The sisters behind a successful Scottish cake-baking business turned to their customers to boost sales at a time when most people are cutting calories and trying to save pounds.
The owners of Three Sisters Bake, who are known for their mouth-watering tray bakes and empire biscuits, put out an appeal for recipe suggestions to mark Burns Day after "missing a trick" last year.
Siblings Gillian, Linsay and Nichola Reith said they had underestimated how popular their Irn Bru-flavoured biscuit would be, after it was launched shortly before January 25.
The business couldn’t keep up with demand for overseas orders, receiving interest from customers as far afield as the United States, and realised it was a missed opportunity to boost the business during the fallow period.
This year they asked customers to come up with ideas for Scottish-themed cakes and biscuits and received hundreds of suggestions, including a Buckfast Brownie, which they insist is much more appealing than it sounds.
“That was our suggestion to get the ideas flowing,” said Gillian Reith, the oldest of the three sisters.
“Somebody actually came back and said Blackberry is actually an amazing flavour to go alongside Buckfast so that is one idea that we will definitely do at one point.”
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“In the bakery industry you rely on moving from seasonal event to seasonal event, whether it’s Mother’s Day, Easter and the huge lead up to Christmas.
“January is a bit of a dearth of anything. People don’t want to spend money and they certainly don’t want to eat anything over-indulgent.
“The only thing that happens really is Burns Day. We’ve always tried to do something but it was always a bit of a hard sell.”
“Last year, we decided to do a range of Scottish empires, one of which will be Irn Bru. We distilled the drin down to create the flavour.
“As soon as we put the first photo on social media it blew up. We had people emailing us asking if we could post them to America.
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“Unfortunately we only started selling them before Burns Day and immediately had to drop the idea and move on to Valentine’s Day so we definitely didn’t take full advantage of the interest and demand.”
The sisters received more than 400 suggestions for new bakes including a Tunnocks Teacake Empire Biscuit, Edinburgh Rock cheesecake, Clootie Dumpling Blondies and a range based on Billy Connolly’s best comedy lines and are now creating some of their favourite suggestions.
“I cannot believe the level of feedback and interest we got,” said the baker.
“I said to the girls it’s a bit of a waste to limit these to January, I think this has probably shown us that there is enough interest to use these ideas year-round and come up with a rotating list of Scottish-themed bakes, which there isn’t really anyone doing at the moment.”
In June 2020, the sisters were forced to close two of their cafes at Quarrier’s Village in Kilmacolm and in Killearn Village Hall in the wake of the pandemic when hospitality took a big hit.
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The family also took the decision not to renew the lease on a cake bar in Glasgow’s west end to focus on the wholesale and wedding catering business, which is based at Killearn Village Hall.
“It was at the start of energy bills rocketing and we already had the overheads of the bakery at Quarrier’s Village and we were thinking do we really do we need another set of overheads when we can produce more products for wholesale deliver across Central Scotland,” said Ms Reith.
“We are starting to build up a bigger customer base and able to offer a bigger menu to the customers that we do have.
“We started selling boxed cakes in 2016 and it always ticked along but during Covid it really, really took off and that has now become a huge part of the business.
“Tray bakes lend themselves to it and ours have a really good shelf life.
“I think over the pandemic people realised, you can send other things through the post as a gift. You don’t have to just send flowers to say thank-you or get well soon.”
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