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David Christie, the joint CEO along with his wife of Bakers Delight, gave an enthralling and fast moving presentation to the 75 members and guests present last Monday night. He shared with us his secret ingredients for profitable growth of more than 700 stores in four countries (Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA). David took us back to the beginning of the family baking business which now spans five generations, starting as one bakers shop in Mordialloc in the early 1900’s.
The business was founded on three key concepts: real bread, real delight and real people. The current Bakers Delight business was born in Glenferrie Road in 1980 and was an originator of the now popular franchising model of retail stores. Successful business growth has resulted from a culture of quality and transparency. Bakers Delight only uses the best ingredients and ensures that all administrative managers work at the counter weekly, having face-to-face transactions with the retail customer providing a continuous feed-back loop. The vision is to always have a point of difference (great product that customer like), continuous (but incremental) improvement and simplicity. Simplicity means continually improving business and in-store processes and simplyifying the message to the customer.
David also believes that employees need a reason to come to work rather than just making a profit and this is achieved by incorporating charity into the business culture. Bakers Delight starts everyday with empty stores as all left-over bread from the previous day has been donated to charity. Bakers Delight also shares their office with Breast Cancer Network of Australia which means that everyday business and charity work side-by-side. David concluded by saying that in 1901 bread from the family business was delivered by horse and buggy, today bread is being delivered by Uber Eats and in Canberra drones are conducting trial deliveries. A lively question session followed.