Délifrance boss on choice creating opportunity

We’ve had quite a lot to celebrate at Délifrance UK this year. It has been 30 years since we came into being as a business entity, and ten years since we opened the Viennoiserie factory here in Wigston, Leicestershire.

A further cause for celebration is the completion of a €4.5m (£4m) upgrade of the Viennoiserie facility, effectively doubling its capacity. Wigston also has a bread-making facility, which opened in 1993.

This has coincided with me being promoted to Délifrance UK managing director, from my previous role as operations and supply chain director. I will continue to look after the day-to-day activities of our other site, in Southall, west London, but the new role means I am now effectively the figurehead for the UK.

The investment at Wigston has been spent on additional ovens, a trebling of our cold-storage space, and a new finishing room. The centrepiece of the room is a filling and decorating line, which allows us to inject baked items like croissants, pains au chocolat and brioches with fillings such as chocolate, jam, or anything else that carries a similar consistency.

The line is perfect for short-run, quick turnaround jobs, meaning we can be more flexible to customer demands. Until now, all our pastries had been filled in our French factories, where our products are made pre-baked before being transported here frozen.

Investment​

The investment is a significant amount for any company to pay. But for me, it’s a recognition from the wider business – whether that’s our parent company, French miller and frozen bakery manufacturer NutriXo, or Vivescia, which is the wider group – that the UK is an integral part of Délifrance’s future. In fact, the UK accounts for 23% of Délifrance’s global sales, so we’re not a country that is going to be ignored.

At Wigston, we make more than 100 different stock keeping units. That has been achieved by forging key strategic partnerships with customers over many years.

It’s about understanding the market trends and trying to pre-empt what our customers might be looking for next year and the year after that. The alternative is to wait to get their brief and then try and react to that brief, and by doing that we’ll be months behind the curve.

There’s no denying that it’s a tough environment to be operating in – but that’s true for everyone. Butter prices are an example of the challenges we face. We use Charentes butter, which by its definition has to come from the French region.

And given that our standard croissant is 25% butter, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to realise we use a tremendous amount – so when the supply side starts to dwindle, it becomes a very complex marketplace.

Working with customers​

We have to deal with that in the same way any manufacturer would. Again, it’s about working with customers so that some of the costs are absorbed by both during the bad times, but equally, ensuring that the good times are shared as well.

The health agenda is another area we cannot ignore. Firstly, most of our products are treats – we don’t advocate that people eat them every day. Secondly, we now have a dedicated health-focused range.

That’s in line with retailer expectations, but it’s still important to offer choice. Our retail customers are just as keen, for example, to offer an aspirational 25% Charentes butter croissant as a reduced-fat one.

And it’s that ability to offer choice that remains our greatest opportunity. If you look at croissants alone – you can have all-butter, reduced fat, vegan, topped, filled – there’s a whole selection beyond the standard butter variety.

To reflect that opportunity, we’ve built in growth capability at Wigston. We’ve deliberately planned it that way, because that’s how our forecast expectations are looking.

Employee engagement ​

Achieving that growth will only be possible if we take our staff along on the journey. Employee engagement is something I’m particularly passionate about, but I’m keen on developing ways to deliberately, rather than accidentally, enhance that.

For me, the true definition of engagement is someone who does what needs to be done because they know it is the right thing to do – not because they’ve got a supervisor telling them to do it. Therefore, I want to add a little more specificity, a little more science, into our procedures.

But there’s two sides to that engagement. In addition to making sure everyone understands what is expected of them, we have to ensure everyone is capable of performing their role, and that’s where training comes in.

We’ve reinvented our training approach to become much more matrix-focused, and by doing that we’re in a much better position to ensure that people have developmental opportunities.

Ultimately, the company is in a good place. The investment at Wigston means we are not just here for the present – we are here for the future as well.