When to Automate vs Stay Handmade: Finding the Right Balance for Growth

Your jam recipe made you famous, but hand-stirring 200 jars is breaking your back. Where do you draw the line between efficiency and authenticity?

Always Keep Human:

• Recipe development and taste testing

• Final quality checks and packaging touches

• Customer service and relationship building

• The "special touches" that make your brand unique

Smart Places to Automate:

• Inventory tracking (apps like Cin7 or inFlow handle the boring stuff)

• Order processing (Shopify can automatically send confirmations and tracking)

• Social media scheduling (Buffer posts your content while you're cooking)

• Basic customer emails (welcome messages, shipping updates)

The Golden Rule: Automate the tasks that don't touch your product or customer relationships directly. If a customer would notice the difference, keep it handmade.

Smart automation gives you more time to perfect recipes and build relationships! The things that actually matter.

Start Small Test: Pick one administrative task that takes you 30 minutes daily. Automate that first. If it saves time without hurting quality, automate the next one.