It was a great start to the week, tasting new products for presentation to Tesco. There are some exciting flavours coming down the tracks.

Tuesday began with an early start for the Aldi Conference in Birmingham. This annual event is where Aldi shares what has worked well over the past 24 months, along with its goals for the short and medium term. It’s always a very insightful day.

Getting home, however, was a bit of a scramble — I had to fly via Bristol to pick up spare parts for our high-speed flow wrapper. I may have cut it slightly too fine, arriving with just six minutes to spare before check-in closed.

Back at base, we signed off on the final design for our next Costco product: the Broderick’s Double Chocolate Brownie. With the graphics now complete, the real work begins — ensuring the packaging meets compliance requirements across multiple European markets, including Great Britain, Spain, France, Sweden, and Iceland. This involves close collaboration between our technical team and their counterparts in each country.

Friday brought another early start, with a 4am departure for Paris. I had been meaning to visit stores in France since we launched our Salted Caramel Crispy range there, and I was absolutely blown away by the response.

The store in Mulhouse wasn’t particularly busy, yet a remarkably high percentage of members picked up pouches — thanks in no small part to Jacki, an absolute legend who made my job very easy. That was especially helpful given that my Leaving Cert French (a long time ago!) barely scraped a pass. Thankfully, chocolate has its own universal language.

Saturday was another fantastic experience in the Villebon store, where members continued to reach for the pouches. I boarded my flight out of Orly that evening feeling quietly satisfied

Bernard x