Her father worked around the clock, but it still wasn’t enough.
Melissa gave him the ultimatum.
Either they found smarter ways to work or she would quit their family business.

Now, it’s a piece of cake.

The savings are insane.
It’s absolutely wild. I didn’t think it was possible.

Kim Åge Larsen, CEO, Larsens Bakeri

Larsens Bakeri was established in 1995 by the baker and confectioner Kim Åge Larsen, son of the Danish baker, Svend Åge Larsen. His wife Solveig is also involved in the company. So are four of their five children. In other words, it is a real family business in which the children early learned about business. The company’s turnover last year (2020) was well over NOK 14 million with around 35 employees.

The bakery has a good selection of bakery products based on traditional Danish and Norwegian recipes. They produce cakes and breads of supreme quality. Today, they have several outlets in southern region of Norway. The bakery’s well-reputed products mean that they can be found on the shelves in all the main grocery chains in their area.

– We also save an hour every day by the stores placing their own orders. The only thing we do is to print the packing slip. With two clicks, the invoice goes out to everyone. The operations can be done from anywhere. If you are on holiday and have online access, you can easily follow up any urgent matters just where you are.

– Previously, we spent a very long time training a person before going on holiday. We now have many users of MyFoodOffice. The software is intuitive and easy to use. With many users, we have great flexibility in relation to both holiday arrangements and in the event of sick leave.

– This has to be the most ingenious thing ever invented in the baking industry. In any case, it is the most profitable investment we have made in a long time. In addition, we have gotten rid of a lot of frustration from customers and employees.

– I started out small in 1995. Good customer service has always been important to us. The customers could send a message or call in an order or change until I started work at 10 p.m. It went well at the start when there weren’t that many customers, but when there are changes late in the evening from 15-16 customers, there are a lot of details and it’s easy to forget something. In MyFoodOffice, we have decided that our customers have until 4pm to place their order. This has created a calmer everyday life. And we don’t have to enter orders and changes manually afterwards. When you’ve worked all night, it’s good not to have to sit down with office work afterwards, says Kim Åge.

More value creation and free time

– How will you use the time you have saved from using MyFoodOffice?

First, we are now able to handle more customers. Second, we have more time to be social. For us as a family business in which both my wife and our four children work, family events and family trips have been a major operational challenge. Now we can both go on holiday together and have family gatherings without worrying about the bakery operations. It’s just a wonderful gain, says Kim Åge Larsen.

His daughter Melissa nods and smiles, knowing that it is largely thanks to her ultimatum, and her demanding her father to adopt modern technology in the company. She actually threatened to quit if not. Today, they are both satisfied that the company made an important technological choice.

– MyFoodOffice costs a little more than the solution we had previously, but it is worth every penny. We save so much time on everything. We actually save almost an entire position by using MyFoodOffice. That’s a lot of money in one year. I didn’t think we could save so much time by just changing the software, says Kim Åge Larsen.

More sales

By using MyFoodOffice, customers can also see their whole product range. Previously, our customers just continued to order what they had always been buying. With MyFoodOffice, they are now being presented with other quality food products they are also selling. This has given Larsens Bakery a somewhat unexpected additional sale on their existing customers.

– MyFoodOffice makes our wider product range available to the customer. It has been an unexpected gain, say father and daughter.