Bakery challenges - Local delivery/scheduling/capacity - Anyone found a solution?

[Doughnaughty]

Hi there.

We are a new doughnut delivery service. We provide freshly made doughnuts to customers in the local area.

Our circumstances:

1. Our doughnuts require being prepared overnight.
2. We can only make a maximum number of doughnuts per day (108)
3. However, if we receive a low number of orders, we will make less doughnuts (batches are in 36 so will be a multiple of that, hence 108).
4. It is very likely that we will have unallocated doughnuts from the batch.
5. We can only deliver to local areas, using a combination of our own bikes as well as couriers. Delivery occurs on set days between set times.

Therefore, we are trying to see if Shopify can enable us to:

1. Enable a limit PER DELIVERY DATE on number of units
2. Prompt customers to place an order at least one day before, with a cut off time of 10pm (so we know how many doughnuts to make).
3. Restrict customers to local locations.
4. Get customers to select delivery date and time.
5. Still allow for the sale of the leftover units on the day.
6. Output the orders per delivery date into a summary for a baking schedule.
7. Keep the delivery locations and routes neatly organised.

Thinking out loud, one solution is that if an inventory limit per delivery date were established, then the shop could simply remain selling units even on the day of baking and we can still receive those orders (maybe just with wording to heavily suggest prebooking ahead of schedule to avoid disappointment). But then how do we know whether one day is going to be a full batch or a half batch? Maybe at 10pm the inventory is adjusted to the minimum amount. 

Our challenge is not unique, and I can see multiple questions from others hear searching for answers.

We are currently looking at Zapiet's Store Pickup + Delivery app, as well as Limitsify. But we can only get halfway there and it still feels like we have no control over the number of orders that are happening.

So, turning to the community, from Shopify users to app developers... does anyone have a tried and tested solutions for any and all of the above?

Many thanks.

[OliUK]

Hi @Doughnaughty ,

I don't have a solution for you I'm afraid. But, I listened to a podcast with a founder doing a very similar thing to you (but with cookies), i.e. hyper local, has to be warm from the oven upon delivery.

He goes through their tech stack, but it's all heavily custom. Anyway, might be handy: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/166-sam-eaton-of-crave-cookie

Cheers,

Oli

——————————

Founder @ www.preproduct.io

Test and make sales for future products

[Doughnaughty]

Thanks for this, I will check it out!

For sure, what we and others are looking for is not overly complicated to explain or manage as a human being (at least on a small scale).

So, I was very sure it could be coded, and sure enough looks like for cookies someone has a custom solution.

It would just be great to hear about a more ready made solution/app. There will be people queuing up to pay for this, I know it.

[Jacob_Killian]

I think you are going need custom development to build your custom ruleset.  I don't think you're going to find a point and click solution to your problem.

Shopify has an active developer community and does a good job of vetting developers so you don't have to waste your time and money with point-and-click "web agencies".

Please consider hiring a custom developer through this community.

[Jacob_Killian]

Now, if you want to partner with a developer to build a ready-made app, I (and other developers) are all ears.  If you're convinced of the marketability of such an app, hire a developer to build it and then sell it in the app marketplace (pro-tip, it will be more complicated and time consuming than you think).

[Doughnaughty]

Thanks Jacob, I fully believe that there is a solid user base for this that will increase as time grows.

It's an extremely accessible business for people to get into (baking in general I mean), but the moment you move beyond a friend texting you asking for an order you realise the baking part itself is the 'easy' bit, its just streamlining the sales process is so cumbersome as you scale. Whereas it seems a lot of other types of businesses have ready made solutions someone can put together themselves to just get up and go, the sticking point really is the idea of a limited quanity per day (that you really want to sell, ie no holder stock) and how you handle that.

After peeking into the backed of Shopify and Liquid, I fully appreciate how its not going to be trivial to code, but if I can verbally explain the logic outloud then I know it can be done 🙂 

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hey @Doughnaughty ,

Andy here from Zapiet!

You have a really interesting use case and one we have actually come across fairly frequently. We currently have over 500 bakeries actively using Store Pickup + Delivery and have rapidly been working on a solution to limit the number of items available per day/location. It's still a fair while off from release and would only cover part of your requirements, as it does not go so far as switching the available inventory automatically at specific times of day.

Although as part of this project we are building a number of API's that a developer could easily use to solve that last requirement. 

