National Craft Bakers’ Week, 8-13 June, is a great way to engage with your local community, generate positive media coverage and showcase your products. So why not get involved by organising a visit to a local school where a demonstration and friendly chat could inspire youngsters and interest local media in a photo opportunity?

To help, we’ll be giving you a free PR tool kit in the next issue of British Baker (22 May) which includes top tips on how bakers can promote themselves during the Week, as well as a window sticker and poster for point-of-sale, special activities and promotions.

Information about the Week has been sent to 22,000 state primary schools and 1,600 independent primary schools to let them know how they can take part and link up with their local baker to find out more about the craft of baking. Teachers are also being encouraged to liaise with companies and invite them to come into school, while there are also two classroom recipes available in information packs to get children to roll their sleeves up and have a go; a bread rolls recipe has been created by Anthony Kindred and one for gingerbread men by Marriage’s.

The theme is The Shop That Never Sleeps!, which aims to engage children by showing them that a craft baker’s shop doesn’t rest - products are made through the night to be sold during the day. To illustrate the concept, a video is now available to download at www.bakeryinfo.co.uk so that schools can watch bread, cakes and pies being made at the Oliver Adams craft bakery in Northampton. This will hopefully inspire them to visit their local baker to see the products in the front of the shop.

The first ever National Craft Bakers’ Week will take place from 8-13 June. It will be a week-long celebration of all that’s great about bakery, and will help drive sales and raise awareness of the craft. It hopes to get independent bakers to promote themselves in their local communities and make consumers more aware of their craft, and as a result build their customer base. The idea is to get more customers through the door during the Week and then keep those extra customers coming back.

The Week will highlight the benefits of buying products from the local baker, namely that these cakes, breads and pastries are high quality, fresh, ’hand-made’, and have low or even no food miles. In addition, the benefits of shopping at a local independent will be communicated: good service, good product choice plus the ability to respond quickly to emerging trends.

National Craft Bakers’ Week activity is spearheaded by the National Association of Master Bakers (NAMB) and has been developed with a group of key suppliers (Bako, Bakels, Bakemark, BFP Wholesale, California Raisins, Macphie, Marriage’s, Puratos and The Reynard Group) along with the SAMB and British Baker magazine.

All craft bakers are being encouraged to take part and support the Week, no matter what the size or location of their business. Apart from linking up with schools, why not organise some in-store tastings or special promotions and offers? For too long the sector has struggled to promote itself to customers and potential employees, so banish the image of the ’humble baker’ and start shouting about yourselves!

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=== Resources available to bakers for promoting National Craft Bakers’ Week in schools ===

l Free PR tool kit in our next issue

l Window stickers and posters

l Classroom recipes for children

l Link-ups with school teachers

l Video of ’The Shop That Never Sleeps!’

l Resources at: www.bakeryinfo.co.uk

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