A neighbourhood bakery took wholesale orders from cafés over WhatsApp. Orders got lost between messages. Now they arrive in one list, every evening at the same time.
ⓘThis is an illustrative example. It shows how I document projects. The bakery and the numbers are fictional. Real case studies will appear here as projects are completed.
Twelve cafés ordered bread for the next morning through WhatsApp messages, voice notes and phone calls. Every night, the owner scrolled through all of it and copied the orders onto paper.
It took close to an hour every night. Some orders were missed, some were baked twice, and about two deliveries a week went wrong.
I spent two evenings and one early morning at the bakery, timing each step from the first message to the last delivery. The baking itself was fine. The problem was one step before it.
Copying onto paper: 50 to 60 minutes every night, and the step where almost every mistake started.
Instead of a big app, a short order form each café opens on its phone. Its usual order is already filled in. Everything lands in one list that closes at 21:00 and prints as a baking sheet.
| Product | Cafés | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Sourdough loaf | 9 | 96 |
| Simit | 12 | 410 |
| Croissant | 7 | 158 |
| 12 of 12 cafés ordered | 664 |
Left: what a café sees. Right: what the bakers get at 21:00.
Measured over the first month after launch, compared with the two weeks I observed before.
Copying orders by hand
Wrong deliveries
Cafés using the form