Bread has a clock. Sourdough bakeries sell out by lunchtime, traditional bakeries have the batch loaves and the turnovers out for the school run, and everyone wants the same thing answered before they leave the house: what is baked today and is there any left. That is what people searching for websites for bakeries in Dublin actually need, a page that keeps pace with the ovens, written in the order a customer’s day runs.
We build it, host it, keep the Google listing right and send you the numbers each month. You are at the oven by five.
Before the shutters go up
The first thing the page settles is the hours, because a bakery’s are nothing like a shop’s. Open at seven or half seven, different on Saturday, maybe a short Sunday, closed Monday for the day off. Google has to say the same thing as your door, or people arrive to a shutter and leave you a review about it. The guide to signs your website is costing you customers starts with wrong hours for a reason.
The second thing is the bake schedule. What comes out on which day: brown bread and batch daily, sourdough on Fridays and Saturdays, cream cakes at the weekend, hot cross buns through Lent, barmbrack from October. A customer who knows the schedule comes on the right day and leaves happy. A customer who does not comes on Tuesday for a Saturday loaf and tells people you never have anything.
Mid-morning, and the phone
“Have you any brown bread left?” is the call that interrupts the bake, and the page can take most of them. A one-line notice edited from the shop phone (“sourdough gone for today, more at eight tomorrow”) is read by Google and by the person about to ring. The notice costs you fifteen seconds. The call costs you a tray.
For the keen customers, a line like “ring before ten and we will hold a loaf” turns the phone into reserved orders rather than questions, and the call button is at the top of the page so nobody has to find the number. Allergens belong here too. List them per product the way you do on the counter cards, say whether you bake with nuts in the same kitchen, and say whether you do gluten-free or not. People ask, and the honest answer written down beats a nervous one across the counter.
Three o’clock, and what is left
The afternoon has its own customers. The cafe owner collecting the wholesale order, the person after a reduced loaf at closing, the parent collecting a birthday cake. A short wholesale section (what you supply, minimum order, delivery days, how to enquire) brings in the cafe trade without changing the retail side of the page. If you do birthday and celebration cakes, list the sizes, the lead time and how to order; for the custom end of that work, the cake makers page covers deposits and design briefs.
The Christmas order book
Christmas cakes, puddings, mince pies, yule logs and the stollen if you do it. Orders open in November and close on a date in December, collection is on the 23rd and the 24th, and every one of those facts has to be on the page and on the listing so you stop repeating them. On Complete, the customer pays a deposit by card when they order, and the paper order book retires. Easter brings simnel cake and the hot cross bun rush, Halloween brings the barmbrack with the ring in it, and Pancake Tuesday has people asking for buttermilk. Each gets its turn in the notice at the top of the page.
Photograph the racks in the morning light before the shop fills, a loaf cut open, hands shaping dough and the window from the street. Phone photos, taken once, used for a year.
Bring the price list and the bake rota
The product list with prices and allergens, the bake schedule, the hours, the Christmas order rules, the wholesale terms if you have any, the photos and who answers the phone. Ten minutes in the shop after the morning rush, or on the phone if you are outside Dublin.
Cost
Essentials is enough for most bakeries, at €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and makes sense once Christmas orders, cakes or vouchers are worth taking payment for online, or you want the review text after each order that we describe in how to get more Google reviews. The full comparison is on the pricing page.