# Websites for bakeries

> Websites for independent bakeries that sell out: opening hours that are right, a celebration cake order form with proper lead times, and a clear answer to what is baked today.

- Source: https://nerdsharks.com/industries/bakeries
- Publisher: Nerdsharks (Exeter, Devon, UK)
- Updated: 2026-09-27

There are 2,975 bakeries making bread, fresh pastries and cakes across 311 UK local authorities (ONS UK Business Counts, SIC 10710, 2025, OGL v3.0).

## How customers choose

A bakery has two customer groups who barely overlap. The daily trade is local, habitual and early: people walking past, commuters, parents after the school run, and the Saturday queue for sourdough and pastries. They check opening hours, whether you are open on a Monday, and increasingly whether they can pre-order a loaf so it does not sell out before they get there. The second group is ordering something: a birthday cake, a wedding cake, a batch of brownies for an office, a gluten-free option for a child’s party. They search for "custom cakes" or "birthday cake" plus the town, look hard at photographs of previous cakes, want a rough price, and need to know how much notice you need. Wholesale enquiries from cafés and farm shops make up a smaller third stream that arrives by email.

## What most websites in this trade get wrong

Bakery websites tend to fail at the most basic thing: the hours. Bakers keep unusual hours, close on odd days and shut for a week in January, and a website that says "open Monday" when you are not costs goodwill that is hard to win back. The second failure is the cake order process, which usually runs through Instagram direct messages - slow, easy to lose, and impossible to price consistently. A form that asks the right questions up front (date, servings, flavour, dietary needs, collection or delivery) saves hours of back-and-forth. The third is allergen information: bakeries deal with every one of the major allergens, and anything sold prepacked for direct sale needs full ingredient labelling under Natasha’s Law, so the website should be consistent with what is on the shelf.

## What the website has to do

- **Celebration cake orders** - The highest-value sale a bakery makes, and it needs a structured brief.
- **Footfall at the right times** - Hours and what is on the counter today drive the daily trade.
- **Pre-orders and click and collect** - Guarantees the sale on busy days instead of selling out and turning people away.
- **Wholesale enquiries** - Steady, repeat volume from cafés and shops.

## Pages

- **Home** - Open today, what is baked daily, and a route to cake orders.
- **Our bakes** - Breads, pastries and cakes in text, with allergen notes.
- **Celebration cakes** - Gallery, starting prices, lead times and the order form.
- **Pre-order** - Reserve loaves and boxes for collection.
- **Wholesale** - What you supply, minimums and delivery days.
- **Find us** - Hours, map, parking and any closures.

## Features that matter

- **Opening hours with an easy way to post closures and holidays** - Bakers’ hours change more than most shops’, and wrong hours send people away angry.
- **A cake order form with date, servings, flavour, dietary needs and notice period** - Turns scattered message threads into a brief you can price.
- **"From" prices on celebration cakes** - Filters out the enquiries that were never going to book, and reassures the ones that will.
- **Allergen information that matches your labelling** - A legal obligation on the counter and a practical one on the website.
- **Pre-order and collection slots** - Stops the regulars losing out when you sell out by ten.

Trust signals: Food hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency scheme; Photographs of your actual cakes and counter; Clear allergen and ingredient information; Real Bread Campaign membership, where genuinely held.

Seasonality: Christmas and Easter are the big pre-order periods. Wedding cake enquiries arrive in winter for the following summer; Mother’s Day and Father’s Day produce short spikes.

## Local authorities with the most

| Local authority | Businesses |
|---|---|
| Birmingham | 55 |
| Ealing | 45 |
| Haringey | 40 |
| Cornwall | 40 |
| City of Edinburgh | 40 |
| Glasgow City | 40 |
| Manchester | 35 |
| Bradford | 35 |
| Leeds | 35 |
| Leicester | 35 |

## The offer

- **Monthly**: £299 upfront, £99/month (the upfront is a setup fee), 12-month minimum term. We build it, host it and look after it - and after 24 monthly payments, it is yours.
- **Own It**: £1,795 upfront, £49/month, no minimum term. Buy the website outright. It is yours to keep, move or cancel.
- **Pro**: £6,950 upfront, £299/month, 12-month minimum term. No limits. For large, multi-site and fast-growing businesses.
- Payment: The setup fee is paid when you book, and it starts the design. Monthly fees are collected by Direct Debit, covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee, from the day your site goes live.
- Guarantee: You see your finished design on your phone and approve it before anything goes live, with two full rounds of changes included. Nothing launches until you are happy with it. The Monthly plan runs for 12 months from launch.
- Bolt-ons: Google Business Profile management £29/month; Local SEO pack £49/month; Business email £5/month. Coming soon, not yet on sale: Missed-call text back, Review booster.
- VAT: We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add to these prices.

## Questions

### Can customers order celebration cakes through my website?

Yes, and a structured order form is usually the biggest time-saver a bakery website offers. It asks for the date, servings, flavour, design ideas, dietary needs and collection or delivery, and it enforces your minimum notice period. You get a brief you can price instead of a long chain of messages, and you can take a deposit to secure the date.

### We sell out most days. Should customers be able to pre-order bread?

If you regularly sell out before your regulars arrive, pre-ordering is worth considering. Simple click-and-collect slots for loaves and pastry boxes guarantee the sale, help you plan the bake, and stop loyal customers leaving empty-handed. It can run alongside the counter without changing how the shop works.

### How do I keep my opening hours up to date?

Send us the change and we make it - that is what the monthly change is for, and bank holidays are the most common one. Wrong opening hours are worse than no website at all, because they send a customer on a wasted journey and they rarely come back.