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How to increase bakery sales: secrets of the trade
The baking industry is going through a phase of profound change, and the challenges for business owners are manifold. Whether your goal is to evolve a historic business or open a bakery from scratch, you have surely noticed that the rules of the game have changed. On the one hand, there are the costs of raw materials and energy, which require careful, precise, and constantly optimized financial management. On the other hand, we are faced with increasingly demanding consumers: eating habits change quickly, and people look for specific, high-quality products suited to new paces of life.
In this highly competitive scenario, the modern bakery is called upon to make a true evolutionary leap: transforming from a simple artisanal workshop into a fully structured enterprise.
But how do you increase sales volume without sacrificing the soul and excellence of an artisanal product? How do you manage commercial growth healthily?
At Bakeit, we believe the best answers aren't found in manuals, but in the field. That's why we love sharing our partners' success stories, because they concretely demonstrate that the right strategy, combined with the correct equipment, can make all the difference. Today, we take you inside the Crifill Srl workshop to understand, directly from their own voice, which choices truly made the difference.
Crifill's Strategy: The 3 golden rules to grow a bakery today
Crifill's story is the perfect example of how foresight can completely change (for the better) a company's fate. Born as a traditional bakery, with a production lab and several retail outlets scattered across the Padua area, the company was able to read market changes and make a bold decision.
Today, Crifill has transformed its business model, moving from a "classic" bakery to a semi-industrial, single-product reality, specializing in the production of premium quality artisanal breadsticks (grissini).
We had a chat with them to understand what the fundamental levers of this evolution were and what advice they would give to an entrepreneur looking to grow their numbers. Here are their 3 golden rules to follow.
1. Align the team with new market dynamics
In a bakery's growth journey, having the right intuition to innovate the product is essential, but it’s not enough on its own. Understanding what to change by looking at market evolutions is only the first step: to transform a new strategy into commercial success, you need a team ready to support, internalize, and communicate it. As Crifill reminds us, entrepreneurial vision and the human factor must travel together:
"In our sector, adaptability is fundamental: consumer habits evolve rapidly. The entrepreneur must have the foresight to understand how and where to intervene. It is exactly this sensitivity in responding to changes that determines success.
Adaptation also happens through training: a prepared team is the first real marketing tool to communicate change to customers. For this reason, creating an optimal work environment is a duty. It’s not about exploiting resources, but valuing them by entrusting responsibilities and recognizing merit. Company growth is, first and foremost, collective growth."
2. Invest in quality machinery to automate work
Some artisanal workshops fear that introducing professional bakery machinery will compromise the soul of the product. Crifill's experience proves the exact opposite. Producing well is an art, but scaling sales requires strategy and adequate tools.
"Many fear that automation lowers quality, but for us, the opposite happened: technological evolution allowed us to refine the product, constantly improving it. We grew while keeping our identity intact.
Although manual skill remains the beating heart of our craft, technological innovation has become the indispensable engine for the sustainability of a modern workshop. Today, without the support of cutting-edge equipment, it is almost impossible to guarantee consistent quality and competitive production volumes. True excellence is born precisely from the perfect union between the artisan's sensitivity and the precision of technology: having reliable tools and prompt technical assistance is not a cost, but the necessary investment to protect product quality and the peace of mind of daily management."
3. Choose strategic partners to scale production
No company grows alone. To support Crifill in their leap toward semi-industrial production, we designed and installed a custom technological setup: a battery of 8 professional bakery ovens, a 120kg spiral mixer, an automatic breadstick line with panning, and advanced systems for fermentation control.
However, knowing how to choose the right technological partners goes beyond simply supplying machinery: it means finding true travel companions capable of embracing the entrepreneur's vision. We at Bakeit are deeply proud of the words Crifill dedicated to our historic collaboration:
"Partners are the foundation of our success. Knowing how to choose who to trust is a necessary entrepreneurial skill. For us, talking about Bakeit means talking about our history: the Contin family has been by our side for over thirty years, since the days of my father's first bakery. It’s a special relationship, built on a shared vision of work and on that family business model that is handed down with dedication from generation to generation. When you see professionals who put your same passion into what they do, collaboration becomes natural. Bakeit is, for us, a guarantee of excellence and closeness."
The Future of the Baking Industry: The 3 pillars of success
Looking to the future, the bakery sector is destined to grow because it is linked to primary goods and our cultural identity. But who will win the market challenge? According to Crifill, the future will belong to those who can make three pillars coexist:
- Excellence in raw materials
- Continuous recipe innovation
- Strong brand identity
To make your business take the definitive leap, traditional logic is no longer enough:
"It is no longer enough to know how to make a good product; you need to know how to communicate it. The future belongs to those who can combine artisanal 'know-how' with modern marketing strategies, transforming the workshop into a company capable of conveying its uniqueness."
Want to take the next step?
The evolution from workshop to enterprise requires courage, vision, and the right tools. If Crifill's story has inspired you to review your production processes, or if you're thinking it's time to upgrade your workshop's technology to increase profit margins, you don't have to do it alone.