A bakery or patisserie sells fast, and sells a lot of small things: a coffee and two croissants, a box of six, a birthday cake collected at four. The counter moves quickly and the basket is rarely one item. A POS for a bakery has to keep that line flowing and the case in sync. Here’s what to look for.
The counter has to keep moving
Like a café, a bakery lives at the counter, so speed is everything: best sellers should be one-tap adds, quantities should be quick to bump (“six of these”), and the screen should be clear enough for a new starter to read at a glance. The morning rush for bread and pastries is no time to hunt through menus.
Sell by the item, the box or the quantity
A bakery basket mixes singles, half-dozens and boxes. The POS should make quantity and grouping fast — adding six of one pastry shouldn’t mean six taps — and let you ring a takeaway box as easily as a single slice. (If you sell anything by weight, check the POS handles per-weight pricing the way you need before you commit.)
Takeaway-first, with the case on a QR menu
Most bakery sales walk out the door, so the flow should default to takeaway rather than asking for a table every time. A QR menu can also help at the counter: guests scan to browse the full case with photos and allergens while they decide. It’s a browse-and-decide menu, not self-checkout, so your counter staff still ring the sale — and with Garivio it’s built from the same catalogue as the till, so a sold-out tray greys out for guests the moment you mark it.
Special orders and the four o’clock cake
Patisseries live on pre-orders — the celebration cake, the weekend platter. Whatever POS you pick, make sure taking a named order with a note and a pickup time is quick, and that it’s easy to find again when the customer walks in. Keep deposits and balances simple.
Gift cards and regulars
Neighbourhood bakeries run on regulars and gifting. Garivio POS can issue, reload and redeem gift cards at the counter, and live customer records help you greet the regular who’s in every Saturday.
It still has to work offline
A queue out the door on a Saturday is exactly when the Wi-Fi wobbles. Pick a POS that keeps selling offline and syncs when the connection’s back — the counter never stops.
A clean close at the end of the day
Bakeries often close mid-afternoon with a lot of small transactions behind them. You want a Z-report and takings by tender ready the moment you lock the door, plus live figures through the day — no reconstructing the morning later.
Try it on a real morning
The best test is a real rush. A good vendor lets you start a free trial with no card — Garivio gives you a full 1 month — so run an actual morning before you decide.
Garivio POS is built for this kind of service: fast counter sales, takeaway-first workflows, a QR menu for the case, gift cards, offline mode, and live reporting in the browser on the device you already own. See Garivio POS, read the café POS guide, or book a walkthrough.