Baking Up Something Sweet: KC’s McLain’s Bakery Installs Avid Solution
By Shelby Fuchs, Marketing Communications Specialist at Avid Communications
If you live in the Kansas City metro, you’ve likely visited or heard of McLain’s Bakery located in the Waldo district.
The McLain family opened the bakery in 1945, primarily focusing on danishes and a variety of other pastries. In 2014, Mollie Lothman’s family bought McLain’s. The family has opened two new locations – McLain’s Market in Overland Park and recently Lawrence. Both market locations offer a lunch menu. In addition, the family has expanded the bakery menu to include coffee drinks, breakfast sandwiches, and has placed a greater emphasis on their cake catering. With a greater demand for cake catering, the need for dependable telecommunication equipment also became apparent to the owners.
Enter Avid.
Prior to fulfilling a great number of catering orders and expanding the business, Mollie said dependable phones weren’t a critical aspect for their business to function well. Since it wasn’t mission critical, Mollie and her family chose to purchase phones from an office supply retailer. However, they soon discovered that these phones weren’t going to cut it if they planned to keep up with their increasingly busy catering schedule.
Mollie’s brother had received calls from Avid Account Executive, Brad Vickroy, and one day elected to set up a meeting to discuss what their business needs would be. Mollie stated that Avid originally stood out to them because we’re a Kansas City based provider. She liked the idea of “Local supporting local”. More than that though, what really impressed Mollie was that Brad was willing to come out and personally meet with them about what their options would be and examine what would be best for the space they are in.
Useful Features
McLain’s uses a standard desk phone along with our cordless models that allow them to be mobile around their bakery/cafes. The service that Avid has provided to the local bakery has allowed them to focus on their passion of baking up treats for the KC community. Mollie no longer has to take the time to make her own Auto Attendant greetings for changing hours or holiday messages. She simply sends a script to Avid for what she wants. This made managing the busy holiday season easier.
The ability to transfer calls between shops has also been a well utilized feature for McLain’s. Prior to installing Avid, the bakery would have to give the caller the phone number for the bakery they needed to be in contact with. You can imagine how confusing it was for the customer. Today, if someone calls in, McLain’s can quickly transfer the customer seamlessly.
Avid has enjoyed working with the McLain’s team, and we look forward to being part of their growing business… even though our waistlines will likely grow with it!
