Custom cake order intake for bakers

The idea

A custom cake is a $150 to $500 product specified entirely through an Instagram DM thread, and the details that get lost in that thread are exactly the ones that torch the margin: wrong pickup date, forgotten nut allergy, an inscription agreed at 11pm and never written down, and no deposit, so a no-show costs a full day of work plus ingredients.

The wedge is that bakers don’t need e-commerce, they need structured intake with two constraints a Shopify form can’t express: date-level capacity (three cakes a weekend, full is full) and a deposit gate before a slot is truly booked. That plus a production calendar is the entire operational life of a cottage bakery.

Who pays

The buyer is the cottage-license home baker doing 2 to 10 custom cakes a week, found in enormous numbers in cake-decorating Facebook groups and on Instagram. At $19/mo, one prevented no-show or one saved remake pays for months. Distribution is the form itself: every order form footer links back, and bakers copy tools they see other bakers using.

MVP scope

• Configurable public order form with required detail and allergy fields
• Pickup calendar that blocks dates already at capacity
• Approve-then-deposit flow with Stripe Checkout and 48-hour expiry
• Weekly production calendar with pickup slots, balances, and allergy flags
• Reference photo uploads attached to each order
• Skip for v1: delivery and shipping, quoting or price calculators, customer accounts, marketing emails, multi-baker teams

Build CakeSlip, an order intake tool for home bakers selling custom cakes. Stack: Next.js App Router, Supabase (Postgres, storage, magic-link auth), Stripe Checkout for deposits.

Core flow: the baker configures their menu (sizes, flavours, fillings, prices) and a weekly capacity, for example three cakes per pickup day. They get one public link-in-bio order form. A customer picks a pickup date from a calendar that only shows dates with remaining capacity, then completes required fields: size, flavour, filling, inscription text, allergies, reference photo upload, and phone number. Submitting creates a pending order; the baker reviews it, adjusts the price if needed, and approves, which emails the customer a Stripe Checkout link for a 50 percent deposit. Unpaid orders auto-expire after 48 hours and release the capacity slot.

Pages: public order form, orders board (pending, awaiting deposit, confirmed, completed), weekly production calendar showing each order's pickup slot, remaining balance, and allergy flags, menu and capacity settings, billing.

Implementation details: decrement capacity at approval, not submission, so tyre-kickers never block a date; store reference photos in Supabase storage and show them full-size on the production calendar card.

Pricing: $19/mo flat via Stripe Checkout, 14-day trial.