As bakers you spend a lot of time looking ahead. Creating your formulas and training staff to re-create them consistently. Planning for your rotating seasonal product lineup, often leaving space for adding timely products or designs on a whim. Mapping out your marketing messages for inside your retail shop, website, advertising and social media. Arranging interviews, orientation and training for new staff.
Measure twice, cut once, as the wise saying goes.
It seems wise to leave a little room for the unexpected as well. In its haze of uncertainty, the global pandemic taught us well to roll with the punches and find room for the serendipitous. When a poignant moment in history happens – for example, the death of Queen Elizabeth II – you’ll want to have the flexibility to marked the shared moment in customers’ consciousness. Many of you did this by organizing your own version of the much-loved cream tea.
We at Bakers Journal have been busy planning an inspiring and useful program of speaker sessions for the Baking Association of Canada’s Bakery Showcase in Vancouver May 14-15, 2023. We are planning a program for you around key themes and concerns – and definitely leaving room for surprise appearances and features.
Our areas of focus include sustainability, celebrating diversity in baking. Here’s a taste of the sessions we have planned. We will welcome Mark Dyck as a speaker and moderator. Some of you may know Mark from his days running Orange Boot Bakery in Saskatoon and his lively “Rise Up!” podcast where he talks to bakers of all stripes. At Showcase Mark will talk to up-and-coming bakery owners and the session will be recorded as an episode of the podcast! How cool is that.
Out on the trade show floor, you’ll find two demo stages highlighting baking and pizza making. Kenta Takahashi, award-winning pastry chef at Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar in Vancouver, will join us for a demonstration. You may remember, Kenta shared a dreamy strawberry pavlova recipe with us in this fall’s recipe collection, “Savouring Special Moments.”
We’ll tackle serious, pressing topics. Staffing was a challenge in February 2020 and it continues to be a challenge today – manifesting itself in unexpected ways. Together we will learn from forward-thinking businesses and experts in a roundtable session “Paying a Living Wage: Rewards, Challenges and Logistics.” And attendees are invited to an education roundtable that will hear from people working in all areas of the industry, including professional bakers large and small, instructors, students and suppliers to the trade.
There will be competitions to please all: student cake-decorating competition celebrating Mother’s Day, a baking competition for professional bakers and, for the first time, the Canadian Pizza Summit and the respected and always exciting Chef of the Year Competition will take place as part of Bakery Showcase. We’re bringing pizza chefs, owners and operators together – they are, after all, bakers too!
It’s important – and stimulating – to make connections at industry events, as you’ll read in Martin Barnett’s message in the BAC Bulletin. The Bakery Showcase is an ideal place for these connections to happen.
Here’s hoping you make meaningful connections with your loved ones this holiday season. Best wishes from all of us at Bakers Journal and we’ll see you in the new year!
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