From a COVID perspective, Marion’s Pie Shop is an outlier, success driven by community loyalty. The shop is on Mainstreet but only with regard to postage. The small bakery in Chatham, MA is 2 miles from the closest store in the heart of downtown Chatham. Yet, Marion’s maintained record business in a time of record profit losses and business closures. Marion’s benefited from its diverse menu, ranging from treats placed at the eye level of an energetic child that the parents need to calm with the distraction of a cookie, to refrigerated ready-to-eat dinners for the hungry or tired parent. While Marion’s community of loyal customers and shop apparel wearers kept the business thriving, most of the baking community had to find other ways to support themselves.
Marion’s hesitated to adopt online delivery and instead offered delivery only within the local area when requested (not advertised). Marion’s was able to avoid embracing delivery due to the high traffic of walk-in customers. The baking community as a whole, however, was forced to adapt to the pandemic by widely embracing the online delivery marketplace.
The baking community at large found ways to promote customer loyalty, often coming in the form of initiatives such as gift cards, subscriptions, and DIY baking kits.
Some members of the baking community such as Jesse Inguiez critique the Paycheck Protection Plan’s ability to reach small businesses. But the baking community would be failing to adapt if they chose to not seek the monetary aid of the Paycheck Protection Plan that has already significantly aided the food industry.
The baking industry must adapt to the pandemic by embracing online delivery, creating customer loyalty-building initiatives, and seek aid from federal policy in order to maintain sales.
Online delivery is essential in 2020 to maintain food sales. Customers, young and especially old, are looking to avoid the contact of in-person shopping. The baking community’s resistance to embracing online delivery is primarily due to the delivery app fees. Delivery app fees can range from “15 to 30 percent,” says Pete Wells in his article To Stay Afloat, the Restaurant Business Clings to ‘Contactless Delivery’.
The baking community and restaurants at large are hoping that delivery apps such as Uber Eats, Seamless, and GrubHub, will suspend their fees to allow restaurants to financially adapt to the delivery marketplace. This is due to the critical mass of sales needed for a small business to make a profit off of online delivery. Bakeries and small businesses can only turn a profit from delivery apps if they are able to form a consistent and large customer base of online orders. By being able to track one’s business sales data via the delivery apps, restaurants can produce such popular items in larger bulk lower the cost per good on the bakery. This will elevate much of the financial burden placed on small bakeries from the delivery fees and eliminate waste.
Online delivery is proven to promote sales. “US consumer interest in restaurants has fallen by 54%,” proving that restaurants now more than ever must adopt the delivery app marketplace (a statistic noted by Lydia Disman). With cities implementing stay-at-home orders, the room for growth in the delivery app space only increases and the baking community must get ahead of the surge to maintain sales.
The baking community must also look to create community loyalty initiatives in the form of gift cards, subscription boxes, and at home baking projects. Gift cards are proven to promote shopping and are essential to growing a small business community. Gift cards allow friends and family to give others a love for a store and its community rather than an item from said store. New customers will enter the shop with a degree of financial freedom and excitement to explore the menu. Members of the community will draw in others to the bakery and create a growing web of loyal customers. The Green also found that “72% of gift card shoppers spend more than the value of the gift card when they redeem their purchase.” Proving that gift cards do result in a direct increase in sales.
Subscription boxes of baked goods will also help to maintain sales during the pandemic. Subscription boxes are consistent income that the baking community is in need of. Not only do subscription boxes proved delicious dessert and food every month, but they also remind the consumers that the baking community is still with them even when they can't go get their breakfast muffin in-person.
The baking community has begun to sell DIY baking kits for families during the pandemic. As another loyalty-building initiative, rather than simply buying a dozen cookies or a blueberry pie. Bakeries are able to sell customers an at-home experience and family event. Companies such as Blue Apron have seen a comeback in sales.
Blue Apron CEO, Linda Findley Kozlowski, is now increasing her hiring during the pandemic to keep up with the increase in demand for meal boxes. The company hopes to create job opportunities for those members of the culinary community negatively impacted by the pandemic.
In order to maintain sales, the baking community must also look to federal policy. The Paycheck Protection Plan has given over 4.6 million loans to US companies totaling over 500 billion dollars in loans. The policy has targeted the food sector and helped aid the baking community as a result. The only areas that received more aid than the food industry were health care and manufacturing. If the baking community decides to actively seek monetary relief from the PPP bakeries across the US can invest in other parts of their business that will bolster sales. Whether that be investing in establishing a website and online presence or buying in bulk to lower cost and increase profits over the long term, regardless, the baking community will benefit. The monetary relief will therefore help bakeries maintain sales by equipping the community with usable capital to put towards marketing and push their name and product.
The pandemic has forced the baking community to look take an introspective look at their business and forced the community to adapt to the new challenges of COVID rather than sit idly by as fewer and fewer customers walk through the shop doors. The baking community must utilize online delivery, create customer loyalty-building initiatives, and seek aid from federal policy in order to maintain sales. Avery Ditcher, an employee of Marion’s Pie Shop predicted that “people will appreciate the bakeries efforts to stay open and become loyal customers.”