There was a time when the baking on the cafe counter asked nothing of anyone. The coffee had to be good, and the food had to be good, but the banana bread, the caramel slice and the muffin sat there on their own terms. A customer pointed, you plated, and nobody wondered whether they should. The slice was the small reward at the end of an order.

For a growing share of your customers that’s no longer how it goes. They still want something sweet with their flat white, but they now want it to be good for them as well as good to eat. The customer who used to point now pauses, leans in to read the card, asks a question, and sometimes leaves with only the coffee.

This article looks at why a treat now has to offer more than taste, and why the cafe baking customers come back for is the kind where being good for you and being good to eat come from the same ingredients.

What has changed in the way customers choose cafe baking?

Customers now choose cafe baking with a question in mind that they never used to ask, which is whether it’s worth having at all. The treat must earn its place in their day.

Part of what’s driving this is how often people come in. For many of your regulars the cafe is part of the daily routine, the coffee on the way to work or the stop between school drop-off and the office. A slice once a fortnight needs no excuse. The same slice every morning starts to need one, and the customer is the first to notice.

At the counter it looks like this. Someone walks along the display reading the cards before they look at the food. What’s in the slice? What’s the muffin sweetened with? They’re looking for a reason to say yes, and when the baking gives them none, they order the flat white and leave it there.

This isn’t the customer who needs a gluten-free or dairy-free option, since dietary needs have always shaped what cafes bake. This is the ordinary customer with no restriction at all. Because there’s no single request to answer, they’re easy to overlook.

Why do so many healthy bakes sell once and not again?

The obvious response is to add something. A scoop of protein powder goes into the brownie, seeds get pressed onto the top of the slice, and the card lists everything that’s been put in and everything that’s been left out.

Goodness added this way usually tastes like it. Protein powder can pull moisture out of a batter, so the brownie comes out dry. The customer buys it once because the card persuaded them, eats it, and finds it a little drier, a little plainer, a little less of a treat than the one it replaced. They don’t buy it again.

For the cafe, that shows up slowly. The new bake sells well while it’s a novelty, then drifts to the corner of the display where things wait for the end of the day. It’s easy to conclude that customers didn’t really want the healthier option, when more often they wanted it and it let them down.

What makes healthier cafe baking worth coming back for?

The bakes that work are the ones where what makes them good for you and what makes them good to eat are the same thing. Customers feel that straight away, even if they couldn’t say why.

Wholemeal spelt flour is a useful example. It carries more of the grain than refined white flour, and it gives a loaf or a muffin a nutty depth that plain flour can’t.

Dates work in a slice for a similar reason. They replace some of the refined sugar, and the caramel richness they bring is a large part of why a date slice is so good. They’re still sugar, though, and a card that pretends otherwise won’t convince anyone. What dates offer is a sweetness with more flavour in it, and some of the fruit’s fibre alongside. That’s a fair thing to put in front of a customer, and it needs no defending because they can taste it.

The shift worth making is in which ingredients you choose. Look for the ones whose benefit turns up as flavour or texture, and the bake explains itself without a list of claims attached.

Where do superfood ingredients belong in cafe baking?

Superfood ingredients belong in cafe baking wherever they add something the customer can taste, see or feel in the bite. Used that way, they add nourishment to a bake without needing to announce it. Used as a label, they’re another version of the protein brownie.

Many cafes already use these ingredients at the smoothie counter or in the acai bowl, and they carry into baking better than people expect. They’re already on the shelf, and your staff already know how they behave, which takes much of the guesswork out of trying them in the oven.

A freeze-dried raspberry powder will colour an icing pink and make it taste of raspberry, which artificial colour can’t do. Seeds give a loaf crunch and a toasted edge before they give it anything else. In each case the customer notices the ingredient as part of the eating.

The test for any of these is simple. If you took the ingredient out, would the customer miss it when they ate the bake, or only when they read the card? It’s worth asking of every bake you sell, not just the new ones.

What does this mean for the cafe that bakes its own?

For the cafe that bakes its own, this change is an opportunity, because what makes a bake healthier is decided when the recipe is written and the ingredients are chosen. A cafe that bakes in-house makes those decisions itself. It can choose the flour for its flavour, sweeten with fruit where fruit does the job better, and build a bake around an ingredient because of what it brings to the bite.

It can also listen. The questions customers ask across the counter about what’s in the slice, what sweetens it and what it’s made with are a running account of what they want from the baking, and they can shape the next batch. A few months of paying attention to them will tell you more than a survey would.

None of this means the classics must go. Some customers will always want the caramel slice exactly as it is, and a display of nothing but virtuous bakes would lose them.

To find ingredients that make your baking healthier in ways your customers can taste, browse the Opera Foods baking range and the superfoods range.

This article was reproduced on this site with permission from operafoods.com.au the “Café Baking Ingredients Supplier”.
See original article:- Why Do Customers Expect More From Cafe Baking?