Page 57 of Sparrow

And I’m thinking that there’s got to be a better way to do this.

I dump everything into one of the mixers and turn it on, then glance at Allie. “You guys do this every day?”

“Every day, all day,” she confirms. “We start baking in the morning and don’t stop until evening because we’re constantly replacing what we sell out of.”

I frown. “How do you have time for anything else if you’re constantly baking new stuff?”

“We don’t,” she groans. “That’s the problem.”

A problem indeed. I stop the mixer, get three muffin pans, and put papers in each spot to contain the dough. Then Allie walks me through putting the right amount of mix into each spot and handling any overflow. And then...

“What now?’ I ask, the full tins in my hands and my eyes on the ovens. “Put them in the ovens?”

“Oh no,” she laughs. “Those have to wait. Put them on the counter there and I’ll show you how to make something else.”

Okay, that can’t be right.

“You make stuff and then just leave it sitting out?” I ask.

“Have to wait until there’s an oven available,” she answers. “This stuff takes different temperatures, different bake times, different steps, so everything has to be put in separately. But if we make prep it beforehand...”

Her voice fades off and I can tell she’s trying not to point out the problem. But I’ve seen it.

“In theory, you always having something else to put in the oven, so there’s never any down time.”

“Exactly,” she says weakly.

“Except that’s not actually an answer,” I continue. “Because you only have two ovens, and you already have three things waiting to be baked. And if they need different temps, they can’t all go in at the same time.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I thought you said you couldn’t bake.”

I shoot her a smile. “I can’t. But I’m pretty good at engineering, and when I see a problem...”

She slams the bowl she’s holding on the counter and turns to me, her hands on her hips. “Tell me.”

I’m shocked at how quickly she comes around on that point, but I know a twin flame when I see one, and Allie’s probably been thinking for years that there has to be a better way to do things. She’s probably also been deciding for years that she doesn’t want to upset Penny by questioning her methods.

But if an outsider comes in and does it for her, that’s something entirely different.

And when I look at Penny at the front counter explaining to people why she doesn’t have any pastries ready, I think she might be open to changing her process, too. Especially if it means making more money while working less.

After all, Penny’s in her sixties. She doesn’t want to be on her feet all day. She wants to be doing something fun while her bakery runs itself.

And if I can help her do that, I’m in.

“Right,” I say quickly. I move toward Allie so we can keep our voices down. “You say everything needs a different temp and bake time, but is that actually true? Are there things that use the same temperature? Things that could bake together?”

She presses her lips together, thinking, and then starts to light up. “There are. There are a ton of things that actually need the same heat, but I’ve never catalogued them that way. But if we organized things better and started making them in batches...”

“Groups of things that all take the same heat level,” I agree. “So you can still make multiple products but you can bake them at the same time rather than having dough sitting out on the counters pre-prepared and waiting.”

“Which will also mean we don’t have anything spoiling while it waits,” she says, picking up the thread. “Right now we lose entire batches of cookies and cakes if they have to sit too long. And that puts us even further behind.”

I grab a notebook and pencil from a table in the corner and start making notes. “Right, but if we organize things carefully, put things into groups, we can prepare everything at once and then do a big bake for that specific... genre.”

“Genre?” she asks with a giggle.

I shoot her a look. “You know exactly what I mean.”