Why nearly 400 Coop sellers picked one pickup day a week

The hardest part of selling from your kitchen usually isn't the baking. It's the logistics. Somebody texts on Tuesday asking if you have anything left, somebody else wants Thursday evening, and you spend your week juggling a dozen little arrangements instead of making things.

A lot of Coop sellers solved this the same way. They picked one day a week for pickup, opened orders ahead of it, and closed them with enough time to make everything. We call it a weekly pickup, and as of this week 390 shops on Coop have one switched on. I pulled the numbers because I wanted to know what sellers actually choose when nobody tells them what to do.

The days sellers pick

Here's how those 390 shops split by pickup day.

Friday and Saturday are almost three quarters of it, which makes sense. Those are the days people are already out running errands and stocking up for the weekend. Sunday is a solid third place.

The midweek shops are the interesting ones to me. There are 57 of them, and if everyone around you is doing Saturday, a Wednesday pickup is a quiet lane. Buyers who miss the weekend rush have somewhere to go.

(Quick note on Friday. Coop suggests it when you first set up, so some of that 35% is people leaving the starting choice alone. Saturday is the one sellers had to go and pick on purpose, and it's still the most popular.)

When they close orders

The other choice is the cutoff. This is the one that protects your week. Here's how many days before pickup shops stop taking orders.

More than half close two days ahead, which gives you a full day to shop for ingredients and a full day to bake. Only 6% close the same day, which leaves no breathing room if a big order comes in.

If you're starting out, close two days ahead. You can always tighten it later once you know how fast you work. The typical pickup window is about five hours, long enough that nobody has to rearrange their afternoon.

Why it works for sellers

You make everything once. Instead of baking whenever a message comes in, you know the total on the day orders close and you bake it in one go.

You set a limit. On each listing you say how many you can make per pickup (it starts at 10 and you can change it). When it's full, it's full, and nobody gets a "sorry, sold out" message after the fact.

You get paid on a schedule. Buyers' cards are charged when orders close, so you're baking against real orders. It also means the money question is settled before you preheat the oven. (Here's exactly what lands in your bank, including the card processing estimate.)

And your buyers learn the rhythm. After two or three weeks they just know. "Orders close Wednesday, pickup Saturday." That's a lot fewer messages to answer.

Why it works for buyers

If you're on the buying side, a weekly pickup is the easiest kind of local shopping there is. You see what's coming, you order ahead, you show up at a set time, and what you get is fresh. Nobody has to guess whether the eggs are still there. Browse what's for sale near you and look for shops with a pickup day on their page.

Setting yours up

It takes a few minutes. In the app, go to the Sell tab, then Week, and tap "Set a weekly pickup." You choose the day orders open, the day they close, the pickup day and the hours. When you save, Coop offers to move your existing listings onto it, each with its own weekly limit. The full walkthrough is here, and this one covers putting a single listing on your weekly pickup.

If you haven't opened a storefront yet, that takes about five minutes and it's free. Pick a day, pick a cutoff, and let the orders come to you.

Cole Coleman, founder of Coop