In this series, British Baker talks to people from across the baking industry to find out about their career path, what their job involves, and the latest trends that are shaping their work.
Name: Elliot Cantrell
Age: 37
Job title: Head of NPD
Company & location: BakeAway, Corby, Northants
Professional history: Chef at various restaurants including Petrus in Knightsbridge, followed by over a decade of roles in NPD processes at Orchard House Foods, Adelie Food Holdings, and Branston Ltd. Formerly a co-owner of Magee Street Bakery in Northampton.
What does a typical workday involve?
No two days are the same in NPD, whether it be spent in the factory to help out with any operational issues, or looking at shelf life of products, or looking at new trends and working with category insights. It’s a really varied and interesting role in NPD.
What does your process for creating new products look like?
We use a lot of the insights from the category insights team mixed with our factory capabilities and our NPD know-how to try to develop the best products. Because ultimately, we want people to be buying our pastry products.
What upcoming trends are you excited about and why?
There are loads of health trends coming up, and how they can fit into bakery. We’re finding protein is a huge one, whether it be in bagels or flatbreads. So how that can translate into pastry and dough in the future is quite an interesting one for me. Protein keeps on getting better and better in terms of what’s out there in the marketplace. Using vegan proteins mainly in the bakery world is a really interesting trend that we’re looking into at the moment.
What is your favourite ingredient to work with and why?
Flour, 100% – it’s so versatile. It has great strengths and also weaknesses, but I just love working with flour.
What was the hardest piece of NPD to perfect?
Something simple like a milk chocolate cookie. In recent years, we may have done some quite complicated flavour profiles but when you try to develop something that is so iconic that people recognise so well, trying to develop the perfect chocolate cookie for our shelf life is probably the hardest one we’ve done.
How is the sweet bakery category changing and what is driving this?
The sweet bakery category is a really interesting one. We’re finding that consumers are definitely wanting a lower fat option, but they still want maximised flavour, so it’s a really trying to balance that off.
What has surprised you most about the way consumers use BakeAway’s products?
I think the rise of the Instagrams, the TikToks of this world. We’re seeing our cookie doughs wrapped around cream eggs and put in the air fryer. It’s something that wouldn’t have been done a few years ago, and it’s being seen all the time now on social media.
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