Local guides · Post 13
The Thursday order a Cardigan café writes from memory
For cafés, bakeries and small kitchens across Ceredigion: the weekly supplier order, and what writing it from memory costs before the season arrives.
In a café on Cardigan high street the order goes in on a Thursday. The owner has a look in the walk-in, a quick count of the shelf, three or four things half remembered from the week, and a call to the supplier before the kitchen gets busy again. Nobody has the list from last week to hand.
Saturday is when it shows. The milk runs low mid morning, the flour tin is lighter than the order assumed, and the wholesaler's van has already been and gone. So someone drives out for the gap, which costs more than buying it in, and pays in the hours that were meant for customers and cooking.
The same pattern runs in a bakery in Aberaeron, a kitchen in New Quay, a small place on the edge of Aberystwyth. It is not a discipline problem. It is one weekly job with no written page behind it.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Assume the order, plus the shelf check, plus the small top-up trips, takes an hour and a half each week. Assume £12 an hour is the value of that time. Both are assumptions, not a client figure.
- × 1.5 hours a week = the time cost
- × £12 an hour = £18 a week
- × 46 working weeks = £828 a year
Now the same order with a draft step. The software holds the par levels and last week's order, drafts the next one, and a person reads it over coffee and approves it in ten minutes.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. An hour or more most weeks, plus the extra run for whatever the order missed. Small kitchens clear that without trying.
- Repeat. If a new starter could order from one written page of par levels, then the page is the spec. Ticking stock against a par list is that page.
- Risk-if-wrong. A short order means a thin Saturday, a top-up run and a supplier who now keeps the price. So the order gets a human check before it leaves.
Try one thing this week (free)
Write a par list for your five fastest moving lines: the minimum you want on the shelf on a Thursday. Then order by ticking that page instead of from memory. If Friday's deliveries match what Saturday needs, the page works.
Where a person stays
The software remembers the par levels and drafts the order. A named person reads it, changes what the week changed, and approves it before it goes to the supplier. That approval step stays human, and substitutions and price changes always come back to a person.
FAQ
The order gets remembered at the wrong moment, on a busy morning, and the gaps turn up on Saturday when the answer costs more.
No. It drafts the order in your usual format and your wording, and a person sends or places it.
The draft starts from the par list, and the person trims it. The decision stays with whoever knows the week.
Yes. Summer par levels are written down and swapped in when the season turns, so the busy weeks start from a page.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a follow-up call ranking what to hand over first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the whole fee credits against any build.