Croff Bakehouse

One of the biggest mistakes I see new cafe owners make?

Skipping the soft opening.

Even on our THIRD store, we’ve spent the last few days finding things that needed fixing before Grand Opening.

Not major issues.

The little operational things that only show up when real customers start walking through the door.

That’s exactly what a soft opening is for.

To test your systems.
To train your team.
To find the problems before your customers do 😭

It got me thinking…

For those who have opened a business before:

👇 Did you do a soft opening?

👇 What went wrong on your Grand Opening?

👇 What would you do differently if you had to do it all again?

After months of planning, building, baking and preparing, we’re finally almost there 🤍

📍 Croff Bakehouse West Leederville

☕ FREE coffee for the first 50 customers
Thursday & Friday

🥐 GRAND OPENING — Saturday

The first 100 customers who make any purchase will receive our limited-edition Matcha Mochi Strawberry Shio Pan 🍓🍵

We seriously can’t wait to welcome you into our new flagship home.

Who’s coming this weekend? 👀

What people see:
✨ new bakery
✨ pretty pastries
✨ shiny new kitchen

What they DON’T see:
😭 forklifts running out of gas
😭 wrong measurements
😭 power trips delaying production
😭 dry stock collapsing everywhere
😭 absolute chaos during move day

So yes… moving a commercial bakery is just as stressful as it sounds 🫠

But after all the problems, sleepless nights and chaos…

seeing our pastries finally bake in the new ovens made everything worth it 🤍

And we’re FINALLY ready for you guys 👀

Our soft opening starts THIS WEEKEND at our new West Leederville location 😭

We seriously cannot wait to show you what we’ve been working on.

We’re currently building our new flagship bakery & production kitchen and the costs honestly add up FAST.

Nobody talks about the reality:
– signing a 5–7 year lease
– risking your life savings
– $15k–20k just for concept designs
– $250k–400k fitouts
– $34k coffee machines
– $20k dishwashers
– and hundreds of thousands spent before selling a single croissant 🫠

This industry can be amazing… but it can also break you if you don’t know your numbers.

Would you still open a cafe after hearing this? 👀

We’re giving away our special Mother’s Day brunch menu to TWO lucky mums this weekend 🤍

To enter just like the post, keep tagging or comment about someone who really deserves this! I will be keeping a lookout in the comments section and reading everyone message!

Available THIS SATURDAY & SUNDAY ONLY at our 131 Barrack Street, Perth store 👀

Menu:
🥐 Crispy Korean Fried Chicken Croffle
🥑 Croissant Swirl with smashed avo, tomato & sous vide egg
🍓 Shokupan French Toast with berries compote & whipped cream cheese

Limited quantities & seating available daily — once sold out, that’s it 😭

If you still haven’t organised Mother’s Day yet… this is your sign.

“We’re closing Saturdays at our Raine Square store after 2.5 years.

Saturday sales: ~$880
Wages: ~$260 (~30% before other costs)
Weekend = ~5% of weekly revenue

Biggest mistakes:
– Opening longer just because of rent
– Not understanding CBD weekend traffic
– Running junior staff → more complaints & bad reviews

More hours ≠ more profit.

Are your slow days actually worth staying open?

“Part 2 — how to prevent fraud on Square (SAVE THIS)

After multiple chargebacks, this is what we changed:

Step 1: Turn on Risk Manager
Square Dashboard → Payments & Invoices → Risk Manager → Get Started → Enrol your location

IMPORTANT: Square DEFAULT settings are NOT enough — set your own rules

Rule 1: 3D Secure (3DS) for all transactions
– Set condition: payment amount > $1
– This forces every order to go through bank authentication (code sent to customer’s phone)
– Most stolen cards fail here

Rule 2: Block mismatched details
– Decline payments if CVV is incorrect
– Decline if billing postcode / address doesn’t match
– Fraudsters usually don’t have full cardholder info

⚠️ This may slightly reduce checkout conversion
BUT protects you from losing both product and money

Since doing this — our chargebacks dropped significantly

Comment below👇 if you know of any other tips!

Business owners — this is happening more than you think.

Online orders → picked up → then disputed.

We thought it was customers scamming…
it’s actually stolen cards.

Using Square made it worse because we didn’t catch it early.

I’ll share how we’re preventing this next.

fyp

Splitting facts here, for those that cares. As a bakery cafe owner, this is how much we make and costs us to run a joint. Where these what you guessed or a lot less than you expected?

Part 3 of Croff 3.0!!

The number of people walking past our new place and asking which bakery we are from. And genuinely never knew of us before. This makes me soo nervous. What if no one comes!! My dream is a bakery with a kitchen. Serving up the best baked goods, unique brunch menu and serving up the best coffee. Whatever happens, this is going to be my dream come true. 🥹

Day in my life running two bakeries!

Running two stores and trying to be there all the time is impossible. I cannot do it without a big team of staff helping keep everything run smoothly everyday. To see how both stores are growing just amazed me everyday. Thank you for walking this journey with me!

Our riskiest $2million bakery investment ever made. This is the beginning to Croff 3.0