Gail’s Bakery is redefining how it exists in the world of “craft”, to make room for innovation and technology, according to head of e-commerce, Rosie Hill.
“The problem with building your brand identity on something as nebulous as a word like craft, is that how you define it has vast implications for your business strategy”, she tells delegates at MCA’s Hostech conference.
Sidestepping an interpretation of craft that focuses solely on traditional, handmade practices, Hill said, “At Gail’s we think craft is something a little bit different.
“We believe it has six key characteristics: knowledge, skill, care, repetition, attention and intention.
“When you define craft in this way, it allows you to involve technology in your business and drive best practice by this combination of new and old techniques.
Now a couple of years into its digital transformation journey, the 133-site strong business is harnessing tech across staff training, loyalty, operations, and consumer experience.
“I genuinely believe that knowledge is the silver bullet in any form of change,” said Hill, with learning and development a starting place for this innovation.
Gail’s ‘Rise’ platform pulls together video content, articles, and how-to guides, to give its bakers confidence in their practices.
“Not every business works with a product that is so variable.
“Our bakers need to understand both the art and the science of baking if they’re going to create something with roughly the same size, appearance, taste, or texture.
“Our platform Rise helps us to take team members with little to no experience of both craft coffee or craft baking and turn them into craftspeople.
Meanwhile, a partnership with gamified training solution Attensi, is helping team members build soft skills alongside functional learning and an understanding of the Gail’s service, says Hill.
“More than 55% of our workforce are Gen-Z and that necessitated a complete change to the way we teach and engage with our teams.”
Last year, Gail’s launched its first digital loyalty programme, which has also allowed it to build a click and collect business.
“The app itself is used by around 30% of our customers, and the more we can understand them, the more we are able to facilitate the different missions that bring them to our doors every day.”
Hill also revealed that last week, Gail’s was trialling the first kiosks inside its Strand bakery.
“This is not new technology to the industry, but it was honestly a little bit divisive at Gail’s,” she told delegates.
With the aim to facilitate two “diametrically opposed missions,” around convenience, and brand education, Hill added, “I don’t know if this is going to be a success for us.
The bakery’s next project will be in partnership with e-commerce platform, Shopify, to rebuild its corporate catering business.
“We’ve been building this proof of concept, to create a more tailored experience for this very, very different mission.”
Furthermore, it is harnessing technology to balance availability, and freshness across its diverse product range.
“On the one hand, you want at any given time the biggest array of products available to your customers to choose from, but at the same time you want those products to be as fresh as possible.”
Therefore, new production planning and reporting software will tell the company exactly what its teams are baking and what they “probably should have baked.”
On top of this, it will introduce a live stock system, which Hill estimates will take about 8 million keystrokes out of the business, by tracking real time availability of food and updating live channels simultaneously.
“We’re going to have some really interesting data coming our way that will help show us the spaces that we can use technology to optimise our business, and where we need genuine human intervention and attention.
“The hope is that AI powered systems will allow us to repeatedly deliver excellence,” she adds.
