Here are a few snippets from Modern Baking's inaugural issue in March 1987.
Publisher’s Note, from John Meehan and Bill Donohue
You now have in your hands the inaugural issue of Modern Baking magazine and as you can imagine, we’re quite proud of it. We think you will find it a valuable reading experience and a magazine you will find indispensible in the years to come.
We would like to invite you to join us every month to share in the experiences of other bakers and profit from their successes. Modern Baking will examine baking operations from the inside, giving you a clear-cut and revealing look at what works for others as well as what doesn’t.
Every month, we will explore the minds of solid, profitable, forward-thinking bakers and report on what they are doing to increase profitability and bake better products.
As bakers, you have every reason to be proud of your recent accomplishments and every reason to look forward to even more success in the future. Today’s consumer is buying “oven fresh” baked goods more than ever. The market is shifting, and in your favor. Nothing in the eating experience is more fun, and increasingly viewed as nutritious, than baked foods. Quality, variety and absolute freshness is what sells wherever the consumer buys—in-store, retail or foodservice.
To compete successfully, you each must stay on top of trends and technology, adjust to change and have access to information that will help attract new customers and control costs. Modern Baking will help fill this need with an editorial voice that is authoritative, timely, objective and, above all, accurate.
Starting with this issue, Modern Baking is dedicated to being the voice of today’s quality baker. It is important to us to know what you are thinking. So, drop us a note to let us know how we’re doing. We would love to hear from you.
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Your Associations: Adjust to changing habits
“If you think things are changing quickly now, you haven’t seen anything yet!” Helen Greening said at a Retail Bakers of America workshop. “Today we’re doing business with lots of different types of people: older, younger, and of different nationalities. They all have different food preferences and shopping habits.”
A rising number of American workers are working outside the traditional 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday routine, she said and added several statistics. One notable one: 120 million women will be working by 1990.
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In-store baking: Smitty’s formula for success
“It’s up to us (bakeries) to capture the audience we already have (in the stores),” Roger Slater, Smitty’s director of bakery operations, says, an important objective given that only about one-third of a supermarket’s customers regularly purchase in-store bakery products.
Retail baking: Customers profit from Country Maid Bakery’s quality
Producing quality bakery products indeed is the hallmark of Country Maid Bakery, whose clientele live in some of the nation’s wealthiest communities. The average annual income reaches in the high $40,000 level.
“Anything with chocolate sells well,” says co-owner June Martin. “We’re in an area of ‘chocoholics.’”
The Martins also have responded to the changers in their customers’ lifestyles, such as offering more items in single-serving sizes for individuals or small families that do not require whole portions.
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Annual RBA/SBC convention: Ideas, ideas, more ideas await bakers in Baltimore
RBA plans to unveil the industry’s first baker certification program during the convention. The program is designed to help train master and journeymen bakers, as well as develop industry standards for each.
“Retail and in-store bakers can’t operate outside (the association) and be successful,” RBA president Hans Nadler says. “It’s imperative that we stick together. We’re inundated by large companies and legislators who try to run our businesses and our lives. We don’t stand a chance alone.”