If you would like to work together on this and be our first pilot store let me know 🙂 

Thanks,

Andy 

p.s. Just to set expectations this is not something we can enable immediately. It is very much a work in progress.

[Jacob_Killian]

@Andrew_Cargill  @Doughnaughty 

I would be happy to fill that last-mile role.  I've looked at Zapiet to save some dev time on another project - didn't use it, but it's worth consideration.

[Doughnaughty]

Hey @Doughnaughty ,

Andy here from Zapiet!

You have a really interesting use case and one we have actually come across fairly frequently. We currently have over 500 bakeries actively using Store Pickup + Delivery and have rapidly been working on a solution to limit the number of items available per day/location. It's still a fair while off from release and would only cover part of your requirements, as it does not go so far as switching the available inventory automatically at specific times of day.

Although as part of this project we are building a number of API's that a developer could easily use to solve that last requirement. 

If you would like to work together on this and be our first pilot store let me know  

Thanks,

Andy 

p.s. Just to set expectations this is not something we can enable immediately. It is very much a work in progress.

Hi @Andrew_Cargill , thanks for getting in touch. (You actually just got back to me on the trial extension page, so cheers again for that).

Glad to see that this is something that has been flagged by Zapiet. I actually saw that your 'Limit by Shipping Day' is a work in progress on your help pages, which initally got me very excited until saw it was Coming Soon. 🙂

Appreciate that it is not ready for release, but would absolutely love to be a part of the development of this. And to set expectations, from our end we are an extremely small business just getting started, but I would like to think we work well together on this to make sure you all are building in the right functionality.

I have booked in a meeting with your team as you directed on the other thread for Monday, would that be the best place to discuss this further?

[Andrew_Cargill]

No problem at all, my pleasure 🙂 

Sure, we have both pickup and shipping limits already in-development. The first iterations of the release will simply be to cap the number of pickups or shipments per day. But we have built out the features with extensibility in mind, meaning once we release v1.0 it won't take us much longer to achieve what you require. 

Great news that you've got a call scheduled! They are proving to be super-helpful all round. Feel free to explain your requirements in full to my team member and they will document everything for our engineers. 

Looking forward to getting this solved for you! 

[Jacob_Killian]

@Andrew_Cargill -

Do you have a git for your work in progress?  I could work directly with @Doughnaughty to start on that last-mile so it's ready to go as soon after you launch v1.0 as possible?

[Jacob_Killian]

@Doughnaughty - 

If you're looking for a temporary work-around, you can manage your inventory via spreadsheet and have your MOD (or whoever is adjusting to demand) replace your Shopify inventory with up-to-date spreadsheets as needed.  It wouldn't take too much to build a node.js or C# app to manage it on a local PC if you have a local data datasource for real time inventory.  In fact, that might be the route you want to go: look for a direct API connection from your local inventory data source (assuming it has good data entry controls) to Shopify's inventory data.

Well, my client said "don't worry about CDN fallback" for now.  Which is good for meeting the milestone deadline I have today.  Now to go see why those images didn't load to the CDN properly (hopefully before I onboard my second subcontractor when he gets home from the subcontractor).

Good luck adjusting to the the online/delivery world, it's very different than the donut shop, coffee and newspaper world I'm missing these days.

[splybon1]

@Andrew_Cargill Do you have an ETA on this feature?

I've got a customer with a similar need as in this thread.  I'm a developer for them, and was wanting to either hook into your APIs, or if you have a solution then point them to that.

Thanks

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hey @splybon1,

I hope you're well. To confirm we are still actively working on this. It's been a little more complicated than first anticipated, and can't provide an ETA just yet. If you want to DM me your email address I can let you know the moment it's ready. Of course i'll also update this thread as well 🙂 

Thanks,

Andy

[QookieMonsta]

I'm interested in this as well.  I have a cookie shop, I discovered this thread from the IndieHackers post.  I'm also using Zapiet.  I've also been looking at Parcelify, which plays with Giftship so I can ship to multiple addresses in one order.

