BlogSeasonal · 5 min read
Holiday Cookie Box Pre-Orders: A Checklist for Home Bakers
A holiday cookie box is a pre-order business in miniature. Nine decisions to make before you post it, from box sizes and allergens to pickup days.
Every December, home bakers across Ontario rediscover the same arithmetic. A dozen kinds of cookie, three box sizes, two weekends of pickup and one oven. The orders arrive in a rush, and the bakers who planned in November are the ones still smiling on the twentieth.
A cookie box is the friendliest way to learn pre-orders, because the whole thing is decided in advance: what is in it, how many you will make and when it is collected. Here is the checklist, in the order the decisions come.
General information, not legal advice
1. One box, two sizes, no substitutions
The more choices you offer, the more boxes you pack by hand at midnight.
Fix the assortment and offer it in a small and a large. Every custom request is a separate box with a separate label and a separate chance of a mistake. If you want variety, make it a second fixed box, such as a nut-free one, and leave it there.
2. A number written down before the first order
Decide how many boxes exist before anyone asks for one.
Work out what your oven and your evenings can produce, then set the limit lower than that. Dough can be made ahead, but baking, cooling and packing all happen in the same few days. A baker who caps at forty boxes and sells forty has a better December than one who accepts seventy.
3. An order deadline with shopping after it
Butter is bought once, and only after you know how many boxes you are making.
Close orders a few days before each pickup day, and shop the morning after. You will buy exactly what the orders need, which is the difference between a profitable season and a freezer full of spare dough.
4. Two pickup days, in windows
Holiday weekends are busy for your customers too, so give them a choice and a time.
Offer two pickup days and a few windows on each. Ask customers to choose when they order. You will be able to stagger the baking so each batch is fresh for its day, and the doorbell will ring on a schedule you set.
5. Allergens on the label, every box
A cookie box travels: it is given to a teacher, a neighbour, an office.
The person who eats your cookies is often not the person who ordered them, so the label has to speak for you. List the ingredients and name the allergens plainly. Health Canada's priority allergens include eggs, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and triticale, soy and sesame seeds, most of which are in a typical cookie box.
If your kitchen also handles nuts, say so, even on a nut-free box. An honest may contain line is a kindness.
6. Cookies that are still good on day five
Choose the assortment for how it keeps, not only for how it looks.
Shortbread, gingerbread and biscotti hold well. Anything filled with cream or iced with something that needs the fridge does not belong in a box that will sit under a tree. There is a rules reason too: Ontario treats most baked goods with no custard, and cakes with icing that does not need refrigeration, as low-risk foods, which keeps a cookie box on the simpler side of the requirements.
7. Payment with the order
A reserved box that is never paid for is a box someone else wanted.
Take payment when the order is placed, by card or e-Transfer, and confirm the box only when the money is in. In December, an unpaid reservation is not a small problem: you have turned away another customer to hold it.
8. A photograph of the actual box
People buy the box they can see.
Bake one full box early and photograph it by a window: open, from above, with the lid beside it. Then photograph each cookie once. Those few pictures will carry the whole campaign, from the first post to the last reminder.
9. Three announcements, not one
Most of your customers will miss the first post.
Announce when orders open, remind people at the halfway point with the number of boxes left, and post a last call the day before the deadline. Use the same link each time. Once the boxes are gone, say so, and offer to tell people when the next bake opens.
A caption you can adapt
Holiday cookie boxes are open! Small (12 cookies) $28 · Large (24 cookies) $52 Six kinds: shortbread, gingerbread, chocolate crinkle, linzer, biscotti, brown butter pecan Pickup: Saturday December 12 or Saturday December 19, in the window you choose Orders close Wednesday at 6 pm for each Saturday. 40 boxes per weekend. Contains wheat, milk, eggs and tree nuts. Order at the link in my bio.
Questions people ask
When should I open holiday cookie box orders?
Early enough to announce three times before your first deadline. Opening in mid to late November for December pickup days leaves time for a reminder and a last call.
Do I need to list allergens on a cookie box?
List your ingredients and name the allergens clearly on every box, since boxes are often given to someone else. Health Canada's priority allergens include eggs, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy and sesame seeds. Ask your public health unit what labelling it expects from a home-based business.
Are cookies a low-risk food in Ontario?
Cookies are among the province's own examples of low-risk foods, along with most baked goods that contain no custard. A home business that prepares only low-risk foods is exempt from some requirements, but it must still notify its public health unit and is still inspected.
How can Dish.ly help with holiday pre-orders?
A Dish.ly order page lets you list each box with a photo, set how many you will make, close orders at your deadline for each pickup day and offer pickup windows. Customers pay by card or Interac e-Transfer when they order, and you get a prep list that adds up what to bake.
THIS SEASON'S ORDERS
Open your cookie box orders with one link
Put your boxes on a Dish.ly order page, cap the number and let the deadline close itself. There is no monthly fee.
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