Jane Tyler’s blog – Notes from north of the border
Two sets of congratulations and some big thank-yous are due after the Cybake team’s latest trip to Scotland.
We were up in Glasgow last month for the Scottish Bakers annual conference and awards weekend.
This is a major event not just for bakers north of the border, but for the British bakery industry as a whole. As such, it attracts attendees from all over the UK and my first thank you must go to Scottish Bakers itself for its always-awesome hospitality.
I am also indebted to Fraser Hogg, head of the British Confectioners Association, with whom I met up with for an excellent pre-event lunch. At the awards, Scottish Bakers granted Fraser a lifetime membership. It was well-deserved and great to see how much it meant to him.
Thanks also go out to the guests who joined us at our dinner table over the weekend. These included Sara Autton from Fermex and ex chair of the British Society of Baking (BSB) with her husband Michael, incoming BSB chairman Paul Turner, and Niklaas Wolters from our German partners toolbox Software, Rachel Gunn and Philip Nelson from The Butterscotch Bakery in Glasgow, and the exuberant Suzanne Galbraith from Baker Perkins.
Cybake sponsored a new category at this year’s Scottish Baker of the Year competition, Manufacturer of the Year. Our first congratulations go out, therefore, to the winner of this year’s inaugural award, Carr’s Flour, which processes around 300,000 tonnes of wheat a year at its mills at Silloth, Maldon, and Kirkcaldy.
With customers like Bayne’s Bakers, Fisher & Donaldson and Scotbake, to name but a few, the Scottish bakery sector is increasingly key for Cybake. Because of this, we thought that the Scottish Bakers annual conference would be the perfect occasion to show off our new branding on our exhibition stand.
Our new look got an overwhelmingly positive response. My favourite was from Mich Turner who, in her usual gracious style, namechecked us from the podium, citing us as an exhibitor that gets bigger and better each year.
We ran a contest of our own on the Cybake stand. Visitors had to weigh up exactly what our recipe required on one of our new SG Systems scales in order to win luxury weekend away to York.
As it turned out, bakers are pretty good at weighing up – so most entries were spot on, which says a lot for bakers’ innate abilities. But, after a close fight, the winner was Dan Carr from Reading-based Warings Bakery. Congratulations Dan. Enjoy our wonderful home city.
Myself and the rest of the Cybake management team will be will be heading to Edinburgh in September for Scottish Bakers’ 125th Anniversary Ball. I’m really looking forward to it so if you are going too, I’ll see you there.
Jane Tyler, managing director, RedBlack Software. You can follow me on Twitter at @Jane_RedBlack
Jane Tyler is the managing director of Cybake and was the bakery software’s original creator. She is a regular speaker at food and technology conferences and is also known for championing the cause of food waste reduction.
