islandadmin 
Waiting is difficult. Here are some suggestions of what you can do to help get ready to re-start your business:
- Check all the suppliers’ websites and see what is new from the last time you checked. May be an opportunity.
- Take the names and email addresses of your customers and start using some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software and get your lists up to date. Check out Mail Chimp or Constant Contact. Both of their services have online classes you could use. Here are some of the subscription plans: https://crm.org/crmland/sales-crm or there is single purchase software via Amazon. This is one of my projects and I am going to use https://www.onepagecrm.com/crm-pricing/ It “ticks” most of my boxes and when I pay for a year at a time it is $132.00 a year.
- Now that you have your data organized; consider making a sales plan where you target when you want to release information and to who you want to release it to. Sales planning is used by most stores. In grocery stores, it is part of the merchandising process. Knowing what you want to sell, at what price, what dates, and to get further, what is it costing, and how many will you sell. SPECIAL OFFER – HIDDEN IN THE BODY OF THIS EMAIL. Send me a request to rick@wpacknow.com for more information and I will send you a couple of chapters from my textbook about sales planning and merchandising. This will come to you via www.WeTransfer.com. I will send a link on May 15th. You must download it within 4 days or the link goes away. The offer expires Thursday, May 14th, 2020.
- Plan the promotion/merchandising program for the next 12 weeks – to start when you get the Green Light to reopen – Think Grand Re-Opening!
- Take classes via the internet to learn things you want to know, but never have time for.
- Train and redo your training program. Ask yourself, what do we need to do better? What has changed since the closing (sanitization procedures? Tamper proof seal on carry-out as a couple of examples. And, of course, more.
- Re-Cost ALL of your formulas. I suggest you include packaging as one of the ingredients in your cost so you know exactly where your profit is and is not!
- Visit Bakeries Online.
– Cake Bake Shoppe – Carmel Indiana – 10” round 3 layer cake for $ 140.00 and they sell ($ 14 a slice to eat in.
– Portos Bakery – LA, CA – The Disneyland for Bakers.
– Buskin Bakery, Cinn – Always fun specials
– Torrance Bakery, CA – Great Family Bakery
– Oakmont, PA – started from 600 Sq Ft 25 + years ago. Now HUGE
– And your favorite. What looks good, what is clunky? At the end of this process; what does your website need? - Read the Flavor Bible – Buy used on Amazon. I paid $20 for my last copy. It will help you with new flavor combinations that will increase the “experience” for your customers.
- Review all your pictures of your cakes, and retire the old, out-of-date, and the ones that are taking up space. Think Spring Cleaning.
How RPIA Can Help You Save
Next post
