How to run your first drop

The first drop is the one that teaches you the rhythm. Get through it once and the rest are muscle memory.

Decide the batch before the drop

Work out what you are making and how many you can actually make. Not the optimistic number — the number you can do on a normal Saturday without staying up. That number goes into the drop as a quantity limit, and it is what stops you promising a twelfth loaf out of an eleven-loaf oven.

Add the products

A product is the thing itself: a sourdough loaf, a jar of apricot jam, a dozen eggs. Give it a name, a short description, and a price. You only do this once — the same product goes into as many future drops as you like.

Create the drop

A drop wraps those products in a window. You set two times:

• Opens at — when you plan to open it for orders.
• Closes at — when ordering stops and you get your final count.

Add a pickup address, and put which door and what hours in the drop's description. Both show on the drop page before anyone orders.

Open it and send the announcement

When you're ready, open the drop from its page. Once it is open, one tap sends the announcement to everyone on your list who opted in. Send it when your customers are actually looking at their phones: early morning reaches more people than midday.

Let it close on its own

The close is the one step you do not have to be there for. A background job checks every minute and closes ordering at the time you set.

Watch it fill

Every order lands in your dashboard as soon as it is placed. An item counts as sold when you mark that order paid, so as you get close to your number, check the unpaid orders before you mark the last few paid.

Close out

When ordering closes you have a list of who ordered what. Bake, hand it over, and mark the drop fulfilled. That moves it into your history, where the numbers become useful once you have a few to compare.

If something goes wrong

Cancel the drop. Every order stays in your dashboard, so you can see who already paid you and how much — no scrolling back through a group text to work it out.