How to Sell Baked Goods on UniLink (Custom Orders, Menus, and Pickup Scheduling)

Replace the chaos of Instagram DMs and spreadsheet order tracking with a single bakery link — take custom orders, schedule pickups, showcase your creations, and count down to collection drops.

Running a bakery from home or a small studio means wearing every hat simultaneously: baker, marketer, customer service rep, and order coordinator. Most cottage bakers manage this through a combination of Instagram DMs, text messages, and a mental (or physical) calendar that was never designed for the job. When you're pre-heating ovens at 5am, the last thing you need is to also be digging through 47 DMs to figure out who ordered the six-inch lemon drizzle for Saturday. UniLink builds the order and scheduling system your baking business deserves, in about 30 minutes.

What a Bakery Shop on UniLink Does

Your UniLink page handles the full customer journey from discovery to confirmed order, without requiring you to be online responding to messages. A visitor arrives, scrolls through your current menu or shop, sees photos of your past creations, decides what they want, fills out a custom order form or selects a product, picks a pickup or delivery slot, and pays — all before you've checked your phone. By the time you see the notification, it's a confirmed, paid order with every piece of information you need to fulfill it.

The Shop block or Menu block acts as your digital display case. Unlike a static photo post, every item has a price, description, and add-to-cart or order button. The Appointment block turns your availability calendar into a self-service pickup scheduler, eliminating the "when can I pick it up?" back-and-forth that consumes hours every week. The Form block captures custom orders in a structured format — flavour, size, design brief, occasion, allergen information — so you start every custom bake with a complete brief rather than scattered notes from a DM conversation.

The Countdown block is a bakery-specific power tool. For limited collection drops — Valentine's Day boxes, holiday cookie sets, seasonal flavours — a live countdown creates genuine urgency. Visitors who arrive on a Thursday and see "48 hours until this collection closes" behave very differently from visitors who see a static menu. Limited drops with countdowns consistently sell out faster than open-ended menus.

How to Get Started

1. Create your UniLink account — go to unil.ink/signup and choose a username that matches your bakery name or brand. A warm, pastel-toned template works well for most bakery aesthetics.
2. Add a Shop or Menu block — insert a Shop block for products with individual pricing and add-to-cart, or a Menu block if you prefer a browse-first experience. Add your current items — custom cakes, cookie boxes, seasonal specials — with photos, descriptions, prices, and minimum order notice (e.g., "48 hours advance notice required").
3. Add an Appointment block for pickup scheduling — insert an Appointment block. Create slots for Pickup (30-minute windows during your available pickup hours) and Delivery (if applicable). Set how many concurrent orders you can fulfill per slot to avoid overbooking.
4. Add a Form block for custom orders — insert a Form block titled "Place a Custom Order." Add fields for: Occasion, Cake/Item Type, Flavour Choice, Size or Quantity, Design Description or Inspiration, Pickup Date Preference, Allergen or Dietary Requirements, and Contact Phone Number.
5. Add a Gallery block for past creations — insert a Gallery block with your best work photos. Organise into categories: Custom Cakes, Celebration Cakes, Cookie Boxes, Seasonal Specials. Freshly photographed creations sell the next order better than any written description.
6. Add a Countdown block for drops — insert a Countdown block pointing to your next collection launch or order-deadline date. Set the title (e.g., "Mother's Day Collection — Orders Close In:") and the target date and time.
7. Connect payment through Stripe — in payment settings, connect your Stripe account to accept upfront payment or deposits for shop orders. Full payment upfront is standard for bakeries and eliminates the risk of unfulfilled orders.

How to Use It

1. Update your shop menu seasonally — add seasonal specials as new products before the season starts (pumpkin spice in late September, Christmas stollen in November) and remove them once the season ends. Seasonal products in your shop create natural urgency without needing a countdown.
2. Set realistic lead time requirements — in the product description or appointment block, clearly state minimum advance notice. "Custom cakes require 5 business days notice" in the product description prevents order requests you cannot fulfill and sets expectations before payment.
3. Limit pickup slots to match your capacity — in the Appointment block, set maximum bookings per slot equal to the number of orders you can realistically complete in that window. Overbooking slots is the fastest way to miss a deadline and damage your reputation.
4. Photograph every notable creation before delivery — invest five minutes photographing each finished custom order in good light before it leaves your kitchen. A single great photo of a custom cake can drive dozens of enquiries when posted to Instagram with your bio link.
5. Use the custom form responses as your order sheet — export or screenshot form submissions as your production list. The structured form means every order has the same fields completed in the same format, making batch production planning significantly easier.
6. Activate countdown blocks two weeks before a limited drop — add the countdown at least two weeks before a seasonal drop closes and promote it in your stories. Update your bio to "Holiday cookie boxes — order before [date], link in bio" for the duration of the promotion.
7. Review which products sell most via analytics — check which shop products get the most clicks and which convert to completed orders. Your best-sellers should be featured first in your shop block and appear prominently in gallery photos.

Key Settings Explained

How to Get the Most Out of It

The most transformative shift for a home baker moving to UniLink is replacing the DM-based order intake with the custom order form. A well-structured form — with occasion, flavour, size, allergen, and design fields — means you wake up to complete order briefs rather than fragments of a conversation you need to chase for additional information. This alone typically saves two to four hours per week for a baker taking ten or more custom orders monthly.

Seasonal countdown drops are the highest-ROI marketing tactic available to small bakeries. Instead of selling the same items year-round at a steady trickle, a timed limited collection creates a concentrated burst of demand. The Valentine's Day cookie collection that opens on February 1st and closes on February 10th will generate more revenue in those ten days than the same products would generate in a month of passive listing. The countdown block makes the deadline tangible and real for every visitor who lands on the page.

Your Gallery block is also your primary conversion tool. Visitors who arrive via a "tag a friend who needs this cake" post are often in an aspirational browsing mode rather than active purchase intent. A well-organised gallery with clearly labelled categories — Custom Cakes, Cookie Boxes, Seasonal Specials — pulls them from browsing into researching, and from researching into ordering. Add captions that name the occasion (birthday, anniversary, baby shower) to help visitors see themselves in your work.

Treat the Appointment block's pickup scheduling as a production planning tool as much as a customer convenience. When you cap pickup slots at the number of orders you can realistically finish, you're also creating a natural production schedule that prevents the Sunday-night panic of realising you have six cakes due Monday morning. Your calendar becomes your capacity plan, and the system enforces it automatically.

Troubleshooting Common Issues