For the love of sourdough: Former Cadbury execs target US and UK millennials with centuries-old Swedish crispbread recipe
Co-owner Wendy Wilson-Bett, who had previously worked in Cadbury’s marketing department for over 20 years, said Peter’s Yard has seen a growing interest in its premium and natural products since launching in the US four years ago.
“We wanted to create a timeless brand that would not easily come and go,” she said, adding it also had to have the ability to adapt to markets other than the UK.
“We looked at Europe, Australia and the US to see who else cares about quality food, including a love of sourdough… The US became the logical next step because of the similarity between the millennials in these two countries,” she added.
The history and tradition of Peter’s Yard
Co-founders Wilson-Bett and Ian Tencor were colleagues at Cadbury. Being married to a Swedish native, Tencor had always wanted to bring traditional Swedish baked goods to the UK.
In 2008, they left Cadbury and embarked on a fact-finding tour of the Scandinavian bakery market. They were redirected back to the UK to meet Peter Ljunquist, who ran a Swedish bakery in Edinburgh, and soon joined him as business partners.
Peter’s Yard began with the importation of 50kg of crispbread from Scandinavia. Wilson-Bett and Tencor then met John Lister, founder of Shipton Mill, Ljunquist’s flour supplier. Lister became the fourth member of the team and Peter’s Yard started producing its crispbreads in a craft bakery in north London.
According to Wilson-Bett, all their products are made using a traditional Swedish recipe and only four organic ingredients: whole-wheat organic flours, organic milk, honey and a naturally fermented mother starter.
She noted some of their crispbreads also have a hole in the center to honor life in Sweden hundreds of years ago.
“In the past, it was customary that large discs of crispbread were baked during the harvest ad left to preserve over the long Swedish winters,” said Wilson-Bett. “The discs were made with a central hole so they could be left on a wooden pie, often above the fireplace.”
Maintaining handcrafted feature
The company’s business strategy for the US differs from the one it has for the UK market, where Peter’s Yard targets mass channels such as Waitrose and Sainsbury. In the US, the company has its eyes firmly on niche categories like cheese shops.
“The size, scale and sheer number of distributors are clearly massive in the US, so we aimed at testing the market’s specialty sector and [are] not planning to go into Walmart and Kroger,” said Wilson-Bett.
Even though Peter’s Yard remains a small bakery brand, it has caught attention of some of the big food organizations, like the Specialty Food Association (SFA).
Its pink peppercorn crispbread and fig sourdough crispbread both picked up the New Product Award in the cracker category at SFA’s Sofi Awards competitions in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
“We are overjoyed to win the award for the second year running, which has helped us gain new listings with a number of key specialty retailers and with larger premium store groups like Bristol Farms, Mollie Stones, as well as securing listings in two new regions of Whole Foods on the East Coast,” said Wison-Bett.
To maintain its handcrafted look, Wilson-Bett said Peter’s Yard uses the minimum amount of equipment, mainly relying on human input.
However, to cope with the growing demand especially from the US, she said they obviously have to change the size of its bakery. “We also have to make sure we don’t take away what makes our products unique, so we will be using the same equipment.”
She said they expect sales to grow by 20% by the end of 2018.
“We may even consider local production in the US,” she added.
