: how not to fail in peak season and in the heat
With a wedding cake, the hardest part is not the baking, it is the structure, the heat and delivering on time. How to handle tiered cakes at the peak of the season so they arrive in one piece.
Pre-orders in a pastry shop: why orders in advance are your ally
Baking “blind” is a loss you never see on an invoice. How to start taking orders in advance, so you throw away less, have cash flow from deposits and a calmer schedule.
Margins on ice cream and desserts: why “cheap to make” is misleading
A scoop of ice cream looks like a gold mine, until your first summer of bills. The real cost is not just milk and sugar, but equipment running all year and sales lasting only a few months.
How to calculate the real food cost of a cake, step by step
Food cost, margin and markup are three different things, and mixing them up is the most common mistake pastry shops make. How to calculate the real cost of a cake, what quietly eats your margin and why a recipe costed once is already out of date.
First Communion season in a Polish pastry shop: handling the rush of orders without chaos
In Poland, First Communions pile up on a few Sundays in May, and a big part of a pastry shop's yearly profit is made then. How to collect orders, calculate your capacity and not lose a single cake.
10 proven ways to cut ingredient waste in a pastry shop
Ingredient waste is 6-15% of production costs in a typical pastry shop. Here are 10 proven ways to cut it in half, from the experience of PyziPyzi and other pastry shops.
How to price cakes in a pastry shop so you make money: the markup formula and a case study
Most pastry shops price by eye and earn 5-10% instead of 30%. Here is the markup formula used by craft bakers who really make money, with a worked example of a cake.