--- title: How to take holiday orders ahead of time without selling more than you can bake date: 2026-11-12 updated: 2026-11-12 canonical: "https://oneshopfront.com/blog/order-ahead-holiday-pies-cookies-pickup-slots" --- Customers want to order holiday pies and cookies early for a set day. Here's how stock counts, lead times, a daily cutoff and pickup slot limits keep orders within what you can bake. Author: Marketing Category: For shop owners Tags: pickup, order ahead, holiday, bakery, lead time, pies, cookies, stock tracking, daily cutoff, time slots ![How to take holiday orders ahead of time without selling more than you can bake](https://oneshopfront.com/storage/platform/posts/DF68by7AgdwQioHPOYFdi99JBPY9e2zpJ9UD3Si0.jpg) Every December, small bakeries run into the same problem. Customers want to order their pies and cookies early, for a set day, and the oven can only hold so much. If orders come in by phone, email, and direct messages, it's easy to promise 90 pies when you can bake 60, or to have 40 people show up at the same hour. Your order page can handle the limits for you. When customers order ahead on your own shop, they pick a pickup or delivery date at checkout, and they can only pick what you still have room for. When a product or a time is full, checkout stops offering it. ## People already look for holiday baking online Holiday baking gets searched. About 880 people a month in Canada search for "christmas cookie box", and about 50 people a month search for Christmas cookies in Calgary (Serpstat, November 2026). ## What does ordering ahead mean on your shop? Ordering ahead means the customer buys now and picks a later day to collect the order or have it delivered. They pay for the whole order at checkout, and you bake it for the day they chose. You control how far ahead they can order, how much notice you need, and how many orders fit in each time. Four settings do most of the work: - **Stock tracking.** You set how many of a product you have for sale. When the count reaches 0, customers can't order it. - **Lead time for each product.** You set how many days of notice a product needs. Customers can only pick pickup or delivery dates that give you that notice. - **A daily cutoff.** You set a time of day, like 2 PM. An order placed after the cutoff can't choose the next day. - **Time slots with capacities.** Time slots are optional. If you use them, you set how many orders each slot can take on a date. A full slot drops off checkout, so the next customer picks another time. You can also set how many days ahead customers can book. ## A fictional example: a small bakery in Okotoks The shop in this example is made up. It is not a OneShopFront customer, and the numbers are only there to show the setup. Picture a small bakery in Okotoks that sells pies and Christmas cookies. Last year, she took holiday orders on paper and by phone. She ended up with more pie orders than she could bake, and most customers wanted the same Saturday morning pickup. This year, she sets up holiday ordering on her own shop. First, she adds each item as its own product. "Apple pie", "Pumpkin pie", and "Tourtière" are separate products. "Decorated sugar cookies, one dozen" is a product too, so each dozen counts as one item. Second, she turns on stock tracking and sets a count on each product. She can bake 60 apple pies for the season, so she sets apple pie to 60. When 60 have sold, customers can't order more. The count is a total for the season, not a count for each day, so she spreads the baking across the week with time slots. Third, she sets lead times. Pies need two days of notice, and the cookies need three, because she decorates them by hand. Customers see the notice on the product page and in the cart. If a cart holds a pie and a dozen cookies, checkout uses the longer notice and offers only dates that give her three days. Fourth, she sets a daily cutoff of 2 PM, so a 4 PM order can't ask for pickup the next morning. She also lets customers book up to 45 days ahead. Fifth, she uses hourly pickup time slots for December 19 to 23 and limits each slot to 12 orders. When the 10 AM slot on December 23 has 12 orders, it drops off checkout. The next customer sees 11 AM and later instead. Sixth, she turns on the cutoff banner, an optional add-on that's off until a shop turns it on. It counts down to her last order time above the header. When it reaches zero, it hides, or it shows an After message she writes, like "Holiday orders are closed. Thank you!" The banner only counts down. It never blocks orders, so she also turns the holiday products off after her last order day. Customers pay in full at checkout, by card through Stripe or Helcim, or by Interac e-Transfer, which she confirms on the order. When a pickup order is packed, she marks it ready, and the customer gets an email with the pickup place and time window. On December 23, the pies on her shelf match the orders on her list, and pickups are spread across the day. ## A second fictional example: cookie dozens for pickup This shop is also made up. Picture a home baker in Spokane, Washington, who sells Christmas cookie dozens for customer pickup. She adds three products: "Gingerbread, one dozen", "Shortbread, one dozen", and "Mixed holiday dozen". Each has its own stock count, based on how many dozens she can bake in December. She sets a lead time of two days on each one. She offers customer pickup. Time slots are optional. She uses hourly pickup slots with a limit of 8 orders per slot, because that's how many boxes she can pack in an hour. When a slot fills, customers pick the next one. ## What should you decide before you open holiday orders? Answer these questions before you turn anything on: - **How many of each item can you make?** Use that number as your stock count. Leave some room for mistakes. - **How much notice does each item need?** Set a longer lead time for anything decorated or made to order. - **How many orders fit in one hour?** Use that number as your slot capacity, if you use time slots. - **When is your last order day?** Write it on your product pages, and set the cutoff banner to count down to it if you want one. - **What happens after the last day?** Turn the holiday products off, or set their stock to 0. Our post on [holiday order cutoff dates](https://oneshopfront.com/blog/holiday-order-cutoff-dates-pickup-delivery-shipping) covers how to pick your last order days for pickup, local delivery, and shipping. If you take custom orders, the [Airdrie bakery custom cake orders](https://oneshopfront.com/blog/airdrie-bakery-custom-cake-orders) post shows how one fictional baker uses lead times for cakes. For delivery areas outside town, see [Okotoks delivery](https://oneshopfront.com/blog/okotoks-delivery-area-pickup-shipping). ## What else comes with a OneShopFront shop? - Your own shop with your products, photos, and prices - [Pickup with time slots](https://oneshopfront.com/pickup) and [local delivery](https://oneshopfront.com/local-delivery) - Card payments with Stripe or Helcim, and Interac e-Transfer for shops in Canada - Order emails for you and your customer Plans are on the [pricing page](https://oneshopfront.com/pricing). Starter is $20 CAD a month or $200 a year, and Growth is $50 CAD a month or $500 a year. A platform fee, currently 1% per sale, applies to the merchandise subtotal after discounts, plus your payment processor's fee. ## Set your limits before the December rush Add your holiday products now, set the stock counts and lead times, and place one test order. Then you'll know what customers see before the busy weeks start. To set up your shop, [register at oneshopfront.com/register](https://oneshopfront.com/register). No card needed to sign up.