Bakery waste: measure unsold items, forecast every batch, put the rest to use

It all starts with three figures, noted every evening for each item: what came out of the oven, what the till sold, what is left. The till gives you the sales; production is recorded in the bakehouse, batch by batch. Without this record, you are going on impressions: ‘there are always some left on Tuesdays’.

Also note the time of the last sale when an item runs out before closing. Selling out is the other side of the same problem: the day shows no unsold items, but customers leave empty-handed, and the till keeps no record of what they would have bought.

Over the week, 138 of 2,120 baguettes were left over, or 6.5%; for croissants, 127 of 850, or 14.9%. The total hides what matters: on Saturday, the croissants ran out by 10:40 and the baguettes at 18:10; Sunday, baked too generously after that sold-out Saturday, accounts for a third of the leftovers.

Sample figures: a fictional bakery, invented for the calculation.

An unsold item first costs its ingredients: flour, butter, yeast and filling, costed on its recipe card. On top of that come the time spent shaping it and the oven’s energy, paid for whatever happens, and sometimes packaging. A sell-out costs something else: the margin on every missed sale, and sometimes the customer, who gets used to going elsewhere.

In the example, a baguette costs €0.22 in ingredients and sells for €1.10 excl. VAT; a croissant, €0.38 for €1.20 excl. VAT. The 127 croissants left over represent 127 × 0.38 = €48.26 of ingredients, and the 138 baguettes 138 × 0.22 = €30.36, before time and energy.

Comparing the two costs tells you which way to err: a leftover baguette costs €0.22 in ingredients, a missed one loses €0.88 in margin. On a cheap item in high demand, a few too many cost less than a sell-out; the richer an item is in butter or filling, the thinner the safety margin should be.

A bakery does not sell ‘bread’: it sells nearly 300 baguettes on a Tuesday, more than 370 on a Sunday, and its croissants go mostly before 10:00. So the forecast is made item by item, day by day, then by time slot (morning, lunchtime, end of the day), using the time of sale recorded by the till.

Start from the history of the same weekday: the last four to six Tuesdays to forecast the next one. Leave out exceptional days (closure, building work, oven breakdown), correct sell-out days, which understate demand, then adjust for whatever changes: weather, school holidays, bank holidays, a market or a street party.

Example: on Saturdays without a sell-out, three quarters of the croissants sell before 10:40. The 160 croissants gone by 10:40 therefore point to demand of about 160 ÷ 0.75 = 213 croissants: 53 missed sales, or about €43 of margin (53 × €0.82).

The safety margin, specific to each item, is set with the calculation in the previous section. The sales forecasting guide shows how to measure the error of each forecast, whether it is made in a spreadsheet or by sales forecasting software connected to the till.

Baking everything before opening means guessing the whole day as early as 04:00. With staggered batches, the first covers opening and the morning peak; the later, smaller ones are decided on the sales you see. Bread dough waits chilled, on a slow prove, never in the freezer if you trade under the French ‘boulanger’ title.

Set two or three checkpoints, for example at 09:30, 12:00 and 16:00. At each one, project the whole day using the sell-out day calculation.

Example: on Wednesday, 58 croissants have sold by 09:30; on previous Wednesdays, 55% went before that time. The day is heading for 58 ÷ 0.55 = 105 croissants: after 90 baked at dawn, a second batch of 15 to 20 is enough, where habit was to bake 120 in one go and have 16 left over.

Also decide what must stay available until closing: baguettes, probably; a speciality, not necessarily. A full display at 19:00 guarantees leftovers, and saying an item has sold out often costs less than one batch too many.

The French Environment Code (code de l’environnement) sets an order of priority against food waste: prevention, then donating or processing unsold food that is still fit to eat, then animal feed, and finally composting or anaerobic digestion. Everything above falls under prevention; for what is left, here are the options, in that order.

Repurpose in-house. Yesterday’s bread becomes breadcrumbs, croutons or French toast; a plain viennoiserie can be filled and baked again, like the almond croissant. Write down the rule (which products, stored how, reused within what time) based on the good hygiene practice guide for your trade. Cream-based products, which are kept chilled, are the most sensitive: if in doubt, they are not reused.

Sell for less. Yesterday’s bread, labelled as such, or end-of-day bags, in the shop or through a platform that connects shops with customers, recover part of the ingredient cost. In moderation: if the discount comes at the same time every evening, customers learn to wait for it.

Compost what can no longer be eaten. Since 1 January 2024, all businesses in France, with no size threshold, sort their biowaste at source and send it to a suitable recovery channel, composting or anaerobic digestion, instead of mixing it with other waste.

Giving to a food aid charity is the simplest route for items that are still good. French law requires certain businesses to offer a donation agreement to an approved charity: food retailers with more than 400 m² of sales area, contract caterers serving more than 3,000 meals a day, and food manufacturers and wholesalers with turnover above €50 million. A bakery below these thresholds is not required to offer an agreement: donating remains its choice.

A donation counts as placing food on the market: hygiene rules apply until handover, including the cold chain for anything kept chilled. The ministerial order listing the foods excluded from donation covers only foods of animal origin; it does not restrict donating composite products such as sandwiches or pastries, the French Ministry of Agriculture points out. The charity can refuse what it will not be able to redistribute in time: agree a collection day and time with them.

A business taxed on actual profits (régime réel), under income tax or corporation tax, gets a tax reduction of 60% of the value of its donations to a public-interest food aid charity; for organisations that provide meals to people in need, this rate applies whatever the amount donated. Donations in kind are valued at cost price. The reduction is capped at €20,000 per financial year, or 5‰ of turnover excl. VAT if that is higher; any excess carries over to the next five financial years. The charity issues a tax receipt, which you should keep.

Looking only at the weekly total. An over-generous Tuesday and a short Saturday cancel each other out in the average. Read each item, each day.

Forecasting from sell-out days. Sales on a Saturday sold out by 10:40 do not show demand; used as they are, they repeat the sell-out.

Baking everything before opening. The decision is made when you know the least. Keep part of production for the later batches.

Correcting all at once after one day. In the example, the sold-out Saturday led to 420 baguettes being baked on Sunday, and 49 were left over. Adjust in small steps, over several weeks.

Discounting at the same time every evening. Customers wait for the discount, and full-price sales fall.

What unsold rate should you aim for? There is no universal right figure: it depends on the item, your closing time and what you want to keep available until the evening. A rate of zero often signals sell-outs. Track each item week after week, with its sell-out times, and look for the trend rather than a target.

Can you freeze unsold bread to sell it the next day? Not under the ‘boulanger’ title: article L122-17 of the French Consumer Code (code de la consommation) prohibits deep-freezing or freezing the dough or the bread at any stage of production or sale. Yesterday’s bread can be sold as such, at a reduced price, repurposed or donated.

Does a bakery have to donate its unsold items? The obligation to offer a donation agreement applies to food shops with more than 400 m² of sales area and a few large operators. Below that threshold, a bakery is not required to. Donating is still possible, qualifies for a tax reduction and calls for the same hygiene precautions as a sale.

How do you value a bread donation for tax purposes? At cost price, meaning what it cost to make, not its selling price. The reduction is 60% of that amount, up to €20,000 or 5‰ of turnover excl. VAT, and requires a tax receipt from the charity. It applies to businesses taxed on actual profits (régime réel).