Editor’s Letter: January-February 2013

In a rather fitting decision, we are ringing in the new year with an issue focused on 2013 trends.

In a rather fitting decision, we are ringing in the new year with an issue focused on 2013 trends.

Within these pages, we hope you’ll find some ideas and inspiration you can bring to life in your bakery.

In the past few years, the bakery industry has been handed a few flagship trends. The local movement and the rising demand for allergen-/gluten-free products are two that stand out for me. The concept of “natural” is another longstanding mover and shaker. These things are nothing new this year but rather remain the “big three” players shaping the baking industry’s future. There’s one more granddaddy of a trend, but I’ll get to that shortly. Generally, you can count on change, but when it comes to today’s consumers, they are unwaveringly fickle in their need for a lot of choice and preference for customization.

Our cover story company makes an intriguingly successful appeal to today’s treat buyers. Firstly, congratulations to cover girl Cynthia Pacheco of Curbside Bliss Cupcakes, winner of the Bakers Journal 2012 Innovator of the Year award, lead sponsored by Fuller Landau Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors, and co-sponsored by Puratos and Hallmark Insurance. Pacheco invented Canada’s first mobile cupcake kitchen.

Secondly, food trucks have been on the popularity radar for the last few years, and Curbside Bliss’ fully functioning bakery on wheels is a great take on the trend. Not too long ago, the idea of food trucks was primarily associated with coffee trucks that catered to blue-collar professions. High-quality or artisan products did not necessarily come to mind. Now you can get gourmet goodies off a multitude of mobile purveyors. The fact that people can actually see where the cupcakes are baked from scratch in Pacheco’s truck appeals to people’s sense of natural and fresh. For consumers, “natural” and “fresh” are concepts. They are subjective perceptions painted by the seller. This is where I think the heavyweight champion of the trend world comes into play. It’s all about storyselling, folks. That’s what is going to net you more sales in the new year, no matter what consumer desires you choose to serve. Stories sell, and the better you are at telling them, the more of an advantage you can gain over your competitors.

On page 16, we look in detail at the results of Puratos’ global research that was presented at its Taste Tomorrow conference last October. Storyselling was most certainly the predominant recurring theme that emerged in discussions of every aspect of the chocolate, baking and patisserie world. The adjacent advice coming out of the conference was to learn how to deliver this effectively through your packaging and point-of-sale materials.

In journalism we learn that people like to read about people, and that stories are really people stories. I think the same applies to storyselling, and that’s why it holds so much clout with customers. If you can put a face on the products and the ingredients, you can help establish a connection with your customers that resonates beyond consumption.

We hope you enjoy the stories on offer in our first edition of 2013. If there’s anything you’d like to read about in upcoming issues, just let us know!