No more New Pastries

Our bakery had a policy of introducing one new type of pastry each month. Everyone loved the idea and we would see a large number of people each time the new pastry was introduced. Unfortunately, our pastry chef did not have any idea what do introduce and often people would hate the new pastry.

The idea of a new pastry was a sound one as it generated a great deal of publicity for us but more often than not, it was a poor choice. A business management consultant I knew offered me some advice on new product development. He explained that you had to do some research to find out what your customers liked or thought they wanted. He offered to do a survey of our customers for a month to see what he could find out.

I looked online and found a free business plan that I could use and I began to study up on everything to do with product development including marketing and promotions. After the survey was completed, to our surprise, most of our customers weren’t looking for exotic pastries, but just wanted more flavors of many of the products we already carried.

The next month, we introduced a new and improved éclair and offered six new fillings. We couldn’t keep the éclairs on the shelves to save our lives. Business was up by almost ten percent in the first two weeks of offering more flavors. The following week, I invited the local paper to be present when we unveiled our newest pastry. This time we had a new version of a old favorite except that it had a spicy coffee flavoring.

Research had shown that most of the customers loved coffee flavors and this time was no exception. We got a lot of free media coverage and today we are doing almost 30% more business consulting firm than we were at this time last year.