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How online bakery stores are revolutionising the industry
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Saturday, 18 December, 2021, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Arun Shrivastav
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What’s new on the bakery scene? Well it’s growing at a healthy rate of about 9% annually. And much of this growth is powered by digital marketing initiatives.
Online bakery stores
Buying quality bakery products has never been so easy until the emergence of e-commerce stores that also offer convenient home-delivery options. With the online option, the whole exercise of shopping bakery products has transformed into an experience akin to spending time in an upmarket store, only that you are spared the physical walk up to the store.
Sitting from the comfort of one’s home, a customer can browse through hundreds of beautifully crafted and even more beautifully presented items and buy what he/she likes and what suits his/her taste or budget. Like all online shopping experiences, buying bread, cakes, muffins, cookies, or whatever other bakery product a customer wants, the online shopping gives him/her the ultimate flexibility and freedom about what to buy or what not to buy.
Online and physical bakery stores
Online bakery stores approach their business with more confidence as they can talk about their products and show them also, perhaps better than physical stores. High definition photographs, videos, recipe details, and assorted variety articulate the brands and products in a grand manner, something that you as a customer can’t fail to take notice of.
Online bakery outlets claim to bring authentic recipes and fresh ingredients. They also claim that they don’t use any preservatives or chemicals. The recipes can vary from traditional to continental. To top it all, these treats are baked with love and passion.
What makes online bakery stores successful?
Here are some of the factors that make online shopping of bakery products a better experience:
Wide range of choices: Before a customer can buy breads, cakes, or pastries, he can consider the flavors, types, themes, and more. He/She gets to see attractive pictures of what he/she is going to buy.
Online stores have a range of bakery snacks that include ragi crackers, lavash, cinnamon sticks, garlic breads, Mexican chili tomato crackers, beetroot crackers in bite size and 100 gram packs. Some stores specialise in just cakes and they have a huge variety. They offer home delivery during normal hours but they can deliver these products at midnight if you are ready to pay a differentiated delivery charge.
From Amazon to bakery boutiques: Bakery products from top brands to connoisseur bakers can be found online. Amazon has them just as BigBasket or Nature’s Basket. In fact, many of them have created a niche within the industry for healthy and organic products. From exclusive banana walnut cake to whole wheat sandwich bread, the choices are as many as one may care to know. And, one doesn’t necessarily need to end up at Amazon or another e-commerce bakery store.
The customer can look up in Google for online bakery stores and the search engine will throw up a list of options where each deserves his attention in its own right. By naming them here, we don’t want to limit the customers’ curiosity.
Bread subscription: Some companies are baking premium quality breads and selling them to customers on a monthly subscription basis. Given that bread is a staple for many consumers, bakeries making special breads such as whole grain bread or sourdough breads offer subscription schemes to customers and let them manage their orders and payments through an app. The customers also have the option to customise their bread preparations by suggesting ingredients. Usually, these bread manufacturers have a wide variety of options in terms of healthy flours. The distribution can be daily, biweekly, and weekly.
Bakery supplies: If finding bakery supplies has been a problem area, it should not be any longer. Bakers can find specialist bakery supply stores online where anything they might need for a baking session can be found. Mixes and powders, fillings and toppings, cake modules, cake boxes, chocolates, tart molds, muffin pans, cake scrapers, or say just anything for a successful bakery project can be found there. Whether one is looking for edible colors or appetizing and soothing flavors, the customers are spoilt for a choice on these sites.
Airbrush, spray, luster, and metallic colors, one can find all of them and more. Ink, markers, flavours and essence – no shortage of supplies should make the bakers’ journey less exciting.
Corporate gifts/bulk orders
Bakery items are also savory treats that can be used as gifts to celebrate important events. Business organisations often have to choose attractive gifts for their associates, customers, and staff. With an eye on this market, many online stores offer gift packs of savory bakery treats. For example - Holiday Gift, Secret Santa Cookies, Secret Santa Small Delights, Love Celebration, and so on. Packed in attractive paper bags and boxes, these gift packs are better marketed online as it’s easy for company executives to discreetly compare all that is available and choose that suits them the most.
Some key facts about Indian bakery industry
The bakery industry is the largest component of the Indian food processing industry, with a market size of $7.6 billion in 2020. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9% between 2019 and 2024. Of the entire Indian bakery industry, biscuits constitute 60%, breads 20%, cakes and pastries 10%, and rusks 10%. The cake market is expected to grow by 12.4% over the next 4 years to $ 882.24 million.
The organised bakery sector has about 2000 companies while the unorganised sector has about a million small to medium size bakery units across the country. In terms of value, the unorganised sector constitutes 62% while the organised sector accounts for 38% of the market.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made the people more health-conscious and they are now looking at healthier options among the bakery products. So instead of refined flour, which is widely used as the basic raw material in bakery products, consumers are now increasingly choosing whole wheat flour, multigrain flour, and flours of other nutrient-rich grains such as millets.
The customer doesn’t need to settle for what is available at the neighbourhood bakery store. He/She also doesn’t need to visit an upmarket premium bakery boutique to find the right muffin or cake. Instead, the customer just needs to check out a few online bakery sites and stop at one where all the attractions are present. Whether you want to buy Bomb Cakes, Ball Cakes, Anniversary Cakes, Scrumptious Cakes, or Christmas Cakes -- have your pick. Each site has its own hall of fame products.
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