Husk Bakery has been using Locate2u for the past few months to assist with sharing the mobile bakers real time location to their customers across Canberra.
Each day when their mobile bakery is on the road they share their live location on their Facebook page using the Locate2u tracking link. Customers are then able to track the vans location and route, to see where they are or where they’re heading. Sometimes customers even are waiting for the van to arrive at the next location to make their purchase!
Such a brilliant and simple idea, especially during the COVID-19 times we are living in.
Husk Bakery Full Story
Husk Bakery Owner, Aaron Clark, 32, Canberra, keeps overcoming the hurdles thrown at him and adapting to succeed. During the bushfires, he was worried customers wouldn’t come to his bakery van. Then, a huge hale storm damaged the refrigeration unit and needed repair. Once that was fixed, Covid-19 hit and he needed to start making money during the middle of a pandemic as people weren’t visiting the farmers’ markets. He then had an idea – he could take his van to his customers. This made him pivot and launch Husk Bakery van so he could deliver fresh bread, pies and pastries to hungry customers across Canberra.
Aaron Clark, who has been a baker for 15 years, comments: “We were very close to calling it quits after the air unit broke on the van, but launching the mobile Husk Bakery has turned everything around for me. When I first started, it was myself, a pastry chef and a couple of assistants. Since Covid-19 hit and I launched the mobile bakery van, I have grown to have 7 employees. If it all continues to go well, I might even expand with another truck, in which case I will need another 2 or 3 staff! Customers have been loving our mobile bakery and love hearing our chimes play when we drive down their street.”
This brought a new challenge – communicating to his customers where he would be each day. “Social media has been a blessing and very effective in helping my business grow. We would be able to communicate directly with customers and communicate to them the areas we would be visiting, but there was something missing. Then I discovered Locate2U, which helps me do everything in one place and I share a link on social media every day so that customers can track my live location.”
“I trialled Locate2U and it was perfect – I automatically increased customers by about 30% on the first day as they knew where I was. This has meant people aren’t calling and messaging me as much so I have saved around 45 minutes a day – almost a day a week of time!”
“We are often inundated in the mornings as we get requests from people asking us to visit their area. We are now starting to take orders on the day and will package those up ready to be collected.
“This has helped the business become more profitable despite lockdown laws lifting, people still want us to come to them. If this continues for a few months then I will look at having another van and Locate2U will really help with that.
“We go to Kambah on Wednesdays, on Thursdays we take requests for suburbs from customers, on Fridays we visit Moncreiff and Casey, then the farmers’ markets at weekends.”
