The challenge
Golden Crust bakes sourdough, pastries, and celebration cakes from a corner site in Brunswick. Pre-orders arrived by phone, Instagram DM, and a notebook by the register — three channels, one increasingly frayed head baker trying to plan an oven schedule around them.
Saturdays were the pressure point. The bakery would either over-commit — 40 orders promised against an oven that comfortably produces 30 — or leave money on the table by refusing orders early out of caution. Either way somebody was unhappy: a customer without their birthday cake, or an owner watching capacity go unsold.
“The notebook by the till was the business. If it got wet, we were ruined. That's a terrible way to run a bakery you love.”
Rosa Marino
Founder, Golden Crust Bakery
One platform instead of the notebook
The bakery started with just POS and Inventory to get the counter under control. The online storefront came three months later, and the feature that made it viable was delivery-window caps: each pickup window takes a fixed number of orders — 30 on Saturdays, matched to what the oven can actually produce — and closes itself when full. A 6 p.m. Thursday cutoff means Friday's bake list is final before the levain goes in.
Celebration cakes and the weekend 'Brunch Box' are built as bundles, so availability comes from the components — when Saturday's croissant batch is spoken for, the box stops selling automatically instead of the counter staff discovering an impossible order at 7 a.m. Gift add-ons — candles, a handwritten card, a knife-and-napkins kit — carry their own daily caps, so the extras never outrun the people packing them.
Since switching on delivery windows, Saturday pre-orders have doubled without a single missed pickup, because every order the system accepts is one the oven schedule already agreed to.
“The caps are the whole trick. The website physically cannot promise a 31st cake on a 30-cake Saturday, which means I never have to make that phone call again.”
Rosa Marino
Founder, Golden Crust Bakery
The results
Online pre-orders now bring in 38% of revenue, and the notebook is gone. The head baker plans each morning from one order list instead of reconciling three channels, and the 5 a.m. bake starts from a number, not a guess.
Waste dropped too — about 15% less unsold stock at close, because pre-orders pull production toward what's actually spoken for. Founder Rosa Marino's favorite number is quieter: zero apology phone calls since the windows went live.
“We doubled Saturday orders and the kitchen got calmer. I still don't fully believe both of those sentences are true at once, but I've watched it for six months.”
Rosa Marino
Founder, Golden Crust Bakery
What's next
December is the real test — the bakery is configuring seasonal caps for Christmas orders and blackout dates for the closure week, all set once in the delivery config rather than policed by hand.
Rosa is also weighing a second site in Northcote. The storefront already supports it; the question is finding another baker she trusts with the levain.