Roberts Bakery: Generation Next

Roberts serves all major supermarkets and local convenience stores across the UK. What changes in demand have you observed this year, what products were requested more, and which ranges sold less?

This year has been unlike any other, so changes in demand have been unprecedented. In our bread business we saw massive increases in demand for our core white and wholemeal sliced bread lines in April – June as we looked to keep our customers – big and small – well stocked during the early weeks of the pandemic.  Our bakeries in Northwich, Cheshire and Ilkeston, Derbyshire worked around the clock – along with many other food manufacturers – to keep Britain fed.  So those were good months for our big sellers – Thick Soft White, Mega-Thick Soft White, Medium Soft White and Wholemeal products.  Our artisan Bloomer range also continued to sell well. Ranges less in demand included food service products going into the out-of-home market, which experienced a massive decline as people, stayed at home. We also saw decline in export sales and sandwich thins as schools / packed lunches were no longer needed. Conversely performance in convenience – as people looked to shop smaller and more often local to home  – experienced very high growth and we launched a home baking kit through a new online channel in response to lack of flour and yeast on shelves. This continues to go well as home baking in general increases in popularity. 

How do you anticipate the market will perform over the next year? How about long-term, what preparations do you have in mind?

As people have emerged from lockdown there has been an increased focus on healthy bread products so we expect that trend to continue and have invested heavily in new, interesting lines. Providing a range of products from premium to everyday will give people choices as we continue to face uncertain times and retailers prepare for more focus on the value-end of the market.

Longer-term there is a decline in consumption of white sliced bread so it is up to brands to look for alternative options to entice new people into the market and loyalists to try something new. We have a program of investment across the board to prepare us for that. Our new Breakfast snacking range launch was delayed until September and now is absolutely the right time to answer needs for individually wrapped snack products at home as well as in lunchboxes and re-positioning the products to broader any time snacking sector. The accelerated interest in all things e-commerce and changes in consumer buying behavior brought forward investment in our direct to consumer channel – our own e-shop – which is now supplying regular deliveries UK-wide of a range of bread and baked goods to the door.

In 2017, Roberts celebrated 130 years. What unique recipes, ingredients, and products have sustained the company’s development since then?

In 2017 we also fundamentally repositioned the business as an ambitious challenger brand, to become Britain’s next generation bakery, the most innovative bakery in the UK and properly shake up baking. The category was sluggish, complacent and ripe for excitement. That level of change was huge for us involving a completely new look for the branded Roberts range and 13 new products, which, in 2019, led to a hugely encouraging 4% branded growth in a declining market. Our award-winning artisan Bloomer range led the charge then and is still leading – driving our first national UK listings – and has been followed up with healthy variants like Digestion Boost and our latest healthy range building on positive customer reaction to new look, recipe and taste experience for a modern consumer.  For pure news impact we developed Gin and Tonic and Espresso Martini Fun Buns out of our test kitchen – newly named The Exploratory – to underpin our innovative, ‘try something new’ credentials. This month we launched a new Breakfast snacking range – a first for us into the OOH snacking sector – speedily repositioned as at-home snacking as well for Brits in lockdown still or quarantined, self-isolating or shielding – again with innovation at their heart.

What are the major breakthroughs that have influenced the business over the years?

When you have a category with 98% household penetration it is difficult to grow the market unless you ask a consumer to buy more of the same or try something new. Eye-catching innovation makes it easier to do both and is the key to improving value as well as volume in an otherwise highly commoditized category. So new products have been at the heart of major breakthroughs that have influenced the business. Together of course with the major rebrand of 2017 – the first in over 100 years – and the ongoing investment in the bakeries to support the product visions.

New products deliver a ‘halo’ effect for the brand  – and indeed the category – because you add interest for both existing and new, younger consumers. Using fermented dough to create artisanal produce, for example, or creating clever ingredient combinations drives reappraisal and a desire to try.  This has been central to Roberts successful repositioning of recent years to shake up a sluggish category and challenge people to think differently about bakery – and delivered a positive commercial result for the business.  During lockdown we accelerated plans for an online business and launched our online store, which is delivering some good additional niche volume and enabling us to target consumers right across the UK. Other notable breakthroughs include moving to paper packaging, which consumers can recycle from home and the launch of hot cross buns using upcycled waste.

