Consumer education driving greater quality in today’s bakery items
“There’s an increased awareness around bakery right now,” points out consultant chef Adam Moore. “We’ve seen how people making their own banana bread at home was trending high at the beginning of the lockdowns, and that’s expanded into a renewed interest in baked goods and demand from consumers – they’re expecting more and businesses are experimenting with new methods and new products in response. I’ve seen people introducing croissants and working to get the lamination and butter content right – so foodservice professionals are definitely focused on learning more about the process.”
Josh Cochrane
Josh Cochrane, Executive Pastry Chef at the RACV City Club and its Le Petit Gateau shopfront outlet, agrees with Adam that today’s consumers expect more from their baked goods and says this has been driven by TV shows like Masterchef. “Those programs really highlight ingredients and focus on quality and they’ve raised customer expectations,” he tells us. “This was really driven home to me when I was helping another chef set up an ice cream station for a dessert buffet and a five year old boy wandered over and asked, ‘Does the vanilla ice cream have real vanilla beans in it?’ And when the chef said yes, the boy went on to ask, ‘Where are the vanilla beans from, are they Tahitian or Madagascan?’
“That was a lightbulb moment for me – it showed me the average punter’s knowledge has gone through the roof, especially with the young kids watching these shows and what they’re picking up. So the trend has been towards higher and higher quality.”
“If you look at businesses like Lune Croissanterie in Fitzroy, their stuff is just amazing. Which is remarkable because when I think back to the start of my career a croissant was just a croissant and most people didn’t even know what it was - now they’re demanding it’s made with French butter!”
Josh and his team strive to keep up with contemporary presentation styles and provide plenty of variety – “we change our display cakes monthly and make sure we’re offering something different each week. We’ll usually have a few specials going in Le Petit Gateau so we can get feedback from customers – plus we all have taste tests, offer our opinions and tweak recipes and ingredients. Our focus is to provide a very modern style, similar to what you’d see coming out of Paris with today’s rock star chefs.”
Moving from the sweet to the savoury side of bakery, meat pies are still a great favourite of Aussie consumers and in recent years their more gourmet incarnations have become a mainstay of the pub market menu. Gary Johnson, National Executive Chef at the ALH Group which operates more than 340 hotels nationally, says these are always big sellers in winter. “We make our own meat pies using beautiful beef or chicken and mushroom casseroles as fillings and serve them with gravy, mashed potato and a side salad - they go great guns on the menu,” Gary says. “And the other day I was at one of our venues and they were serving a pork and fennel sausage roll with truffle mayo on the side which was attracting a lot of interest.”
With the market evolving rapidly, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that many of ALH’s pubs now also cater to the morning coffee crowd with items such as muffins with seasonal flavours and Portuguese tartlets made in-house. “We try to offer something bite-sized for customers coming in to grab a coffee,” Gary confirms. “The focus today is on catering to all different day parts and customer demographics – so we have venues which are open for breakfast, some do takeaway, and some offer muffins and coffees on the way to work. Customers want to be able to stop in for a donut or a slice of cake, and we even do homemade cookies which we put on the bar top, warm out of the oven, under a little cover. That fresh-baked aroma is really what entices people to purchase – even in the afternoon some of our pubs are baking scones and taking them around to customers in the gaming rooms. It’s something fresh that we can offer – it’s all about catering to greater consumer awareness, because I think today’s consumers have a higher expectation of what pubs can offer and we need to be catering to that.”
Alex Patterson, Executive Chef at The Ary Toukley RSL on the NSW central coast, serves house-made braised chicken, leek and bacon pies as a chef’s special and says they are always in demand. “We also make our own shortcrust and sweet pastry for tarts when we have them on our regular menu and for functions. We’ve always served a lemon meringue tart which we make from scratch, and we even used to make our own milk buns and brioche, but we started selling so many burgers that we couldn’t keep up, given we don’t have a dedicated bakery kitchen. We do still make our own pizza dough, focaccia and donut mix all in house – pizzas in particular are great for this market, because the visual appeal really sells them.
“We have a section at the front where customers can see the meals in the larder well, and we have a chef rolling out the pizza dough and as soon as customers see him working they want to come up and get a pizza! There’s something about the interaction of working with dough and baked goods that grabs people’s attention – that plus the smell of anything fresh-baked is sure to bring more customers through your doors.”
A move away from the mass-produced
To get a supplier’s view of the latest trends, we spoke to Tracie Heyes of Priestley’s Gourmet Delights, who echoed Adam Moore’s comment by telling us: “There has been a move away from the mass produced to a more homestyle look – that may be related to this trend of people home-baking sourdough, banana bread and chocolate cake during lockdown.” But, she adds: “We’re also paying close attention to what’s being done in the French patisserie style, because perhaps the more rustic look is already hitting the peak of its curve – it might continue for some time to come but it’s not ‘new’ anymore an we’re now seeing a lot very well-presented French patisserie items which are extremely well-finished, completely the opposite to homestyle.
“What’s important to remember is that while presentation is important, you can’t focus on one element at the expense of another. Your bakery items have to tick all the boxes for customers to come back – they may buy something once, but it needs to deliver on flavour, on texture – it needs to taste as good as it looks.
“We’re also keeping a close eye on packaging trends – you may have noticed that individually wrapped products are moving out of the convenience market into the mainstream more.”
“Food handling is definitely under the microscope right now – we aren’t going to see any big buffets for a while, so packaging is something everyone needs to be aware of.” Priestley’s launched individually wrapped Crazy Caramel Slice and Bent Banana Bread earlier this year, initially for the petrol and convenience market but found demand soaring for them in kiosks and hospitals – “where an individually wrapped product is the only one they’re going to sell right now, whereas previously they would have had an open cabinet.”
That said, Tracie adds: “There were a lot of predictions early on in COVID about e-commerce and home delivery, but I don’t think consumers are set to change their behaviours that drastically. As soon as lockdown ended in Queensland people were keen to get back to their favourite cafes – you can’t separate the dining out experience from the food and drink offer, it’s ingrained in the Australian psyche.”
