How Route Planning Helped A Bakery Grow

Flourist is a Vancouver-based bakery and food hub with a mission to bring traceable grains from Canadian farmers to Canadian kitchens. Since 2014 founders Janna Bishop and Shira McDermott have worked directly with family farms to source premium local grains and beans. They stone-mill the grain to order for home bakers, as well as preparing their own delicious baked goods.

Their daily home delivery service features groceries, fresh produce, pantry staples, and baked goods. Meanwhile, their retail locations offer a robust menu of bread, pastries, sandwiches and salads, as well as sweet and salty treats.

Home deliveries enable business growth

In 2020 the pandemic shuttered Flourist’s beautiful brick-and-mortar store. Like thousands of other businesses, their little bakery and mill had to figure out fast how to switch to home delivery for all their products. 

“We chose to work with Routific from the beginning to make sure we could be as efficient as possible with our driver resources,” said cofounder Janna Bishop. “It offered the simplest and most affordable solution for us.”

Flourist took just three days to onboard with Routific’s route planning software. In their first year, they made over 18,000 deliveries to homes across Vancouver. Their delivery model enabled them to thrive and grow through the pandemic and beyond.

Now Flourist’s production manager spends just 30 minutes every morning planning routes for the day, before dispatching them to their delivery drivers’ phones.

Drivers use the Routific Driver mobile app to follow their optimized routes, and read their delivery notes to ensure deliveries are dropped off at the right locations.

Meanwhile, Routific sends automated notifications to Flourist’s customers so they know exactly when to expect their deliveries. A second message is sent as the driver is approaching the customer, giving them a 15 to 30-minute warning.

“Routific’s platform sends our customers updates about their orders automatically, which helps them go about their day without waiting around for a delivery,” Janna said. “It also cuts down on the manual communication for our team members. Customers don’t need to call in and ask when their deliveries are coming. They already know.”

More retail locations, bigger team

By early 2023, Flourist had doubled their team, grown to two retail locations and built a growing delivery business across the greater Vancouver metropolitan area. And the team has plans for even more growth and expansion.

“Routific absolutely enabled us to withstand the pandemic, and with the launch and continuation of our home delivery service, we’re able to reach new, long-term customers,” said Janna. “We continue to hire new team members, and have plans to expand our retail locations.”