Collection slots for large bakery orders and holiday rushes

Give every large order a collection time. Take the order in the shop or by phone as you do today, then ask the customer to book a collection window on your booking page, such as a 15-minute window with a few places each, with the order reference or contents in the note. On a busy morning, you know who comes when, you prepare orders in that order, and customers collecting a tray of viennoiseries don't wait behind the daily bread queue.

Large orders don't fit the normal flow of the counter. Forty croissants for an office breakfast, three quiches and a bread crown for a party, festive cakes on the day before a holiday: each needs checking, boxing and sometimes a conversation. When they're all collected "in the morning", they arrive at the same time as regular customers, the queue grows, and some orders wait on the shelf for hours while others are asked for before they're ready.

A collection time spreads them out. It also tells you, the evening before, how many orders go out in each part of the morning, so you can plan the bake and the boxing.

Book doesn't take orders or payments: the order itself stays in your shop, on paper or in your till. What Book handles is the time. Each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page. Each slot belongs to one service, with its own start and end, and its own number of places. Customers pick a service, then a free slot; each booking takes one place, and when all places are taken, the slot disappears from your page.

Lengths and places are examples: set the number of places to the number of orders your team can hand over in each window. Collection is free here because the order is paid in the shop; the price you see on Book is the collection service's.

The public booking form asks for first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that you read in your new-booking email. Ask in the description for the order reference and, for a party order, the item count, so you can match the booking to the order.

The days before holidays are the ones where collection times matter most. Create extra collection windows on those days, with more places each, and say in the description the last date to order. Open them a few weeks in advance, so customers book their window when they place their order. If you stop taking orders for a given day, delete its remaining free windows, so nobody books a time without an order behind it.

On the day, keep the bookings list at hand. If a customer can't come in their window, they can't move the booking online: they contact you, and you reschedule it from your list and confirm the new time yourself, since Book doesn't email them about changes. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.