Bernards Bits: A Trip Away

I was in Bath in the UK at the weekend for a wedding, so I took the time to go to the CostCo Store and do some preparation for a retailer meeting at the end of the month.

I got the chance to go into Costco in Bristol. I saw our double chocolate brownie on sale beside a salted caramel Crispy. Both products look great and it appeared to be selling - win.

Back at the bakery, operation is well under way for the introduction of our new line which is due in early November... yes, suspense. This line should give us the ability to treble chocolate enrobing capacity and allow key products to be packed side by side, taking away bottle necks, it is badly needed as production is quite stretched as sales remain very strong.

Met with our Technical and Procurement team to finalise the critical path on an exciting pliable label item that’s launching in October - ooohhh.For every one of these items a massive amount of work goes in all the way from recipe creation to specs, backup pack specs, testing, production trials, procurement inner packaging, outer packaging outer case, if there are any unique ingredients. Anything at all that can hold up a project. At any stage. And it all must be managed to come together at the right time. So no matter if the item is going to be an absolute Success or failure. It gets the same amount of work. Which is why we limit the amount of prime label work we do. There is a time and a place for private label work. There can be big benefits in procurement allowing us to buy greater volume of key ingredients, thus getting better prices.

Product development is seeing what works in the market, what flavours are trending without having to go through an expensive launch process.

But it's very labour intensive at the bakery from all our technical people so, we do try and limit how much we do.