[RobH]

Hi @Andrew_Cargill 

we use zapiet currently but also struggle by not being able to limit sales based on daily limit / future inventory. 

would be interested in exploring if it’s something you are still developing 

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hey @RobH ,

Great to hear from you! We are certainly still working on a solution for this. I'd have loved to already have a solution in place for you, but of course this year has been a little out of the ordinary so we've had to focus on ensuring our app can continue to scale to meet demand. Thankfully that works all been completed now so we're back on the case! Expect to hear from me soon 🙂 

Kindest,

Andy 

[DonutDawn]

Any updates? I am also just building my donut shop and found I have the very same issue.  Need to limit orders per day, limit days I'm accepting orders and only accept the order placed 24 hours in advance.  

Many thanks

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hi all,

Andy here from Zapiet! I just wanted to let you know that we've finally made some significant progress towards daily product limits. I was hoping to get some feedback from you guys to ensure that the controls we are adding are going to be meet your requirements. I've attached a screen recording for you below:

Currently we've added the following:

• Ability to select which products you want to have a daily limit 
• Daily limit can be different for each day of the week 
• You can increase or decrease the daily limit for specific dates of the year 

@DonutDawn - We already have the ability to set a 24 hour preparation time via the app. You can also limit the number of pickup, delivery and shipping orders per day. The functionality described above is for going next level and restricting the number of individual products that can be ordered on a given day. 

Let me know what you think 🙂 

Andy

[Myrrhe]

@Andrew_CargillThanks for the update. The added functionality seems to be exactly what we're looking for so we appreciate you being the first to bring this to market.

When will this be available?

Also, is there any possibility of also adding these limits at the collection level?

[Myrrhe]

Hi, @Andrew_Cargill, just following up to see if there was an ETA for the daily product limits function.

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hey @Myrrhe,

We're planning to release this within Q1 2021. I'll be sure to let you know the moment its ready for early access 🙂 

Thanks,

Andy

[Myrrhe]

Awesome. Thanks

[origo]

Hi Andrew,

I'm building the online shop for our bakery and we need this exact feature too. How is the development going? We'd be happy to test it for you and give you our feedback if it's helpful. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Thank you,

Francois

[Myhrre]

Hi @Andrew_Cargill,

Following up since we're now in Q2. Has this feature been delayed/abandoned or is there something I need to do activate it in the dashboard?

Thanks

[Andrew_Cargill]

Hi Myhrre,

Wow where does time go!? How is it Q2 already?

We are most certainly still planning to release this feature in the near future. We have spent the time since we last spoke refining our existing daily pickup, delivery and shipping limit features to ensure they continue to work at scale. All work which is critical for daily product inventory limits to work effectively.

If you can give me until the end of this month we should be able to get you enrolled on the beta 🙂

Thanks,

Andy

[Myhrre]

@Andrew_Cargill 

Yes time is flying for sure. Glad to hear this is still in the pipeline. Totally understand the delay. Can't wait to put it to use!

[origo]

@Andrew_Cargill that's great news! 

One tricky consequence of having inventory limits by day is to avoid frustration of being told only at checkout that some of the products in your cart are sold out for your selected delivery day.

How are you planning to solve it? One potential solution is to have a date picker for delivery before entering the store (or as a banner), the other would be a calendar view with available stocks on each product page.

Really looking forward to seeing your solution and we are fully available for beta testing!

[Myrrhe]

Hi, @Andrew_Cargill 

Any update on the beta?

[lorihughes]

Hi, Andrew. A client I am working with would love to be a beta tester. The client is a micro-business bakery, similar to some of the other businesses in this thread. Would love to be able to email you and/or your developers re what we need, what we have found thus far, and how your app might help. We have found apps that will do bits and pieces of what we need but not everything, and the cost of many apps adds up quickly. It would be so much better to have one app that can do it all.

Thx,

Lori

[Kitty_Zapiet]

Hi everyone, 

I just wanted to update this post regarding the Product Limits feature that the team are working on.  

We are now accepting beta users for our new app Zapiet Eats which was specifically created to solve this problem and with the grand vision of giving restaurants, bakeries and pretty much any other fresh produce business a single app to handle everything. Including the ability to mark item as unavailable directly from Shopify POS, Online Store or Mobile.

Currently, we are only accepting merchants who offer same-day delivery and pickups and not scheduled. So, we don't let customers order today for next week, they must be ordering today for delivery/pickup today.  The ability to schedule future orders is a function that is still being built. 

If you think you fit the criteria above, then drop us a line eats@zapiet.com we would love to welcome onboard! 

Many thanks, 

Kitty