Florence Mae Maglanoc is used to early starts. As a child, she spent Saturday mornings helping her mother make ‘pandesal’, a traditional Filipino bread bun, for the family. Today, she rises at 3 am and heads to Panadera, her London bakery, to get started on the first batch of pandesal for a busy day of trading.
Panadera has carved out a distinctive niche by reinventing Filipino baking traditions for London’s discerning foodies. The innovative and ever-changing menu includes pandesal sandwiches and variations of pandesals with sweet fillings, as well as speciality coffees infused with Asian flavours. Located in fashionable Marylebone, just around the corner from Selfridges, the bakery serves a steady stream of shoppers craving its fun and colourful delicacies.
The challenge: keeping up with dynamic demand
Since opening in 2024, the bakery has grown increasingly popular and frequently sells out of sought-after items. People tend to order a sandwich or two but then add a box of everything else because they’re picking up for their family,” says Maglanoc. This demand often leaves customers who come in after them frustrated. “You don’t really want to sell out six hours before your closing time,” adds operations manager Adrian Guerrero Garces.
Another challenge Panadera faces is that its best-selling items can change from season to season, and even from day to day. In the beginning, this caught Maglanoc off-guard: “I thought it was very wild – why wouldn’t it be the same thing every day?” Without accurate, real-time data, she and her team struggled to understand and predict customer behaviour in order to make quick production decisions.
The solution: data-driven decision making
Panadera has recently moved to the Square Point of Sale (POS) system, which allows the team to process payments efficiently, closely monitor daily performance, and streamline operations.
An intuitive system for staff efficiency
“The interface is really easy to use,” says Garces. “It’s really intuitive. It doesn’t require much training.” The Square POS allows new Panadera staff to get up to speed quickly, which is a crucial advantage in the fast-paced hospitality industry.
Seamless integration across business systems
Maglanoc has used a lot of POS systems, and she particularly values Square’s integration capabilities. “Finding a POS that can talk to the rest of our ecosystem is really important,” she says. “It makes our job a lot easier.”
Actionable insights for daily operations
The team relies on the daily reports in their Square Dashboard for making business decisions. “It tells me all the things I need to know: top-selling products, what made the most money, what we need to push tomorrow,” Garces says, adding that this insight saves them approximately an hour per day compared to their previous system. And with the Square Dashboard app on their phones, they can check their essential metrics anywhere, anytime.
Finding a POS that can talk to the rest of our ecosystem is really important. It makes our job a lot easier.”
Mae Maglanoc → owner of Panadera
Impact: dramatic growth and a clear business vision
Panadera has seen immediate benefits since switching to Square. Within just a few weeks, Maglanoc says that production increased by 50%. It’s also helped them to identify and troubleshoot potential quality issues. “When I see the sales at the end of the day, if a product that should be performing highly doesn’t [perform], I know there’s something wrong,” she says.
Square has also helped to shape Maglanoc’s vision for the future. “The great thing about Square is the easy access to reporting that allows us to make daily changes and ultimately carve out that path of how we want to grow,” she explains.
This has ultimately allowed her update the business plan with an expanded vision for the business. “I can imagine a wholesale version of Panadera now,” Maglanoc says, explaining that she was previously uncertain of demand, but now that she’s having to limit in-store purchases to avoid selling out, she feels more confident. To accommodate bulk orders, Panadera is preparing to take advantage of Square Online. “We’re launching online food orders on the website via Square so customers can pre-order for their family for Christmas,” Maglanoc says.
Ultimately, Square supports Maglanoc to run an operation that can keep up with Panadera customers’ ever-changing demands. “Square makes communication more efficient between me and my team,” she says. “Having instant information come through on my phone so I can discuss it with the team puts us at an advantage to be able to make quick decisions – and the correct decisions as well.”