What is the inspiration and R&D process for new entries into each of these categories? What aspects are in your focus?

We divide our product range into two clear buckets – bread and other bakery.  In bread we are constantly looking to evolve against a declining market and consumers, especially millennials, avoiding bread for perceived health reasons.  So much of our focus is using healthy ingredients insight to stimulate the bread category and offer consumers more choice to answer their individual health needs.  We have also taken a deliberate stance to be more direct on-pack with the consumer benefits so this can easily be understood rather than focusing, for example, on how many seeds there are.  Some of our key focus areas are fiber and wholegrain and new ingredients to give us breads with more vegetable influence for flavor, color and nutritional benefits and then our continued journey to move away from single use plastic bread bags.  We have delivered a signature business process for innovation, which ensures we are constantly filling our funnel with ideas and bringing the best through to commercialization.  We have separated our R&D (2-5 years) from our NPD delivery plan (0-2 years) to ensure we succeed in both and our aim in R&D is to invent the uninvented, helping us keep the category stocked with new, vibrant and different bakery products. 

The company has launched Crunchy Cricket Loaves. How was it developed and what is the market’s reaction to it?

As well as having very strong sustainability and environmental credentials, insects are also very tasty and shouldn’t be overlooked as a great recipe ingredient. Our Crunchy Cricket Loaf provided consumers with a good source of protein and an easy way to familiarize themselves with insect-based food.

Crickets offer significant environmental benefits to other animal sources of protein. For example, they expel just 1g of greenhouse gases per 1kg protein produced compared to 2,850g for the same weight of beef. They can also be vertically farmed and require very low input – in terms of both water and feed – to produce a protein source rich in all nine essential amino acids as well has being high in iron, calcium and B12.

With all of these benefits, we set out to enrich the goodness of our loaves whilst highlighting some important environmental issues and tapping into this increasingly popular, alternative and high-quality protein source available to us. Our first and main challenge was finding a supplier of such an unusual ingredient. After a little research – and some inside knowledge – we made contact with the UK’s leading insect food brand Eat Grub. After speaking with its co-founder Neil Whippy – who was delighted to help us – we ordered enough cricket flour to kickstart our NPD.

This is now sourced from the world’s only farm with Grade A BRC food safety certification. This has made it a little more accessible and cost-effective.

Cricket flour does remain much more expensive than normal flour due to its dry weight and relative rarity. But we do believe that the extra cost is worth it for the added benefits. We also know that consumers are happy to pay a premium for products with such environmental and health advantages.

Cricket flour on its own has a unique aroma which can be off-putting at first, however, once baked along with the above additions, it became a deliciously flavored and textured loaf with real wholesome depth and nuttiness. It’s also high in protein containing just over 13g per 100g, compared to wholemeal bread at around 10g.

Since news broke of our first batch of limited edition Crunchy Cricket Loaves, we’ve had so much interest from consumers and trade customers asking where they can buy them and if we can produce large scale.  Unfortunately, we won’t be going into full production yet as we would need to invest in a dedicated plant, separate to the rest of the bakery, to avoid contamination with our vegetarian and vegan lines. That is for the longer-term. In the meantime we are hoping to keep interest alive by making a bag of crickets available next month as an ingredient to add to our popular home-baking kits available from our new direct-to-consumer online channel. These would make a nice Halloween surprise!

What will innovations at Roberts be prioritizing in the future? Please highlight some of your latest launches.

Post-lockdown interest in health is probably the most significant trend to come out of Covid-19, so we know shoppers are now searching for healthy options, and mealtime inspiration, as more meals are being consumed in the home. Part of that trend is an increased focus on developing immunity to future outbreaks, so food that helps boost their immune systems and provides protection is high up the shopping list.

To meet that need we have launched a new 4-strong healthy bread range into the convenience channel that very much focuses on ingredients to drive nutritional, health boosting value. 

