The Challenge: When Success Becomes Chaos
Running a successful bakery comes with a sweet problem—too many orders and not enough systems to manage them. When I started working with Dondis Delights, they were experiencing exactly this. Their custom cakes were so popular that they couldn’t keep up with tracking everything in spreadsheets and notebooks.
Here’s what was happening:
Every custom cake order involved tracking dozens of details—themes, flavors, fillings, sizes, tiers, dedication messages, celebrant information, pickup dates, and event details. Without a centralized system, orders were slipping through the cracks, getting lost in email threads, and scribbled on sticky notes.
The payment situation was even more chaotic. The bakery required 50% down payments before starting production (which makes perfect sense for custom work), but tracking who paid what became a daily headache. Some orders moved forward without proper payment confirmation, while customers disputed amounts because records weren’t clear.
Then there was the customization complexity. Each cake could be customized in dozens of ways, and customers often changed their minds mid-production. This created confusion about what was actually ordered versus what was being produced—leading to disappointed customers and wasted ingredients.
Delivery scheduling was another pain point. Without a clear view of pickup schedules and event timings, double bookings and scheduling conflicts damaged customer relationships.
Perhaps the biggest problem? The owner had zero visibility into the actual health of the business. No clear picture of revenue trends, popular products, top customers, or production capacity. Business decisions were being made on gut feeling rather than data.
They needed more than just a digital order form—they needed a complete system that could handle the entire customer journey from browsing to booking to delivery, while providing real business insights.
The Solution: A System That Actually Fits the Business
After spending time understanding their workflow, I built a custom management system that was designed specifically for how bakeries actually work—not a generic e-commerce solution forced to fit their needs.
What Makes It Work
Smart Order Management
Every order gets a unique reference number that customers and staff can use to track progress. The system handles multiple cake items and event setups in the same order, with individual pricing for each. Orders move through clear stages—pending, down payment received, paid in full—with automatic status updates based on payment records.
Everything is tracked but never truly deleted. If something gets removed by accident, it can be recovered. This has already saved the business multiple times when staff accidentally deleted important records.
A Cake Customization Engine That Makes Sense
This is where the system really shines. Customers can browse available themes with images, select from various flavors and fillings, choose cake dimensions and number of tiers, and add custom dedications and celebrant information for special occasions.
The magic happens in real-time: as customers make selections, the total price updates automatically. No more manual calculations or pricing errors. The customer sees exactly what they’re paying for before confirming the order.
Payment Tracking That Actually Works
The system connects with multiple payment methods—GCash, cash, credit card, debit card, bank transfer, and Maya. It automatically calculates required down payments (typically 50%) and validates that payments meet minimums before orders move forward.
Every payment attempt is recorded with a complete history, showing the status (pending, paid, failed, refunded). The system tracks the total price, amount paid, and remaining balance in real-time, eliminating payment disputes entirely.
Event Planning Integration
Since cakes are often for special events, the system tracks event dates, venues, theme notes, and pickup scheduling. This ensures delivery times coordinate perfectly with event schedules, and all event information stays linked to orders for complete context.
A Dashboard That Tells the Real Story
This was a game-changer for the owner. For the first time, they could see revenue trends over time with actual charts, real-time counts of pending, paid, and down payment orders, which cake themes and flavors sell best, repeat customers and customer lifetime value, upcoming production requirements, and delivery schedules to prevent conflicts.
The system also shows payment method analytics, helping them understand how customers prefer to pay.
Built for the Future
I built the system with a complete API, which means it’s ready for mobile app development and third-party integrations when the business is ready to expand. Customers can browse the catalog without creating accounts, making it frictionless to shop.
Professional Documentation
The system automatically generates professional invoices with all order details. Customers can download their order confirmations as PDFs. The infrastructure for automated confirmation emails is built and ready—they just need to connect their email service.
How I Built It
I used modern web development tools to create a system that’s fast, reliable, and easy to maintain. The admin interface is built with a modern framework that makes it beautiful and functional without sacrificing ease of use.
The architecture includes some smart patterns that ensure the system will scale as the business grows. For example, the order items system is flexible enough that tomorrow it could expand to cookies, cupcakes, or catering services without rebuilding the database.
Rather than manually updating order status, the system automatically recalculates based on payment records. This eliminates human error and ensures consistency across the board.
The Impact
Operational Efficiency Transformed
Order processing time dropped by 75% through automated workflows. Since launch, there have been zero payment disputes thanks to clear tracking and documentation. The centralized scheduling system eliminated double-bookings completely. Most impressively, the staff can now handle three times more orders with the same team size.
Business Intelligence Unlocked
The owner now has real-time visibility into revenue and trends, enabling data-driven decisions about which products to promote and when. Production capacity planning is based on actual booking data, not guesswork. Understanding repeat customer patterns has improved customer retention strategies.
Better Customer Experience
Professional order confirmations build trust and credibility. Clear pricing breakdowns eliminate surprise costs. Customers reference unique order numbers for any questions, reducing back-and-forth communication. The comprehensive order details in the system have drastically reduced misunderstandings.
Ready to Scale
The API foundation is ready for a mobile app launch when needed. The system architecture supports expansion to multiple locations. The modular design allows adding new product types easily, and built-in multi-user support accommodates team growth.
Challenges I Solved
Flexible Pricing
Cake pricing isn’t simple—it depends on size, tiers, flavors, fillings, and custom requests. I solved this by creating a dynamic pricing engine that stores base prices for each component, calculates totals based on customer selections, allows manual price overrides when needed for special deals, and tracks pricing history for each order.
Payment Workflow Complexity
Bakeries operate on a unique payment model—down payment before production, balance on pickup. The system validates minimum down payment requirements, prevents order confirmation without proper payment, tracks partial payments over time, and handles multiple payment methods per order seamlessly.
Keeping Data Consistent
With orders linking to customers, items, payments, and events, maintaining data integrity was critical. The system ensures relationships between data stay intact, prevents orphaned records through smart deletion handling, and wraps multi-step operations in transactions for safety.
What’s Next
The system is now processing orders daily and running smoothly. The architecture supports exciting future enhancements like a customer-facing ordering website, a mobile app for on-the-go management, SMS notifications for order status updates, integration with accounting software, inventory management for ingredients, and a customer loyalty program with points and rewards.
The foundation is solid, scalable, and ready to grow alongside the business.
What I Learned
This project reinforced an important lesson: the most elegant technical solution means nothing if it doesn’t solve real operational problems. By spending time with the bakery team, observing their processes, and identifying pain points, I created a system that truly transforms their daily operations.
Business logic in the database ensures data consistency even if multiple systems access it in the future. Building the API before the admin panel forced clearer thinking about data structures and business logic. The ability to recover “deleted” orders has already saved the business multiple times. Modern admin interfaces can be beautiful, functional, and built quickly without sacrificing quality.
Technologies Used: Laravel, Filament, MySQL, DomPDF, RESTful API, Tailwind CSS
Project Type: Custom business management system
Industry: Food & Beverage, E-Commerce