Two in the morning and the deck oven will not heat
The first bake is proving, the second is being shaped, and the main deck oven trips and will not come back. The engineer cannot come until the morning. The night manager has one smaller oven and a rack oven, and a bake list planned for all three.
Now it is a matter of choices. Bake the hotel's breakfast rolls first because they are needed by seven? The cafes with the biggest orders? The sandwich shop that has complained before? The night manager makes the calls on the spot, and at six the drivers load what there is. Customers find out at the door.
Why breakdowns turn into chaos
Nobody plans for the night the oven fails, because it is rare and unpleasant to think about. So there are no agreed priorities, no quick way to see what the remaining capacity can produce, and no way to warn customers other than the owner ringing round at dawn.
- Customer priorities are not written down.
- The bake plan assumes every oven and mixer is working.
- Working out what fits in the remaining capacity is done in the head.
- Customers are told by the driver, or not at all.
- The owner is woken to make decisions without the information.
What a bad breakdown night costs
Customers opening without bread and no warning, which hurts more than the shortage itself. Credits across many accounts. The wrong orders prioritised, because there was no time to think. And a night manager left carrying decisions that should have been made in advance.
Maintenance of your ovens and equipment is for your engineers. We are not addressing that. We deal with what happens to the orders when something fails.
The fallback plan we build
- In daylight, you set customer priorities: who must have bread, such as hotels with breakfast service or care homes, who can take a reduced order, and who would rather have nothing than a partial delivery.
- Each oven, mixer and prover is recorded with its capacity, so the planner knows what each product needs.
- When something fails, the night manager marks it as out of action on a tablet, and the planner re-sorts the remaining bake to fit the capacity left, following your priorities.
- The screen shows the revised bake list, which customers will be short and by how much, and the night manager can adjust before accepting.
- Messages to affected customers are drafted, stating what they will receive and when, and sent by the owner or night manager at a sensible hour, before the vans leave.
- Packing sheets, drop lists and invoices are updated to match what is actually delivered, so nobody is charged for bread they did not get.
| Customer priority | What the plan does |
|---|---|
| Must have | Baked first with the capacity left |
| Can take a reduced order | Shared out from what remains |
| Would rather have nothing than part | Told early, order held |
| Flexible delivery time | Moved to a later bake or second run |
A bad night that is handled
The night manager follows a plan agreed in advance instead of improvising. Customers hear before the van arrives, with a clear statement of what is coming. Invoices match deliveries without anyone going back through the notes. And the owner is woken with a proposed plan and draft messages rather than a problem.
The same screen helps with smaller disruptions too: a mixer that is slow, a prover that is out for a night, or a flour delivery that did not arrive. Anything that removes capacity can be marked, and the plan adjusts.
Afterwards, the record of what was baked and who was told is there for the conversations that follow, and for reviewing whether the priorities were right.
Would your bakery be ready?
- Nobody has written down which customers come first.
- An equipment failure would be handled by the night manager alone.
- Customers would find out when the driver arrived.
- Invoices after a short night are corrected by hand.
- The owner would be woken to decide without the numbers.