Speaking at the Business of Baking for Beginners seminar at the International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE) Sept. 17-21 in Las Vegas, Mitchie Curran of Mitchies Munchies, a cake and sugar arts specialist in Las Vegas, emphasized that consumers shopping online – a growing segment for the bakery business – have a short attention span. So make your messaging count.

“We have 3-7 seconds to capture a user’s attention online,” Curran said, outlining several key strategies to follow on your business’s social media platforms:

  • Keep your handles consistent so they are easy to find.
  • Use the same profile pics across all social media platforms.
  • Follow specific brands and vendors you patronize, local communities (chamber of commerce) and dream accounts (who you look up to).
  • Don’t follow (on your business account) celebrities and your family.
  • Stop posting selfies every day. “You’re not selling you. You want to relate your posts to your business.”
  • Make sure to keep your posts relevant to your business: events, products, reviews, short videos.

“Social media is a two-way street. Interact and engage,” Curran emphasized.

Another BOBB speaker, Cydni Mitchell of Sweet Fest in Atlanta, further emphasized that every social media platform has its own audience, and users rely on each app for different types of content.

Consider TikTok, she said. TikTok Made Me Buy It drew 7.4 billion views in 2021.

“The key to success is relationship building – interact, celebrate others, and support community involvement,” Mitchell advised. “Once you find something that gets more engagement, keep posting that type of content – and then use analytics to develop and refine your content strategy.”

Cybake bakery software announces the introduction of its unique solution for retail instore bakeries, Cybake ISB, to the market in the United States. Cybake ISB is a retail production planning and management system used by supermarkets, convenience stores and others to ensure freshness, improve availability, increase sales, and cut waste for their instore bakeries and fresh food counters.

Multilingual, cloud-based Cybake ISB tells instore bakery colleagues the best combination of products to bake or make at the right times via PDAs, tablets, or cell phones by using forecasts and live sales data.

Freshness and availability are key market differentiators. Retailers that get their production waves right sell fresher, better quality products at the times their customers want them. The systems used by retailers often lack the ability to make this happen.

This is where Cybake ISB fills the gap. Food production sections that use Cybake ISB’s multi-wave production plans generally increase like-for-like sales by around 3-4% and cut in-store food production waste by at least 10%.

Jane Tyler, founder of Cybake, said: “It’s exciting to bring Cybake ISB to America and to be announcing it here at IBIE. This is our debut as exhibitors at the show. The feedback we’ve had so far has been amazing; so there couldn’t be a better time or place.