Several brands changed their courses or threw out their rulebooks over the last couple of years, to cater to a shifting pandemic market. But Kolkata-based entrepreneur Punit Ghai took his retail expertise to branch out to an entirely different sector altogether. Ghai, who owns the popular city-based shoe label Hamlyn, introduced his bakery label Bake Me Good, along with his wife Megha, in the middle of 2020.
Within just a few months, the label has been able to impress Kolkatans with its line-up of freshly baked burger buns, whole wheat pizza bases, milk loaves and more.
“We bake fresh every day and we don’t run too high on stocks. On food apps, we’re ready to take that hit, but we don’t want to compromise on quality. Bake Me Good’s motto is actually not too different from Hamlyn’s, we’re okay with over-demand and lesser supply (haha!). Our priority is serving fresh, healthy products that everybody can use,” Ghai tells us.
Ghai reveals selling shoes and selling bread isn’t all that different when you know your audience. Bake Me Good’s products are currently available at around 42 venues across Kolkata, besides food apps and online platforms.
“We are a lockdown brand — from our starting phase to our growth phase, we’ve had to be conscious about the basic models and the resources. But I’d say we’ve been lucky in the way people have accepted our products, that too, at a tricky time,” Ghai shares.
My Kolkata had a chat with Ghai to learn more about his plans:
My Kolkata: Tell us what made you venture into the baking circuit
Punit Ghai: There are quite a few aspects that made it happen. The one thing which we noticed was that whenever people talked about their daily bread, it’s either a brand like Modern or maybe something upscale like Flurys.
When the lockdown happened, people began looking for readily available bread, there was a huge vacuum even in the commercial circuit. My father-in-law happens to own a confectionary business. During the lockdown, we were left with very little staff, and my wife, who’s also the co-founder of our brand, would use the bakery’s kitchen to make kulchas and pizza bases. We’d often bring them home or share them with our loved ones. Eventually, we decided to start our own brand.
We started getting orders from the get-go, we were asked to supply food to one of the biggest hospitals in the city and we received orders from one of the biggest corporate houses in Kolkata too. The response was really overwhelming.
You have perfected a unique delivery model…
Yes, we have our own riders and our products are featured at more than 40 locations across the city. You can spot our products at a store within The Saturday Club’s premises and at CCFC. We are listed on Blinkit, and our products are available on Fresh Aisle, besides a number of other platforms. We took a conscious call of not opening a place of our own and we’re also selling through food apps, and at the moment it’s working out for us.
What would you say your USP is?
I would say our kitchen model — it’s quite different. We take orders till 8 or 9 pm. We start our production around 10 pm. Our work goes on throughout the night, we are fermenting till 4-5 am. We live by the word ‘fresh’. We don’t use preservatives, this is something I’ve been very careful about. The reason we’re usually asked to stay off bread or to change our flours by our doctors is that there are so many preservatives and chemicals that go into most of the bread products in the market. We really did not want that for our brand.
Some of your wheat variants are in demand…
Yes, our customers have helped us time and again by suggesting what we should bake or telling us about their daily bread needs. Our wheat-based pizza bases or burgers are doing better than maida variants, our multi-grain loaf is a French loaf melded with wheat and multi-grains. We are even making charcoal buns which are doing well.
Are you planning to scale up?
We definitely want to… but it will be a challenge. Our products have been able to do better than some pretty popular brands, especially on online platforms and we definitely have a chance of expanding our brand beyond Kolkata. We treat the brand like our own child, my wife and I are at the bakery by 4 am every day, be it Rakhi or Diwali — very few brands work with so much commitment. So, we’re confident that we can scale up soon.
We are trying to explore ways to expand the shelf lives on pizza bases and we are trying to make lavash and melba toasts suited to the distribution model.
Has your experience with Hamlyn helped you with Bake Me Good?
For the first three months of the pandemic, this is the only thing we were looking forward to because factories were shut, retailing had come to a standstill and everything that usually kept me going had come to a halt.
Initially, it was a bit of a challenge. But the manufacturing team for Hamlyn has also grown so they are used to not having me around that much.
We’ve managed to move from micro-management to a macro model and we did it rather fast. Funnily, we’ve grown Bake Me Good in the Hamlyn model where we haven’t spent too much money on publicity or other aspects of marketing but we’ve solely focused on the end products. We’ve always believed there’s no better promotion than the end user telling someone that they like your products. We have chosen to let the brand love grow organically.
MK recommends: Charcoal buns, lavash, tomato bread and wheat kulchas
