How a three-shop bakery got its Saturday mornings back
Harbor Bakery bakes for three neighborhoods in Portland. Their inbox was eating the weekend, so they switched on a support agent that knows every order and every pickup time.
Harbor Bakery
Food & retail
Support agent
Live since March 2025
The problem
Every Saturday, Rosa opened her laptop to about 60 emails. Most asked the same few things, and the ones that really needed her got buried.
Inbox
Before the agent
Dana K.
Is my cake ready for 11?
Marco P.
Can I move my pickup to 3 PM?
June L.
Anything gluten-free today?
Ellie R.
My order arrived damaged
Needs a person
Sam W.
Is my cake ready yet?
Priya & Tom
Wedding cake for 120 in June?
Needs a person
Leo M.
Can I pick up at the Alberta shop?
+ dozens more like these
The same questions, all day
Is my cake ready, can I move my pickup, do you have anything gluten-free. Each one meant looking up an order by hand.
Canned replies didn't help
Customers could tell, and someone still had to open Shopify to answer properly.
The urgent ones got buried
A damaged order or a wedding request could sit in the pile until Monday.
How it runs
One support agent with Rosa's rules. Here's how it handles a typical email, step by step.
Before and after
Three parts of the week, side by side: how they ran before the agent, and how they run now.
In the owner’s words
What the owner told us a few months in, with the two numbers that changed most.
Rosa Lin
Owner, Harbor Bakery
“Saturdays used to start with 60 emails. Now I open my laptop to three that actually need me, and I can see exactly what Bloop said to everyone else.”
71%
of emails answered by Bloop
29 hrs
back each week
Next story
Another small team, another week that got lighter.
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