Blue Baker serves up healthy, nutritious food that tastes great and makes you feel great. Period. And all without fryers, grease, MSG, trans-fats, preservatives, and additives. No wonder they received the Best of the Brazos award for the past 16 years.
What they needed was an internal system that's as flexible yet perfectionistic as they are.
First, we built them a modern new e-commerce website, back in 2014. It still serves as the central hub of their infrastructure today.
The site integrates with their in-house point of sale, Micros. Orders, coupons, deliveries all flow between the two systems.
Blue Baker focuses on guest experience. One place we were dropping the ball was not letting people know exactly when their order would be ready. We came up with an extremely detailed method of working out how many minutes it would take us to build an order, knowing things like the existing order queue, staff count for today, ingredient prep time and more.
When Covid hit, Blue Baker was able to quickly shift gears on their gift cards to offer Baker Bonds. These were a clever "investment opportunity" that allowed the restaurant to avoid laying off staff during the slow down. However, their online presence, and their shift to adding groceries to their delivery menu, kept business running at nearly full speed. The Dallas Morning News picked up this story.
Currently, we're wireframing out a new group ordering / catering tool for the café. And next up is an in-house kiosk to make ordering easy in this new no-touch environment.
Over the years of working with Blue Baker we have learned many of the nuances of the food service industry. Every time we go out to eat or order something from a local café, restaurant, or bakery, we can’t help thinking of what we could do to improve their customer experience and boost their sales.