Leftover

Leftover tells a bakery with one oven how many sourdough, cinnamon buns and sausage rolls to bake tomorrow — so fewer of them go in the bin at four.

At closing you type in what is left on the shelf. In the morning it gives you a number for each thing, based on the weekday, the weather and the last six weeks. That is all it does, and it does it on the phone you already have.

Try it for a month

Floury hands shaping a ball of dough on a wooden counter. A café owner in a plaid shirt and apron checking a tablet at the wooden counter.

At closing

about a minute

Count what is left and tap the numbers in. Three sourdough, no buns, eleven sausage rolls. Leftover remembers that it rained and that the school was on half-term.

A smiling woman with red hair using a laptop at a table in a café with a neon sign.

At six in the morning

before the oven is hot

One list: bake 14 sourdough, 30 buns, 22 rolls. If a number is very different from yesterday, it says why — a bank holiday, a hot day, the market in the square.

Vegetables, eggs and jars of ingredients laid out on a wooden table.

At the end of the month

one page

What you threw away, in loaves and in pounds, next to the same month last year. Most bakeries throw away a third less by the second month.

A woman in a burgundy top smiling at her laptop at a small desk.

Built in a bakery, not in an office.

Leftover started as a notebook on the flour bin at a two-person bakery in a market town, and a spreadsheet that got too long. The numbers in it are the same numbers a good baker keeps in her head — written down, so she can take a holiday.

A smiling man with glasses giving a thumbs up at a laptop in a café full of plants.
Hands typing on a laptop on a round wooden café table beside a latte.

Before you sign up

The one daily job

Counting what is left at closing. If you skip a day it guesses, and says it guessed.

What it will not do

Stock of flour, staff rotas, the till. It is only about what goes in the oven tomorrow.

What it costs

£8 a month, the first month free. No card to start, and one button to leave with all your numbers.

A glass of coffee beside a laptop on a dark café table. A man in a cap and flannel shirt drinking coffee at a laptop in a sunny café. A pastry on a plate next to someone typing on a laptop in a dim café.