Bakery routes for early wholesale drops and weekend home orders.
Cafes want bread before they open; home customers want it on Saturday. Keep both lists in one place, put each morning's drops in order, and hand the driver a route that's already sorted.
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The short answer
Updated
Lite Route Planner plans bakery delivery routes from a spreadsheet: keep your wholesale accounts and home customers as saved addresses, filter to today's drops, and optimize the order from the bakery in one click. Drivers get the route in their phone's browser with each stop's drop-off note. It's free for up to 50 addresses, Personal is $19.99 a month billed every six months, and Business adds unlimited drivers from $59.99.
Two kinds of bakery route
Wholesale is the same cafes, restaurants and grocers most mornings, often before they open, with a key or a back door to get in. The order rarely changes, but the list does: a cafe adds Saturdays, a restaurant drops Mondays.
Home delivery changes every week. Saturday's orders come in all week, the addresses repeat (your regulars), and the volume jumps before holidays.
Lite doesn't repeat routes on a schedule. You build each morning's route from your saved list, which takes a minute or two: filter to the accounts with a drop today, lasso them and optimize. The addresses, notes and visit history stay put.
Standing orders, one row per account
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
| 1 | Account | Address | City | Weekdays | Saturday | Drop by | Access |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Tandem Street Cafe | 742 Congress St | Portland, ME | Y | Y | 6:00 | Back door, key on ring 3 |
| 3 | Harbor Market | 35 Commercial St | Portland, ME | Y | N | 6:30 | Receiving door, ring bell |
| 4 | Little Fern Bistro | 212 Ocean St | South Portland, ME | N | Y | 9:00 | Hand to kitchen |
| 5 | Casco Bay Grocers | 410 US Route 1 | Falmouth, ME | Y | Y | 7:00 | Bread rack by dairy |
| 6 | Morning Light Daycare | 88 Bridgton Rd | Westbrook, ME | Y | N | 7:30 | Office, sign the log |
Y and N columns come in as yes/no fields. On a Tuesday, filter to Weekdays = Yes; on Saturday, filter to Saturday = Yes. Drop-by times are for your reference: the optimizer orders by distance, so move an account that has to be first to the top.
Build tomorrow's wholesale run
- 1
Filter to tomorrow
Filter by the Weekdays or Saturday field, depending on the day. Only accounts with a drop stay on the map.
- 2
Lasso the whole set
Draw one loop around everything that's showing. If you run two vans, draw two loops.
- 3
Start and end at the bakery
Make it a round trip from your bakery base, so the route ends where the second load is waiting.
- 4
Optimize, then fix the early birds
Press Optimize, then drag any account that has to be first, like the 6 a.m. cafe, to the top.
- 5
Hand it off
Assign it to a driver on Business, or open it on your own phone and drive it yourself.
Small things that help a 5 a.m. driver
Drop-off notes on every stop
Write "back door, rack by the sink" in the stop note once. The driver sees it at that stop every morning.
Time at stops
Set a few minutes per drop as the default, and more for the grocer who counts every loaf. The day's total tells you when the van is back.
Attempted, with a reason
If the cafe is locked and nobody answers, mark it Attempted with a note. Color by last outcome to see who needs a call.
A printed backup
Export the route as a printable PDF for the van's clipboard, in case a phone dies mid-route.
Weekend home orders without retyping your regulars
Export the week's online orders with a Delivery date column and import the file. New customers are added. Addresses you already have are matched rather than added twice, and their Delivery date is filled in from the sheet. Filter the map to Saturday's date, lasso and optimize.
Regulars build up a history. When a customer asks whether last week's box arrived, the stop's history shows when it was marked and the driver's note. And because repeat addresses aren't new stops, your regulars don't use up your plan each month. See planning delivery routes from a spreadsheet.