These include: a True Vitality Good for You Bloomer which is full of super-foodie ingredients – whole hemp seeds, brown rice flour, malted wheat flakes and zinc for a healthy immune system; an Energy Balance Good for You Bloomer which has been created using oatmeal and a mighty mixture of quinoa, watermelon and chia seeds. It’s packed with magnesium to support a healthy metabolism; a Vit Hit 50% Wholemeal, 50% White flour loaf which isa delicious combination of 50% white flour, 50% wholemeal flour with the addition of seven vitamins and minerals for extra everyday goodness. These include Thiamine B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin B6, calcium, iron, niacin and folic acid; plus an Ultimate Fiber Wholemeal loaf which is a more wholesome take on our original wholemeal classic – and, at 8.7g fiber per 100g, is the brand’s highest fiber wholemeal loaf to date, packing, on average, 30% more punch than other wholemeal products..

Roberts is the first bakery brand in the UK to reduce plastic in its bread bags by 53%. How was this accomplished? And how is it affected by the requests to have everything individually-packaged?

Sustainability is at the heart of what we do, and we know that shoppers want to make more efforts towards it. When we introduced our Bloomer range in easily recyclable at-home packaging in September 2018, we highlighted our strategy to act rather than pledge. To become plastic-free as soon as we can.

We packaged them then in a sustainably-sourced paper bag with a very thin poly prop coating to ensure that the loaves stayed fabulously fresh. We’ve since taken another step towards plastic free – and another UK bread brand first – when we launched a revolutionary new bread bag in June 2019 for our core 800g breads bags, reducing our plastic by 53%. This reduction was supported by our ‘Rise up against Plastic’ campaign, a message that we also featured prominently on-pack to create stand-out so that shoppers could easily identify the range on the shelf and make a sustainable choice.

They’re small yet very significant steps towards more sustainable packaging and the realizing of our ambition to be plastic free. Next milestone will be moving towards a fully pulpable closed-loop paper bag. Our new snacking range is in compostable packaging and individually wrapped. Today’s cautious shopper has abandoned unwrapped fresh bakery produce so our snacks are well placed to not only fill the gap for a healthy baked treat, sustainably wrapped, but to allay hygiene fears.  

What is the impact of COVID-19 on snacks and snacking? As on-the-go is on-hold, what opportunities do you seize now? What benefits should snacks provide? And what are Roberts’ favorite snacks?

Originally designed for the on-the-go breakfast food sector pre-Covid, Roberts has since switched focus and its new snacking range is now designed for those consumers who want to feel the benefits of healthy energy at home, and out and about, as we adjust to our ‘new normal’ lives.

Five months ago we were targeting an on-the-go consumer in a market set to top GBP23bn by the end of 2022. Since the outbreak of the pandemic – thanks to the agility of our brand and operations – we’ve quickly adapted to take advantage of new opportunities.

We know that high levels of uncertainty, combined with restrictions on movement at the height of the pandemic, had an adverse effect on the mental wellbeing of consumers, which in turn saw them snack more to escape.  As we ease out of this stage of lockdown, there is certainly an increased demand for better-for-you snacks that still offer escapism without conflicting with health goals. We know that most shoppers are now trying to eat and drink healthier. This new range meets their needs perfectly – being healthy nutrient-rich snacks that taste great too.

The launch takes the innovative brand into the snacking sector for the first time – tapping into convenience and ready to eat anytime, anywhere, while bringing a freshly baked taste and real goodness experience to the market. They’re a tasty treat for any time of the day, location and occasion for both adults and children and are a particularly good addition to lunchboxes and for school snacks.

The nutritious ready-to-eat snacks are made by mixing real fruit pieces and flavors – raspberry, apple, cranberry, orange – with other tasty ingredients such as chia seeds, coconut, raisins, cinnamon, chocolate and coffee. Each contains less than 250 calories and comes individually wrapped in compostable packaging.

Read this interview in our September – October issue of European Baker & Biscuit Magazine by clicking here.