How much should you bake for a market stall?

Bake too little and you're packed up by eleven with customers walking away. Bake too much and you're driving home with forty brownies and a feeling in your stomach. Every market trader is guessing a bit, but you can make it a much better guess.

Start by writing down what you sold

The single most useful thing you can do is record, after every market, how many of each item you took and how many you brought home. Add the weather and anything unusual (a school holiday, a road closure, a rival stall). After six or eight markets you'll have something much better than memory.

Plan for a sell-out time, not zero leftovers

Aim to sell out of each item a little before the end, say in the last hour. If you never sell out, you're baking too much. If you sell out by mid-morning every week, you're turning customers away and should bake more. A simple rule many traders use:

• Sold out more than an hour early: bake 10 to 20% more next time.
• Sold out in the last hour: about right.
• More than 15% left over: bake 10 to 20% less.

Adjust for the things you know

• Weather. Heavy rain can cut footfall sharply at outdoor markets. Plan a smaller bake when the forecast is bad.
• Season. Summer markets and the run-up to Christmas are usually busier. January is quiet almost everywhere.
• Events. A festival nearby, bank holidays or school holidays all change who turns up.
• Pre-orders. Bake these on top of your stall stock, not out of it.

Split your range into staples and specials

Your staples (the things regulars come back for) are the most predictable, so bake those closest to your record. Specials are harder to predict, so bake fewer and let them sell out: it makes them feel special, and leftover specials are the ones that go to waste.

Have a plan for what's left

Some leftovers are inevitable. Decide in advance what happens to them: a discount in the last half hour, a next-day shelf, freezing what freezes well (most cookie doughs and many cakes), or a local food-sharing app. Products that keep, like brownies and biscuits, can be counted towards next week's stock.

Turn it into a production plan

Once you know how many of each item to take, scale each recipe, add up the ingredients and buy what you need. A regular market can be set up as a repeat order, so the same quantities appear on your plan every week, ready to tweak.

MakrPrep does this: save your usual market as a repeat order, create it for each date with one click, change the numbers for the weather, and the Production plan and Shopping list update. Anything you make extra of goes into made stock, ready for the next order. See also stopping ingredients running out mid-batch.