Burleigh Baker: “Smooth payment processing, similar to PayPal”
“It gave us the structure and tools to scale our wholesale business with greater efficiency and accuracy.”
- Geoff Dance, Founder, Burleigh Baker
Geoff Dance, co-founder and Director of Burleigh Baker, is an agricultural economist who traded the corporate boardrooms of New York for a return to Australia, so he could revive the lost art of artisan bread.
After building one of Australia's largest privately owned grain trading companies, Geoff embarked on a different kind of journey: following his passion for artisan bread and the long-standing baking techniques found in Paris, rural France, and Italy.
Established in 2014, Burleigh Baker was born from the philosophy of slow baking, naturally and without compromise.
In a market flooded with $1 supermarket loaves, Burleigh Baker uses organic and sustainable flour, sea salt, and a 25-year-old starter culture. They introduced long lacto-fermentation techniques to create bread that's as nourishing as it is delicious.
It hasn't been without challenges: Queensland's hot, humid climate and a vanished artisan baking culture meant building state-of-the-art fermentation rooms and training every staff member from scratch. But their commitment has paid off, and today Burleigh Baker employs over 50 staff, have expanded into pastries, pasta, and cake flour, and have grown over 30% annually.
Read on to learn about Burleigh Baker’s journey and how Ordermentum has helped support their remarkable growth.
Why do your venue customers love Burleigh Baker?
Our wholesale customers love Burleigh Baker because we align with their values, and they know they're getting truly handcrafted, honest bread, made with care, skill, and integrity. That commitment to quality means they can serve their customers bread that not only tastes better but supports health and digestion too.
We really believe in a personal touch and whenever a venue connects with us, we always organise a time to meet or run them through our business and processes.
Relationships are incredibly important and we foster ours.
What are the main challenges you've had with scaling and growing your business?
Artisan baking is incredibly labour-intensive and relies on skilled tradespeople, yet sourcing such talent locally is increasingly difficult. We operate in a subtropical climate that's far from ideal for sourdough fermentation, requiring extensive investment in fermentation rooms and ongoing staff training.
Moreover, our strict commitment to gut health, clean ingredients, and traditional fermentation, avoiding modern yeasts, sugar, additives, and shortcuts, creates added complexity.
Balancing innovation and quality while scaling in a competitive industrial food market remains one of our biggest challenges.
Why did you first start using Ordermentum?
The idea to adopt Ordermentum came from John, a young French entrepreneur and brother to our current CEO, Max. John had been closely involved with Burleigh Baker since 2017–2018, supporting early wholesale deliveries and working alongside Geoff in the bakery.
While building his own delivery business, he saw that Ordermentum was designed to simplify wholesale ordering and recognised the potential for Burleigh Baker as well.
We were rapidly growing and still relying on manual paper systems prone to errors and delays. When we implemented Ordermentum, it gave us the structure and tools to scale our wholesale business with greater efficiency and accuracy.
How has your ordering admin improved?
As an artisan bakery with a growing list of wholesale customers, implementing Ordermentum has completely transformed the way we manage our orders.
Before using the platform, we were relying on a mix of texts, emails, and phone calls which often led to confusion, missed items, and a lot of unnecessary admin. It was difficult to keep track of orders, especially during peak times when our focus needed to be on baking and production.
What other improvements have you seen in your operations?
Order history and reporting has been huge.
Both our team and our customers benefit from full visibility into past orders, simplifying admin, reordering, and forecasting. The system has improved order accuracy, reduced administrative labour, and allowed for better day-to-day management of our wholesale business.
What has your experience with Payments been?
The platform allows for smooth payment processing, similar to PayPal, helping reduce payment delays and the risk of defaults from wholesale clients.
Payments through Ordermentum have taken a huge load off our admin. We no longer have to chase invoices, follow up with venues, or worry about delayed payments, everything is automated.
Customers are prompted to pay when they order, and many have moved to pre-payment or auto-payment, which means cash flow is more consistent and predictable. It also saves time on our end.
Less time spent reconciling accounts or processing manual payments means more time focusing on baking and growing the business.
We’ve found the integration with our accounting system MYOB has made end-of-month reporting so much smoother. Overall, it's made the finance side of things far more efficient and stress-free.
What's a feature you can't live without?
Standing orders have been very helpful with automating orders and having fewer customers ordering late or forgetting to order.
What would you say to another supplier considering using Ordermentum?
Ordermentum has brought structure and simplicity to our process. We can easily manage changes to products, set minimum order amounts, and avoid the back-and-forth that used to slow us down.
If a supplier is wanting to make their business more efficient and reduce admin time we would highly recommend it.
Ordermentum has grown supplier businesses all over the country and we want to help you.
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At a glance
- SUPPLIER Burleigh Baker
- LOCATIONVarious locations, QLD
- INDUSTRYBakery
