How to take Thanksgiving pie and roll pre-orders from your home kitchen

Thanksgiving is the one weekend where people who never order from a home baker suddenly want a home baker. Nobody wants to wing the pumpkin pie, and nobody wants to be the person who showed up with a grocery store crust (no judgment, but still).

I run Coop, and I spend a lot of time looking at what sellers list and what buyers search for. Here's what stood out this month. As of October 1, there were 114 Thanksgiving-related listings from 107 sellers on Coop nationwide, things like pecan pie, dinner rolls, and sourdough dinner rolls. That's a lot of bakers getting ready! Buyers are already typing things like "thanksgiving pie orders near me" into search, so the demand is warming up right now, not in mid November.

Thanksgiving is November 26 this year. Here's how I'd plan it if I were baking from home.

Decide your cap before you open

The biggest Thanksgiving mistake is taking every order that comes in. Your oven holds what it holds, and you only get one Wednesday.

Do the math backwards from your busiest bake day:

That cushion is for the neighbor who texts you Tuesday night. Say yes to her, if you can!

Coop lets you say how much you have and when, so buyers see a real number instead of an open-ended "order whatever." Here's the walkthrough: say how much you have and when.

Keep the menu small

Three items beats eight. A pumpkin pie, a pecan pie, and a dozen dinner rolls is a menu a buyer can understand in five seconds. Every extra flavor is another shopping list and another thing that can go wrong at 11 p.m. Wednesday.

A short menu also makes your storefront easier to read. If you haven't set yours up yet, start with publishing your first listing.

Close orders earlier than feels necessary

I'd stop taking orders about a week before Thanksgiving. That gives you time to buy ingredients in one trip (before the store runs out of canned pumpkin), and it keeps the last few days for baking instead of answering messages.

Say the cutoff in the listing itself. Buyers respect a date when it's written down.

Think about payment timing

This one is easy to miss. If a buyer pays by card on a made-to-order item, the card is held first and charged when you mark the order ready. That hold has a limit of 7 days, so an order placed three weeks early can run into it. We explain how it works here: made-to-order card holds.

For early orders, the easy fix is to let buyers pay cash at pickup, or to open your order window closer to the holiday so most orders land inside the hold. Either way, tell people how they'll pay before they order.

Make pickup boring

Pick one pickup window (or two) and stick to it. Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning works for a lot of bakers, and it keeps pies fresh without a Thursday morning scramble. Set it once and buyers can plan around it. Here's how: set a pickup rhythm. And if you'd rather deliver, pickup or delivery walks through the options.

Tell people you're open

Orders don't come from a listing nobody sees. Share your shop with your neighborhood group, your church, your coworkers. One link, one message, done.

If you want to see who else is baking near you, the Thanksgiving baking page for Dallas is a good example. In St. Louis, where we had the most Thanksgiving listings on October 1, the pies page shows what buyers can already order.

A quick note on the rules

Selling baked goods from home comes with rules that vary by state, including labels and what you're allowed to sell. Check yours before you add something new to the menu. We keep plain-English guides for Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check your state or county rules before you sell.

Ready to open a storefront?

If you've been thinking about it, this is a great season to start. Open your storefront on Coop and get your Thanksgiving menu up while buyers are still planning.

Cole Coleman, founder of Coop