Here's how a San Francisco bakery flawlessly manages sales of 5,000 packages of cookies in 30 days

When it's elbow-to-elbow with holiday shoppers at San Francisco's famed Ferry Building, the last thing Meg Ray needs is a holdup at the register. The owner of local pastry shop Miette calls the holiday season unrelenting, but also critical to her store's success.

Miette fans come to the European-inspired bakery for the gorgeously crafted cakes, macarons, classic candies like licorice and fleur de sel caramels, pretty lavender shortbread cookies, and chocolate sables - all delivered in bespoke packaging and setting. Now overseeing four locations, a catering operation, cooking classes, and a mail-order business, Ray has smartly grown the patisserie from a stall at a farmer's market into an operation with nearly 50 employees.

As with most retailers, December is Miette's biggest sales month, and the store hires a wave of seasonal workers to match the crowds. Production goes up by about fivefold on nearly every item, which means making 5,000 packages of different cookies in 30 days versus 1,000. After Christmas, Miette rolls right into a busy Valentine's Day and then the confectionary-studded Easter holiday. Careful inventory planning and a smooth checkout are essential.

Ray switched out her old POS for Square a year ago to optimize her increasingly busy business. The results were immediate - with a faster customer line and an elimination of employee POS training.

"It wasn't that hard to do," she says. "We just got rid of the old machines and put in Square. Putting inventory on was painless, and the employees took to it so intuitively. I kind of imagined this 'day of training,' but they just started tapping at the screen and said, 'Yeah we got this.'"

Ray also used Square's real-time analytics and custom software solutions to help streamline her inventory management across her four locations. In fact, she no longer goes to each store - and each cash register - to manually encode inventory. She does it from her desk. Items are rung up more accurately, reducing reporting and other errors. That's because every item has a photo, making it easy for employees, even seasonal ones, to quickly identify which of the many the foil-covered Santa Claus chocolates the customer is purchasing

With a year's worth of sales data racked up, Ray and her team are seeing another benefit this holiday season.

"It tells us why we shouldn't panic when there are 500 candy canes left on December 22, because they're all going to sell on December 23," she says. "It gives us a really clear snapshot into what the sales trends are going to be."

The Square dashboard instantly tells Ray and her team which of the company's more than 100 handmade goods and 1,000 total SKUs are high in one store and low in another. Knowing that an item is well-stocked means she can tell someone in the kitchen to go home, shaving off payroll. Miette's cost of goods sold is down 22%, and payroll is down 23%.

Ray also relied on Square Capital, which gives businesses access to funds grow their business, to launch a store-wide coffee program this holiday. The access to money without a stack of paperwork, she adds, is what made her a believer.

"Like most retailers, Miette needs to stock up for any season months in advance," Ray says. "If the cash flow isn't there, Square Capital allows us to buy the inventory, ensuring that we will have ample product on the shelves to have a successful holiday. We'll never go to a bank again."

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