Background
Sunrise Bake Co. operates 4 bakery-café locations across the Pacific Northwest. Each location bakes fresh daily — croissants, sourdough loaves, pastries, and sandwich rolls — and any unsold product at close of business represents a 100% loss.
Before ExpiryOS, each location manager made individual judgement calls about end-of-day markdowns. Some were aggressive (50% off from 4 PM), others were conservative (10% off at 5:30 PM). The result was inconsistent sell-through and weekly wastage of approximately $1,080 across all four locations.
The Challenge: Fresh Goods, Tight Windows
Unlike grocery items with 7–14 day expiry windows, fresh baked goods need to be sold the same day. That means the markdown decision window is measured in hours, not days. Traditional inventory tools weren't built for this granularity.
Sunrise's operations manager, Angela, had tried setting a blanket markdown policy, but found it was either too aggressive (hurting full-price morning revenue) or too conservative (still throwing away product at close).
How ExpiryOS Solved It
Sunrise configured ExpiryOS's Smart Markdown Engine with category-level rules for their fresh goods:
- Pastries and croissants: Alert at 3 PM, recommended markdown 30%
- Sandwich rolls and loaves: Alert at 2 PM, recommended markdown 20%
- Seasonal specials: Alert at 1 PM, recommended markdown 40%
The platform's batch system allowed each morning bake run to be logged as a new batch, with quantity and bake time recorded. ExpiryOS then counted down to the configured alert window and surfaced the markdown recommendation automatically — no manual tracking needed.
Results After 90 Days
- ✅ 45% reduction in end-of-day wastage across all four locations
- ✅ $1,840/month in markdown revenue recovered (previously $0)
- ✅ Consistent sell-through rate of 82% vs. 61% before ExpiryOS
- ✅ Staff time saved: 6 hours/week previously spent on manual stock walks
- ✅ Customer satisfaction improvement: fewer complaints about stale product, more positive reviews mentioning fresh product quality
Angela's Verdict
"I was skeptical that a web app could handle fresh bakes — I thought we'd need something custom. But ExpiryOS just worked. We set it up in one afternoon and it's been running itself since. The consistency alone is worth it — every location now does the markdown the same way, at the right time."
— Angela R., Operations Manager, Sunrise Bake Co.