STORY: Finsbury Food Group on the good, the bad, and the downright tasty of 2020

By Daryl Newlands, Marketing Manager at Finsbury Food Group.

Looking back on the year
2020 has been such a challenging year for so many industries in the UK and across the world. From the outbreak of a pandemic to the looming Brexit deadline – we have all felt uncertain and vulnerable about the future.   

At Finsbury, from a manufacturing point of view, the pandemic brought many. Like many businesses, it put a strain on our manufacturing process – but, the health and wellbeing of our staff was, and still is the priority. Despite the constant sense of uncertainty, we adapted our workspaces and factories to be Covid-19 compliant, with a proactive response to ensure we could continue producing products whilst keeping everyone at Finsbury safe.

With celebrations usually at the heart of our offering, when we all retreated to our houses to stay safe, so did many of our reasons to celebrate. Cakes are not just for birthdays, we also celebrate work promotions, passing a driving test, graduating from university, the list goes on. Finsbury saw overall revenues dropping to £306.3 million from £315.3 million in the year to June 27, 2020, due to the outbreak of Covid-19. The Celebration Cake category has seen a significant reduction in sales due to the pandemic.

Whilst sales of celebration cakes softened, we’ve seen strong growth in the sharing cake category, for example, loaf cakes, swiss rolls and round cakes, mainly because these cakes are more suited to less formal, smaller, family occasions.

However, as consumers spent more time at home, at-home baking was revitalised with many of us taking to the kitchen to create our own treats. Data from Kantar suggests the sale of baking ingredients saw a 33.6% increased throughout lockdown. It is suspected that this impacted the sales of pre-packed cakes, however, by recognising a gap in the market at Finsbury we transformed this into an opportunity for those less skilled at-home bakers to still enjoy some of the trending cake creations.

In September we launched a new range of licensed branded sharing and celebration cakes of which Baileys Marble Cake, inspired by top baking trends and the obsession with marble effect icing. This was followed by the launch of the Xbox Controller Cake later in the month, bringing the popular online baking trend to create replica, look-a-like household items out of cake, to the shelves. Baileys Marble Cake and the Xbox controller Cake launched at the perfect time, allowing many consumers to still enjoy the expert and innovative craftmanship that was flooding their social media channels.

At Finsbury we pride ourselves on staying ahead of the curve. Innovation is weaved into everything we do, especially when it comes to new product development. Tuning into chatter and feedback from consumers has enabled us to not only stay one step ahead of our competitors, and successfully remain the market leader, but to give our customers new exciting products before they realise they need them!

More than ever, wellbeing has been high on the agenda for our consumers and therefore a lot of our activity this year has anchored around this. For example, veganism is on the rise. The proportion of people who have reduced or limited the amount of meat they consume has risen from 28% to 39% between 2017 and 2019, whilst the number of meat eaters not interested in limiting or reducing their consumption has fallen from 48% to 36%. With the demand from consumers for more variety of plant-based foods, in the Spring we launched a new partnership with social media stars BOSH!, bringing delicious tasting, plant-based cakes to the market.

We’ve also grown in areas such as nut-free. This was a huge undertaking, turning one of our largest manufacturing units, our celebration cake factory unit, completely nut free. Our insight showed that 36% of shoppers worry about a nut allergy when shopping, and other research highlighted the growing number of people who are developing nut allergies; between 1995 and 2016, peanut allergies saw a five-fold increase in the UK. As a result, we felt compelled to take action.

63% of UK adults try to eat healthily all, or most of, the time, demonstrating that for many people, a healthy eating mindset is ingrained. When it comes to snacking however, this is not the case, with just 39% of snackers saying that they look for healthy options all or most of the time. We know that snacking is seen as more of a treating occasion, a chance for consumers to enjoy less frequent, permissible treats. In October, we launched Baileys Chocolate Treat Bars, smaller, snack-sized treats for those fewer, less guilty moments of indulgence.

Finsbury’s continual hard work and dedication to create high quality products, well loved by our consumers, has been recognised by industry experts and reflected in a few of our most recent award wins. This year, we have won four Q awards for both licensed products, Galaxy Gluten Free Cake and Galaxy Triple Chocolate Cake, and own label products Finsbury’s Sid the Sausage Dog Cake and Memory Lanes Cake. We have also won a Brand and Lifestyle Award for our Guinness Cake. Finally, Finsbury has been shortlisted to receive the Food Excellence Bakery Manufacture of the Year award (award ceremony in early 2021).

Despite the challenges of 2020, through lots of hard work and perseverance at Finsbury we have managed to successfully hit many milestones this year. From launching an entire nut-free manufacturing site, to releasing our first ever free from product, the Galaxy Gluten Free Cake, to most recently in December, celebrating 20 years of a successful partnership with Thorntons (Ferrero). We are so grateful to all our partners as they continue to help us get our products on the shop shelves and in front of our consumers to enjoy.

Looking forward to the year ahead

The general sense of uncertainty from the pandemic is expected to continue into 2021 and predictions for next year fair similar to 2020. A focus on whole and snacking cakes is expected, with celebration cakes set to be perform to a similar rate as larger gatherings will likely continue to be limited at least in the first half of the year.

With this shift in mind, at Finsbury we are continuously working hard with our licensing partners to create new products to reflect those smaller occasion opportunities. As the year draws to a close, we are turning our attention to several great launches next year. Throughout 2021 you can expect to see some exciting cakes, with all the trimmings, and new and improved innovation across both our existing branded partnerships as well as some new branded partnerships.

 For more information visit www.finsburyfoods.co.uk