ROI for bakery water dosing
When bakeries look at water dosing units like Dosamix T20 and D30, the first question is often: “Will this actually pay for itself?”
The short answer: in many bakeries, the investment is recovered in a relatively short time through less waste, more stable production and time saved at the mixer.
Where the return on investment comes from
A water dosing unit doesn’t just replace a tap – it removes small, everyday sources of variation that quietly cost money. The main ROI drivers are:
- Reduced scrap and rework when dough is too weak, too tight or off temperature
- Less time spent correcting batches with extra flour/water or repeat mixes
- More consistent quality, which protects your brand and wholesale accounts
- Smoother shift handovers because dough behaves the same for each team
- Faster training for new bakers, who follow clear, repeatable settings
None of these changes look dramatic on their own. Together, they add up quickly across dozens of batches and hundreds of production days.
Simple payback example
Every bakery is different, but a basic example helps show the logic. Imagine a bakery producing 20 dough batches per day.
Before Dosamix:
- 1 in 20 batches (5%) needs major correction or is scrapped
- Each problematic batch costs roughly $80 in ingredients and labour
- Total cost of problem batches: 1 × $80 = $80 per day
After installing Dosamix:
- Dough temperature and hydration become more stable
- Problem batches drop from 5% to, say, 1% of production
- Now only 1 in 100 batches causes a similar issue
New cost of problem batches:
- 0.2 batches per day on average × $80 ≈ $16 per day
Daily saving from reduced rework/scrap:
- $80 − $16 = $64 per day
Over 5 production days per week, that’s roughly $320 per week, or $16,000 per year. Even if the real numbers are half of this estimate, a water dosing unit starts to look like a relatively small cost compared with ongoing waste.
Time saved at the mixer
Time is another part of the ROI story. When water is pre-set and delivered automatically:
- Bakers spend less time watching taps and checking buckets
- It’s easier to run consistent timings between batches
- Staff can focus on scaling, loading or other tasks while water doses
For a busy production environment, even 2–3 minutes saved per batch across a full day can free up meaningful labour hours without increasing headcount.
Why ROI is usually stronger for T20
Both Dosamix models improve accuracy, but T20 often delivers a stronger payback because it controls temperature as well as volume.
That matters because:
- Dough temperature is tightly linked to proofing time and oven loading
- Small temperature shifts can push dough out of your ideal window
- Seasonal changes can otherwise cause regular “surprises” in production
When water temperature is stable, it’s easier to plan staffing, oven usage and delivery schedules with confidence – all of which have a financial impact even if they don’t appear on a single line of the P&L.
How to think about payback for your bakery
To get a realistic view for your own operation, consider these questions over a typical month:
- How many batches are corrected or scrapped because dough is “off”?
- What does one problematic batch really cost in ingredients and labour?
- How often do you lose time on the makeup bench or oven because dough is behind or ahead of schedule?
- How much training time is spent teaching “feel” instead of using documented settings?
Even conservative estimates often show that bringing those numbers down by a small percentage covers the cost of a water dosing unit in a reasonable timeframe.
Turning ROI into a practical decision
A water dosing unit won’t change your bakery overnight, but it will tighten one of the most important variables in dough production. From there, every improvement you make has a more stable base to build on.
The question isn’t just “What does a unit cost?” It’s also “What does inconsistent water cost us every year?”
If you’d like help running numbers for your own setup, we can walk through your batch sizes, problem rates and labour costs to outline a simple payback pattern.