We are grateful to Modern Baking Magazine for publishing a very informative article about our product, BakeSmart Courtesy Modern Baking Magazine, page 65, March 2007 Issue.

Merritt’s Bakery Gets an Upgrade

After nearly drowning in paperwork,

Merritt’s Bakery turned to

BakeSmart Bakery Software

for efficiency and savings.

Last fall, Merritt’s Bakery made a technological leap. After hearing about Legacy USA’s BakeSmart Bakery Management Software for years, the Merritt family implemented the system in their three Tulsa, Oklahoma bakeries.

“We had identified for some time that the transfer of information inside and outside the bakery was a limiting factor to growth,” said Christian Merritt, who learned the business from father and 2003 president of the Retail Bakers of America, Larry Merritt. “With $4 million per year in sales spread over three stores across the Tulsa area, we were choking on the paperwork of moving the tickets. We couldn’t get reliable data on how much we made in a day or how much we sold, and hand counting tickets with today's labor rates is just too cumbersome.”

The BakeSmart Software saved the bakery five to 10 hours per day in clerical duties from the beginning, but labor savings were just the tip of the iceberg. “We also noticed that the program saved a lot simply by ensuring that the the prices were correct,” Merritt said.

“We were startled by how many employees thought they had the price right but they had the wrong one.”

A simple, long-range, sustainable pricing structures would be much easier for employees on both the wholesale and retail side to calculate. But Merritt maintains that highly specific, variable pricing structures are a necessity.

“If you are just eyeing stuff, you aren’t making profit on it,” Merritt said. “That’s what happens to a lot of smaller bakeries, they don’t take everything into account and end up under pricing.”

BakeSmart Software served to link the three bakeries, calculate complex price scales and make implementing the nuanced pricing systems easy for all employees. This introduced a level of standardization that Merritt’s hadn’t previously enjoyed.

Before implementing the software, Merritt’s had to make sure it’s infrastructure was up to par. They prepared a back of the house computer network using a local company and put in some of the PCs themselves. Once the computer network was in place, Merritt’s was ready for a software upgrade.

“Legacy came down for two weeks, and it was worth every penny to do it that way,” Merritt said. “We got a much richer implementation. It’s like any database, how well you think it works is based on how you set it up. The package just moves data around, but how you organize it is very key. I had to get it just right.”

Computers need rules, though, and that can be a difficult transition for some bakeries, but Legacy was there to help Merritt’s figure out a schema, a schedule and a way to implement it.

Once the system was up and running, Merritt began to find conveniences that he didn’t expect. The data reporting features tell him what is selling and what isn’t, allowing him to adjust the product line and remove under-performing products. BakeSmart tracks point-of-sale information. Every transaction is attributed to employees, guaranteeing honesty. The system follows decorators, tracking productivity and allowing Merritt to find and eliminate production inefficiencies.

“All of those things have been added functionality for us, we’ve really gotten a lot out of the deal,” Merritt said.