Edinburgh’s Lannan Bakery to launch pre-order service to help customers beat the queue

Lannan Bakery in Stockbridge was named Pastry Opening of the Year at La Liste’s World Pastry Awards last year. But it’s popularity with customers has long preceded the numerous accolades it has received in the last two years, with some customers queuing as long as two hours to get inside when it first opened.

Now the bakery has plans to introduce a pre-order service where customers are designated a time slot rather than having to wait in line. It comes after the bakery expanded their site on Hamilton Place, utilising a space that had previously been rented out to another business. An exact date for the new service has not been announced but it is understood it could be trialled in the coming months.

Lannan bakery in Edinburgh Stockbridge could launch a pre-order service in the summer | Stephen Lister

Speaking to the Evening News, owner and head baker of Lannan, Darcie Maher, said: “I was always a bit against doing pre-orders but I think it will open us up to a bigger demographic of people.

“There's a lot of people who wouldn't stand and wait in a queue and I support that. So it would be nice to give people the opportunity to experience Lannan in a sort of more relaxed and steady way.”

Customers will be able to make their order online from around two weeks in advance and pick an available time slot. The recent expansion will allow the Lannan team to double the amount of pastries they can make, from 600 to 1,200 and, once the pre-order service goes live, the popular bakery could be producing as much as 2,000 pastries in a single day.

Darcie, 27, also said an inhouse café could be on the cards in the future, but the priority at the moment is to launch the pre-order service. She said: “We’ll be making plans for the café in stages. Initially we're going to renovate the space without any furniture and use it as a collection point for pre-orders which we're going to start in summer.

“I want to do it quite slowly because if it doesn't work as a cafe or if I think we actually need to keep it as a collection point, I want to have that option. An important thing about the pre-orders is I don't want to create another queue - I can't have another queue forming!”