How to offer subscriptions

If you have a devoted set of customers that buys from you regularly, you may want to set up a sort of subscription service for your weekly pickups. We get this request all the time, especially from bakers who sell loaves of bread weekly to friends and neighbors. We’re working on building out more features that will help you automate subscriptions but in the meantime, we have some tips on how to use current Hotplate features to make this happen.

Most chefs do this by setting up 1 event at the start of the month and having their customers pre-order a month’s worth at a time. These are the steps to follow:

Create an Event for the first pickup

Use the description to explain what the pick up schedule will be. We love this one from  Laune Bread :

Create each subscription as an Item

For example a “4 week subscription” would be a different item than “2 week subscription". Be sure to price the item for the whole month and include the number of weeks included in the description.

When you set inventory: Remember that you’re setting inventory for the number of subscriptions for the month, not individual items. So if you set the inventory to 10, that’s 10 loaves each week, 40 for the month.

Pro tip: Simplicity is key, especially when you’re offering subscriptions for the first time. Fewer options = fewer headaches for you and your customers!

Add only the first pickup window

Your customer will only be selecting their first pickup window when paying for the subscription. To keep things simple, we strongly recommend offering just 1 or 2 options and keeping the same date and time for pickups every week.

For example: if your customer selects 5pm on Wednesday March 5th at checkout, pickups for the month would be:

Be sure to announce to your customers that pickups in future weeks will be at the same day and time. We recommend you add this a a section title on your menu to draw attention to it! Like  Capitol Jill  did here:

Do my customers get text reminders?

As usual, your customers will get reminder texts for the pickup day and time that they choose at checkout (Week 1’s pickup). After Week 1’s pickup, there are 2 ways to get reminder texts out for the following weeks:

Adjust pickup windows each week:

Edit each order and move the pickup window to the following week, to re-send the automatic reminders on the new pickup date.

This moves the order forward on your Prep and Packing lists as well!

Send a manual message:

On the packing tab, filter for customers who ordered your subscription item. Click the 3 dots --> Text Customers to send a manual text blast to everyone.

More on manual messages  here .

If you choose to go this route, you can add  manual orders  for weeks 2-4, to keep your Prep and Packing lists accurate.

Need some help?

Always feel free to reach out for help setting up a subscription like this! If you’ve put a draft Event together, we’ll be happy to look over it and offer suggestions!

Hotplate Bakers rocking subscriptions

We showed some examples above from how these two bakers set up their bread subscriptions. If you’re local, show some love to their Hotplate storefronts:

 Capitol Jill Baking 

Check out her February “ Carb Collective Membership ” which allows customers to pre-order a loaf for every week of the month.

 Laune Bread 

Lets customers pre-order bread for every week or every other week through their bread clubs. Check out their “ March Bread Club ”.