Coffee Shop Bakery Sale Ideas

Creating your own coffee and bake shop can be incredibly rewarding—and profitable. But how can you get a piece of the profits while still providing the best products to your customers? Consider some new promotions to sell your baked goods!

Coffee shop bakery sale ideas can include but are not limited to creating coupons or discounts, organizing a contest, creating a “Pastry of the Day”, creating meal specials, offering a “Baker’s Dozen” special, creating a photo contest, creating special holiday giveaway items, creating discounts for day-olds, and talking to your customers. 

Whether you’re selling biscotti to go with your coffee or have a full-scale bakery situation, it doesn’t matter—this tricks can help you to sell more bakery items in your coffee shop. 

Create coupons or discounts. 

While this is the easiest way to create a bakery sale, it’s really up to you and your coffee shop to determine what this means. Coupons and discounts are so customizable, it can truly become overwhelming to consider. 

So what is the best way to offer coupons or discounts? Keep it to a few of your bestselling items. Buy One, Get One Free sales can extend to most any cookie, donut, or even your pastries. If you have larger items, though, you may want to reserve the right to sell those full price. 

You can also create discounts for certain demographics coming into your business. Consider a discount for seniors, or if you find many coming in, veterans—not only will they appreciate the discount, but others may find that discount morally pleasing and continue to patron your business, discount or not. 

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Create a contest. 

Another broad stroke, you can do almost anything when creating a contest for your bakery. An idea for your contest is having a naming contest for one of your items. With this, you can declare a winner and officially name your baked good after their idea, while giving them a discount or a coupon as a reward. It doesn’t always have to be related to the food, either—you can do drawings or even charity events that are sponsored by your coffee and bake shop. 

Don’t be afraid to do virtual contests as well. By leaning into that and making your social media engagement a game, you can encourage more people to like and engage with your posts. If your 2,000^th like on Facebook gets a free order of a dozen donuts, more and more people are going to like your business just to get those donuts. 

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Create a “Pastry of the Day”.

As a coffee shop, you’re probably already doing sales or promotions for your coffee drinks. Many will have a specials board for the week or even the month. You can do the same for the bakery side of your business, too. Consider creating a “Pastry of the Day” or any other length of time, and promote it at a discounted price. 

This can help encourage sales of that item, but it can also help your customers to take the plunge and try something new. So many people are tempted at the thought of receiving something for less than it’s actually billed as, so more will consider buying the item and trying it out. 

Create a meal special. 

Just like fast food restaurants or franchised coffee and bake shops, you can consider creating a meal special or a meal deal. What does this entail? Create an option for your customers to get a coffee and a baked good for a reduced price. This means they’re going to be buying both items, and you get the benefit of the added profit. 

Offer a “Baker’s Dozen” special.

The origin of the “Baker’s Dozen” may be disputed, but you can benefit from the practice by offering it as a benefit to visiting your coffee and bake shop. You can run a promotion where if someone buys a dozen baked goods, they receive another one free. 

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Create a photo contest. 

In the world of the media and social media age, we thrive on creating that content. Why not encourage your customers to help you with it? Create a photo contest of your baked goods. Encourage your customers to take photos of the goods they are purchasing at your bakery and have them post to their social media using your name, tag, or handle. You can then create some sort of contest or drawing to choose a winner, whether it’s chosen by you or chosen by the amount of likes that other customers give each photo. 

Regardless of how you organize it, you’re going to benefit—the engagement on your social media pages have the opportunity to drastically increase, and creating a way for your customers to engage directly with your social media page will likely create a better relationship between your business and the public. 

Create special holiday giveaway items. 

While the pumpkin spice and peppermint crazes are here to stay, you can also add items to your bakery to hop on that marketing train. Consider giving away certain treats at this time, too—people are coming into your coffee shop in the midst of their crazy holiday rush, so having free samples or even free full sized items can really help your business. Consider running any other sale idea during this time, too—the more foot traffic you can get into your store during the holidays, the better, and the more likely you will sell not just more coffee, but more bakery goods, too. 

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Create discounted “day-old” deals. 

While you may not see the draw of selling items like your day-old baked goods, you’d be surprised at how many people actually want these day-olds. Make sure you’re not charging them full price, but finding a way to get rid of these items that didn’t sell the day before can give you that much additional profit. 

Talk to your customers. 

While this is less of a sale tactic and more of a marketing tactic, it can still help you make a profit. If you’re not sure what your customers want, it’s simple—talk to them about it. If you want to make a good impression while finding out exactly what they’re looking for, all the while creating relationships with your regular customers, consider asking them about their impressions, what they like, what they don’t like, and what they wish you offered. Not only is the communication helpful between you and your patrons, but making those changes or updates can make your customers feel like you’re listening—which means they keep coming back. A way to encourage that communication is offering them a token of your gratitude through a free coffee or baked good, meaning you have one more way of hooking them and bringing them in. 

Marketing Your Sale

In all cases, marketing your sale is key. There are many ways to get the word out about your products, and make sure you’re letting people know what you’re offering, or the sale itself won’t help your business. 

• Create flyers or physical coupons. In many cases, the physical act of handing someone something means they will be more likely to look at it. For any of your sales, make sure you’re not neglecting the visual and physical aspect of things—hang up flyers and make coupons or postcards to hand out to your customers to let them know about your offerings. 
• Use social media and your website. It’s not just there for you not to use—supplement your flyers and coupons by posting your bakery sale items on your website. Share photos of your baked goods, tout your discounts, and more people will see it and want to visit. 
• Partner with other businesses or organizations. Especially if you’re working on a contest with a non-profit organization, you can publicize the event between both you and them, meaning you have double the opportunity to let the public know what you’re doing. 

While there are many ways for you to create that bake sale for your coffee shop, the most important thing to remember is marketing. You can do any sort of promotion to bring in people, but if you don’t let them know about it in as many ways as you can, then they can’t bring their business to you. Utilize all different avenues to bring in the most customers to sample and purchase your baked goods!

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Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.