How Bakey reduced prime costs by 6% with Tarragon

6%

prime cost improvement

2%

COGS reduction

4%

labor reduction

85%+

forecast accuracy on top sellers

Background

Bakey Babka is a 5-unit bakery and café concept known for its laminated pastries, specialty coffee program, and grab-and-go breakfast and lunch offerings. Nearly all prep is centralized through a commissary kitchen, allowing the shops to stay focused on speed, consistency, and customer experience.

Commissary models can unlock major efficiencies, but only when supported by software that ties together production planning, distribution, accounting, inventory, and predictive ordering.

Before Tarragon

When we first met with Bakey, they had 4 locations and ambitious growth plans. They were juggling two disconnected software systems — one for commissary production and one for inventory — and neither was designed for the operational complexity of a growing, commissary-driven bakery concept.

An outdated production system

Bakey's commissary was operating on a legacy production tool. It generated static prep lists based on pars set manually by the production manager and offered limited forecasting capabilities, no real-time visibility, and minimal ability to dynamically adjust production based on demand trends.

This system required constant tweaking and resulted in frequent coordination issues between the shops and commissary. Shops regularly sent last-minute emergency requests, creating additional production adjustments and operational strain for the commissary team.

A POS inventory add-on that couldn't keep pace

On the inventory side, Bakey relied on a POS add-on where invoices were sent overseas to be manually coded, so operators waited 12–24 hours to see updated pricing and item costs.

The system also failed to flag price spikes and unit-of-measure mismatches, creating a classic "garbage in, garbage out" problem and making item-level COGS improvement nearly impossible.

The breaking point

Between manual production adjustments, emergency bakes, delayed invoices, and no forecasting, the Bakey team knew the system wasn't sustainable for their existing operations and wouldn't provide the level of operational visibility and coordination they wanted as they continued to expand.

With Tarragon

Bakey implemented Tarragon across all units and their commissary in just 4 weeks, including GM training. The team adopted both of Tarragon's product offerings:

• Predictive Operations — predictive ordering and commissary management
• Food Costing — invoice automation, menu item & recipe management, and reporting & analytics

Tarragon has made it much easier to track food costs and purchasing across the business. It helps us clearly communicate percentages and budget variances with our GMs and stay aligned as we grow. It's also saved us a huge amount of time compared to juggling reporting and spreadsheets manually. The data is trustworthy, the system is easy to use, and it's kept us far more disciplined than we were a year ago.

Measurable financial results

In the first two months after implementing Tarragon, Bakey observed improvements in prime costs totaling 6%:

• COGS: down 2%
• Labor: down 4%

Operational outcomes

• Shops were able to place more consistent and predictable orders.
• Commissary labor stabilized, with fewer emergency bakes and more predictable production cycles.
• Managers gained significantly greater visibility into item-level COGS.
• Forecasting accuracy for top sellers rose from 0% to 85%+.

We've always believed scaling a commissary-driven concept requires strong systems, operational accountability, and real-time visibility into the business. Tarragon has helped our team streamline forecasting, production, and food cost management while connecting our commissary and café operations in a much more data-driven way.

Conclusion

Tarragon helped Bakey consolidate previously disconnected workflows into a single operational platform, supporting more predictable commissary operations, improved cost visibility, and measurable improvements in prime costs across the company — driving a 6% improvement in prime costs across the company.

Two months after using Tarragon, Bakey opened their 5th location. On opening day, the new shop was set up for success, seamlessly placing orders to the commissary using Tarragon.

Tarragon is built for multi-unit bakery and commissary-driven concepts looking to improve operational visibility, reduce complexity, and build infrastructure that can scale alongside their growth.