How Wholegreen Bakery adapted to overcome challenges and grow their business

Award-winning Wholegreen Bakery has risen above the adversity of 2020 to prove that a strong vision, mixed with a generous sprinkling of passion, can lead to lasting success.

The gluten-free bakery – which opened in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 2016 and now has a bustling venue in Sydney’s CBD – turns out a delicious range of croissants, breads, savoury tarts, and sweet treats like fresh lemon meringues, eclairs, and salted caramel chocolate tarts. Today, some of its most popular sourdough loaves are also stocked on the shelves of Woolworths Metro supermarkets and Harris Farm stores.

It’s an amazing result for what started as a small business to produce delicious gluten-free food. The team at Wholegreen Bakery have worked incredibly hard to get where they are today – drawing on support from partners like Tyro to help them grow.

Let’s take a look at some of the major milestones on their remarkable journey.

Expanding during a pandemic

Having built up a loyal following at their first eastern suburbs venue, owner Cherie decided to take the plunge and open a second venue in the Sydney CBD in March 2020. “Our second store, a café, had been open in the CBD for two weeks when COVID struck,” said Cherie. “All of a sudden the CBD went dead.”

It was six months before Wholegreen Bakery could open its CBD venue again. Operations Manager Grace reflects on the effort involved in getting the venue up and running.

“Adding the CBD location took a lot of work. Probably the fastest part of getting the new venue ready was setting up our Tyro terminals,” she said. “We received them via courier, opened the packet, called the Tyro support team and followed the steps. In a couple of minutes, we were connected and ready to go.”

Getting set up with EFTPOS

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Reaching customers in new ways

Tyro was also there to help earlier in the pandemic, when Cherie made the call to move to online orders. Keeping jobs was the aim of the game: “We basically had to pivot in order for the business to survive and to keep the staff employed. We were already doing wholesale … but we had to very quickly change our website to include home deliveries.”

With Tyro behind them, Wholegreen Bakery had the new site ready for online orders within a week. “Tyro was on board with us from the moment we asked them for help. It really was an exchange of a few emails, and within a week we had our online ordering system ready to go – thanks to Tyro,” said Cherie.

The online system integrates with Tyro so that when a customer places an order, they can make their payment online and it can be immediately viewed within the Tyro App.

“It’s immediate. We’re not chasing money, there’s no delay. And as soon as the payment’s received, the order’s confirmed. They get a confirmation email, and we get the confirmation order emailed to us immediately. It’s such a quick and easy process.”

Indeed, the bakery is now delivering its baked goods to customers across the state. “It’s become a huge part of our revenue, doing these deliveries to customers all over New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory,” said Cherie.

Sights set on a bright future

Having seen an “absolute” increase in business both in Waverley and beyond during COVID, the team at Wholegreen Bakery are now moving to a larger production kitchen so they can extend the Wholegreen range. They also have their sights set on opening a third location in the near future.

As for the supermarkets, the goal is to get their gluten-free bread products into even more supermarket stores. No doubt Wholegreen Bakery’s loyal customer base will be delighted with this planned expansion.

How about you?

If you have a vision for going online or expanding your business – and you’d like some help – contact us directly on 02 8907 1700 between Mon-Fri 9:00am-5.30pm (Sydney time) or click through to our visitor contact form and we’ll get back to you: https://www.tyro.com/get-started/