Bakery Shop Assistant CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for someone who started on a coffee counter, worked in a supermarket in-store bakery and now leads the counter at an independent bakery. The shops are invented. If this is your first job, skip to the no-experience section, which is written for that.

The person hiring is usually the bakery manager or the owner, and they are reading between a bake and a delivery. Four things decide whether you get a call.

• Can you do early mornings? Bakery shifts start at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and the manager has been let down by people who agreed to it and then could not. Put your earliest available start time in the contact line.
• Are you fast and accurate at a counter? A morning rush is 90 transactions an hour with people who have a train to catch. Transactions per day and queue times both read well.
• Do you understand food hygiene? Date coding, rotation, temperature logs, allergen questions and cleaning records. A Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate and a hygiene rating of 5 in the shops you worked in answer this in one line.
• Can you take a cake order without a mistake? Celebration cake orders are where money and complaints both live. Order volumes with a low error count are the single most persuasive detail on this CV.
• Two extras that get you hired over an equal candidate: you can write neatly on a cake, and you have handled a Christmas or Easter rush.

• Counter and sales: speed at the till, upselling and suggesting, product knowledge across the full range, handling a queue, phone and online order taking, complaints and refunds.
• Cakes and orders: taking orders and sizing, flavours and fillings, writing on cakes, simple piped borders and rosettes, collection times, deposits, allergen notes on the order form.
• Production support: proving, bake-off, thaw schedules for frozen dough, cooling, slicing, packaging, sealing and labelling.
• Display and stock: merchandising the counter, rotation and first in, first out, par levels, reductions, ordering support, waste logging and shrinkage reporting.
• Food hygiene: your Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate, allergen awareness and cross-contamination, PPDS labelling under Natasha's Law, temperature logs, date coding, cleaning schedules and inspection readiness.
• Money: EPOS tills, counting the till, card terminals, end of day cashing up.
• The practical realities: 4:30 or 5 a.m. starts, standing for a full shift, lifting flour sacks and baking trays, hot ovens, weekends and bank holidays.
• People: calm during a rush, patient with a customer choosing between 12 cakes, and clear when explaining what is in a product to someone with an allergy.

Bakery counter work is a common first job and managers are used to hiring people with nothing on the page. What they need is evidence you will turn up early, handle money honestly and speak to customers.

1. 1Get a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate first. It is a short online course, costs very little, and having it already puts you ahead of other first-time applicants. Check whether the advert asks for the retail or the catering version.
2. 2Put your availability at the top and be specific: 'available from 5 a.m., weekends and bank holidays included'. Early availability wins bakery jobs.
3. 3List school, sport and volunteer commitments as evidence of reliability: full attendance, a two-year team commitment, a regular volunteer shift.
4. 4Add any experience with money or customers: a school fundraising event, a market stall, babysitting, a paper round, helping in a family business.
5. 5Mention home baking honestly and specifically. 'Bakes weekly for family and made 40 cupcakes and a two-tier cake for a school event' is real evidence of care and speed.
6. 6Say you can lift and stand. Baking trays, flour sacks and a full shift on your feet are the physical part of the job.
7. 7Keep it to one page and put education near the top if you are still at school or college or have just finished.
8. 8Apply in person in the afternoon if you can. Bakery managers are usually free after the morning rush, and handing over a CV in person still works in this trade.

• One page. Never more, whatever your experience.
• Plain layout, no photo, no date of birth. Supermarket chains screen through applicant tracking software, and independents want something easy to read on a phone.
• Put your earliest available start time and your food hygiene certificate in the contact line. Those two facts decide a lot of these hires.
• Order: contact details, short personal statement or career objective, experience, skills, certificates, education. Education goes near the top only if you are still at school or college.
• Mirror the advert's title and words: 'bakery assistant', 'bakery colleague', 'counter assistant', 'bake-off', 'date coding', 'rotation', 'food hygiene', 'celebration cake orders', 'waste'.
• For supermarket chains, complete their online form fully even where it repeats your CV, because the form is what gets screened.
• For independent bakeries, print a copy and hand it over in the early afternoon after the rush has finished.
• Send a PDF named firstname-lastname-bakery-assistant.pdf.
• In the US this role is often called a bakery clerk and the document is a resume. For UK jobs, keep it to a one-page CV with no photo and no date of birth.

“I hire on two lines: what time you can start, and whether you have ever been trusted with a till or a cake order. Everything else I can teach in a week. The person who writes down that they opened five mornings a week and never once ran late gets the call.”