At Puratos, whose products are distributed in the region by Baqer Mohebi Est, commercial manager — Middle East and Africa Walid El-Dana comments: “Bread and pastries are complex items to produce. Their manufacturing requires not only skilled and experienced professionals but also time and talent.
“In these top restaurants and hotels, chefs appreciate not only the level of quality we offer them but also the real partnership.”
Heidi Chef Solutions general manager Manuel-Yves Eckert adds that pastry chefs and bakers are “increasingly willing to look at other alternatives to scratch-made products, providing the quality meets their high standards”.
“The key drivers for this change are time and skill,” he adds. “Most hotel pastry departments’ teams are now leaner following staffing cut-backs, but are expected to produce the full pastry and bakery range.
“With the help of pre-mixes, semi-finished products and fully-finished products the chef has the option to schedule his time better and meet their deadlines.”
The way to overcome any lingering old prejudices, according to these suppliers, is by educating the market.
Aramtec’s Shabayk says the company achieves this through a variety of approaches —“from arranging demonstrations, to planning market visits for technical staff to go and meet chefs, to taking part in trade shows and even arranging visits for local chefs to our principle’s facilities overseas”.
Advertisement
As Puratos’ El-Dana puts it, the objective is “to be a reliable partner in innovation for our customers”.
And innovation alongside baked goods suppliers is the route the industry is taking, according to Park Hyatt’s Fallait.
“With demand increasing, I see more and more companies adopting a mix of fresh-from-frozen, bought-in mixes and totally home-made breads,” he admits.
Meanwhile Kempinski’s Helmetag believes more traditional regional items are going to be in demand.
“There is a big consumer trend towards focusing on simple, quality food products that showcase high-quality ingredients obtained from a particular region or made using certain time-honoured techniques,” he says.
And according to a multitude of baked goods suppliers, they are seeing increasing requests for healthy products.
Puratos’ El-Dana notes: “At our headquarters, we have a department measuring trends around the world. One they identified a few years ago was a growing demand for healthier food items — therefore we developed the Puravita range offering different mixes for health breads.
“More generally speaking, the group wants to further develop its health-conscious approach by paying particular attention to the nutritional benefits of the ingredients we use in order to offer balanced products.”
Whatever the future holds in terms of consumer demands, chef preferences and market availability, there is no doubt that the baked-goods boom is continuing in the Middle East: and the region’s pastry chefs, bakers and market suppliers are in a strong position to support it.
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
