A Baker’s diary

A typical weekday evening would have people returning from office who generally stop by for snacks and general shopping . Hence, this time of the day was ideal for me to study the customer visits to the local bakeries of Mahabalipuram.

I made observations of particularly two bakeries – Archana sweets and Bakery and Iyengar bakery. The parameters and metric of evaluation are detailed in the table below.

Sl. No.	Parameter of evaluation	Archana bakery and Sweets	Iyengar Bakery
1	Average number of customers in 10 min	8 to 9	2 to 3
2	No. of people to attend customer	3	1
3	Customer category	All - family crowd, youth, foreigners, students, small kids	Primarily college crowd, general labour class
4	Cost	Nominally priced(based on a customer feed back)	Little cheaper
5	Location	Main road	Interior (side lanes)
6	Glamour quotient	Good lighting, attractive hoarding, items arranged very neatly	Dull lighting, not very clean, clustered
7	customer service	quick service, very friendly personal, many regular customers(some visiting for more than 7 years)	Witnessed a customer tussle over some money being due, no personal touch
8	Product lines	A wide range of products - confectionaries, mixtures , sweets, cakes, packaged snacks (lays,biscuits,wafers) , cold drinks	Mainly bakery products
9	language	Owner – local(from Chennai); Main language of conversation : Tamil. But knew other languages - english(foreigners),Hindi	Owner was from Bangalore. Struggling to talk in the local language(Tamil).
10	Process	Bakery timings - 7:30 AM to 9PM).Fresh stock brought from godown(2 trays of each item made).A stock check is done in the afternoon based on the sales in the morning - more is made on a need basis. All perishable items are not kept beyond 7:30 in the evening. The product is not sold even if customer asks.	No particular bakery timings. Bakery closes early when there are no sales. Items made in bulk and kept for at least 2 days if not sold.
11	Work force	4 guys serving at bakery, one person (From chennai visits shop weekly to supply kova for sweets,5 people to make products at the godown One supervisor(master as he is called)	One man army. The owner makes the items himself and runs the shop. Only one small boy to serve at the bakery
12	Key distinctions	Foreigners place order,beyond 7:30 PM the food was kept inside	Nothing extraordinary noted

Take-aways

Archana bakery and sweets is a clear winner. The main take-aways from the observations were:

1.       Customer Satisfaction :

As was observed, customer satisfaction and quality of product is given the highest priority. The fact that any item that was kept for more than 12 hrs (beyond 7:30) and not sold despite customers asking for it shows the level of quality maintained. This small value system gives a great impression to the customer as there is a feel-good factor involved. The guys serving always had a smile and were very accommodative to the customer requests.

2.        Inventory management – The challenge of handling perishable items was evident and inventory management was at its best.

Key points here – small quantities were made at the beginning of the day and adapted accordingly during the day based on the sales. Wastage was minimized and rarely items were left beyond 7:30.Extra effort is taken to minimize wastage due to the fact that they don’t allow customers to buy items which are kept beyond 7:30.A structured process was in place and past experiences/average sales data was used to roughly calculate the number of items to be made per day.

3.       Extra product lines – The variety of products available provided an advantage – They had a whole range of sweets and mixtures so that in case any of the bakery items had low sales, the revenue from sweets/mixtures could make up for it. Further, in an offseason for  sweets,  bakery items could contribute to the revenue. Secondly there was considerable innovation within the bakery products – they had a vegetable roll, mushroom puff, paneer puff which were unique and fast moving items. Thirdly, they had a regular source of income from the packaged foods – lays, biscuits etc.

4.       Strategic Location and glamour quotient   –  It was located at the shopping street of mahabalipuram near a super market/vegetable market and other shops. This helps getting more customers since they would stop by for a quick snack before their regular shopping. Further, it might also lead them to buy sweets/mixtures as part of their shopping list. The lighting was attractive and provided an extra customer appeal.

5.       Adaptability and flexibility – Although the owner was Chennai based, he had made an attempt to learn other languages to cater to different market segments – tourists/foreigners .This provides a comfort factor to the customer since communication becomes clear. Further, there was a special service to take custom made orders from foreigners based on some niche requirements. This shows the flexibility and eagerness to adapt as required.

Adhithi Aji

FT13399