Ordering bread before 7 a.m.

First week

The bakery had one date that could not move: the fourth shop opened on a Saturday in March, and the posters with the new address were already printed. Everything else was open. I spent the first morning behind the counter of the busiest shop, from five until the queue cleared, and wrote down every question customers asked.

Most questions were the same three: is the rye ready, can I collect at seven, and do you deliver to the office. None of them needed a phone call.

I also sat with the two shop managers on a slow afternoon and listed what they would need to keep the site up to date without me. The answer shaped the build: no page they could break, one place to change the menu, and nothing that needs a designer for a new loaf.

Decisions

The site became six pages with one job each. The menu is a CMS list the shop managers edit themselves, with a simple 'sold out today' switch. Pre-orders close at 9 p.m. and land as one list per shop, sorted by collection time, so the morning team prints a single page.

If the night shift has to read a form twice, the form is wrong.

I kept the photography warm and close: bread, hands, flour. Type is large enough to read with gloves on, and every page loads without a web font flash.

Launch

We planned the launch for the Friday before the opening and shipped on the Thursday, so the owners had a quiet evening to place test orders. In the first month online orders grew by 31% and phone orders before seven fell by 40%. The managers asked for one more thing: a printable label per order, which went live two weeks later.