The challenge: A baker's passion project suddenly needed a schedule.
Gusto Bread was never a business plan. It was Arturo's curiosity, and the bread kept finding more people. "The place that we're at is not what we imagined at first," Anna says. "As that grew, it just needed more support, and so that's when he started hiring some more folks and I got more and more involved."
Arturo is the creative side, focused on recipes and the bread itself. So the business side landed with Anna. When they started looking for a storefront, she took on what she calls "serious things that I don't really feel capable of." Leases. Budgets. And soon, a team.
That team needed a schedule, and Anna had never built one. She'd never scheduled people or used a scheduling app. The bakery's hours didn't make it simpler. Bakers start as early as 4am, long before most people want to answer a question by text.
Then there were the rules. California's break and overtime laws are "a lot to learn," Anna says, "and it's important to be compliant."
Gusto Bread was turning into a real employer. Anna needed a way to run it that she could learn fast and, one day, hand off.
“We were going to look in totally different neighborhoods just because we were like, 'We don't know what we can afford. We're so new to this.'”
— Anna Saltino, co-owner of Gusto Bread
The solution: One monthly template, shift notes at clock in, and breaks set for California.
Anna went looking for help the moment the schedule became real. "We started using Homebase as soon as we started hiring people," she says. "I want to say as soon as we had to start building schedules." She searched online, found Homebase, and set it up around how the bakery works.
As the team grew and Gusto Bread added managers, Anna passed the scheduling along. She also passed along her method. "I've trained our managers to really become friends with the scheduling template," she says.
Today, managers build a template for the month, adjust it, and reuse it. "For the most part, our schedules stay fairly consistent," Anna says. The team sees its next month of shifts before it starts, and day-to-day changes happen inside the template instead of on a blank page.
Shift notes take care of early mornings. Managers attach a note to a shift, and team members see it the moment they clock in. If a coworker calls out sick, the note explains who's out and how priorities have changed. "Rather than surprising them, or making them feel anxious about that news, when they clock in they might be given that information," Anna says. "It's very intuitive. Everyone understands it."
The Homebase time clock covers the rest. Anna set up breaks to fit California's rules, and overtime tracking "has been pretty clear." Managers review every timesheet before it's processed, and Anna gives each batch a final look. And team messaging in the app has been "super convenient," Anna says.
Gusto Bread did test another option. When the bakery moved its point of sale to Toast, the rep pitched Toast's own scheduling tool. Anna signed up and tried to learn it. Then she told the rep, "Just cancel it. We're not going to use it."
That loyalty runs through the business. Arturo leaves the admin to Anna, but he's a Homebase fan now too. "I've grown to love it," he says.
“It was super easy to work with. Never having scheduled people before, never having used that kind of software, I was able to figure it out and customize a lot of features that really helped us establish our team from the beginning.”
— Anna Saltino, co-owner of Gusto Bread
The results: A month of shifts planned ahead and a handoff that stuck.
The biggest change is how far ahead Gusto Bread can see. Managers plan a full month at a time, and the team knows its schedule before the month begins. Anna estimates the template approach "saves hours every single month for each person doing it."
The handoff worked, too. Anna once built every schedule herself. Now her managers own it. "As things have gotten more complex and we have managers and have them take over certain functions that I was doing before, it's been pretty seamless," she says.
Early mornings run quieter. With shift notes waiting at clock in, a 4am baker doesn't have to text anyone to find out who's out or what comes first. "We have super early hours here, at four in the morning," Anna says. "We don't necessarily want the team reaching out with a question at that time if they don't need to."
The time clock helps the bakery stay compliant, and Anna sees value in the breaks beyond the rules. "Having these regular breaks really makes sense and really helps with rest and recovery throughout the shift," she says.
Arturo gets something too: a view of the bakery on the days he's not in it. Managers write up what happened in the Homebase manager log, and he reads it in one place. "I know you can just text people," he says, "but it's a little more compiled, so you don't have to get bombarded with texts."
“I'll have our managers report things, and it's really great to be in tune with that and see what's happening if I'm not here at the shop that day.”
— Arturo Enciso, founder and baker of Gusto Bread
Still baking for the neighbors, now with a team of 20.
Gusto Bread still feels like it did when it was bread for friends. The regulars from the wood-fired oven days still come in. Most of the team lives in Long Beach. And the values Anna and Arturo started with, curiosity and kindness, still set the tone.
What's changed is who carries it. Anna no longer has to do it all herself. Managers own the schedule, shift notes cover the 4am questions, and Arturo can step away from the shop and still know what's going on.
And there's more coming. After about three years of roasting coffee for the bakery, Arturo is opening a coffee roastery in Long Beach under a separate brand.
For Anna, the best part is seeing how far the original idea has traveled. "It's pretty amazing having a crew of like 20 people still executing the same vision that we had when it was just the two of us," she says.
