’Tis the season to be jolly—and to enjoy plenty of treats. And also a time to regret not updating your bakery equipment before getting hit with the holiday rush.

This is the time of year when bakeries are filled with holiday-themed goodies like gingerbread cookies and festive cakes and loaves for all kinds of celebrations.  

The holiday season is usually the busiest time of year for most bakeries. People are ordering cakes for holiday parties, surprising Secret Santas with a sweet treat, and placing bulk orders for family gatherings and celebrations. Keeping up with demand is challenging, especially if you don’t have a plan for scaling up production.

So how do you keep up with customers clamoring for Christmas cookies and panettone? 

All it takes is the right equipment—like a commercial dough mixer or a cookie depositor machine—and a little planning to ensure bakers can work efficiently without bottlenecks that put your bakery on the naughty list instead of the nice list.

What Tools Do You Need to Tackle the Holidays?

The holiday rush doesn’t have to be scary—as long as you plan ahead.

Start with planning your holiday menu: will you offer specials? What have you seen customers order in seasons past?

In general, cookie orders go up, but we see all baked goods becoming more popular during the holidays. At Empire, we have a few pieces of bakery equipment that can help with the rush:

Commercial Dough Mixer—As we mentioned, demand for baked goods rises across the board during the holidays. Mixing dough by hand quickly becomes untenable as business picks up. A commercial dough mixer can handle large batches of dough while improving consistency and reducing labor.

A vertical mixer is perfect for holiday production (and for any bakery looking to upgrade their mixer). Vertical mixers can handle a variety of doughs, from crumbly cookie doughs to cake batters and creams. 

Empire’s IRIS Stationary Bowl Spiral Mixer has a front-mounted control panel so you can set parameters easily; it’s got two speeds, it’s made of stainless steel, which is easy to clean, and is easy to move—key when business picks up, and you have to adjust your regular kitchen routines and setups to accommodate.

Empire Cookie Depositors

Cookie Depositor Machine—While most bakeries see business pick up across the board, cookie orders go up exponentially during the holidays.

A cookie depositor portions out and places cookie dough onto a baking sheet. Instead of bakers scooping and dropping dough by hand, the machine does it for you.

Portioning and sheeting dough might seem like a small task. A good baker can likely roll out and portion about 10-15 cookies per minute—it’d take them over an hour to do 1,000 cookies. A machine can portion out that same amount in minutes.  

A cookie depositor reduces labor, but it can also improve consistency (even the most experienced baker can’t portion out thousands of cookies that are the same size).

Workflow Tips to Maximize Efficiency During the Holidays

Equipment can help a bakery prepare for busy spikes, but maximizing output also requires solidifying your workflow. Here are a few things to think about:

  • Consider your production schedule: Production workflows might need to change during the holidays. Depending on your business, you might need to dedicate staff specifically to custom orders or to front-of-house work. Create a plan that can accommodate where you expect volume to increase.
  • Always be prepping: You can never be too prepped for the holidays. Take down time to prep doughs (this is where that commercial dough mixer comes in handy!) and freeze what you can.
  • Organize your kitchen: If you haven’t designed it for maximum flow and efficiency, now is the time to do so. Think of putting together equipment and tasks that support a natural workflow for a bakery: all the shaping and dough-mixing tools in one area, all the decorating and packaging tools in another.
  • Create standards now: The holidays aren’t the time for new recipes—now is the time for bakers to knock out recipes on autopilot. Decide what you want to feature ahead of the holidays and make sure bakers understand recipes well and that they’re written down and easily accessible for reference.

Crush the Holiday Rush

The holidays can be exhausting, but also deeply rewarding—people fondly remember the special treats and goodies that mark this time of year!
Meeting increased demand is all about having a plan and knowing which tools can make busy times easier. Check out Empire’s commercial dough mixers, cookie depositor machines, and other essential kitchen tools that can help make this truly the most wonderful time of the year.