Muffin R&D Process Innovation: A Case Study

How a forward-thinking national grocery brand streamlined in-store bakery OPS with pre-deposited muffin batter.

The Muffin Challenge:
Messy, Wasteful — and a Pain in the Payroll.

Our customer, a culinary-focused in-store bakery of a national grocery chain, was struggling with in-kitchen operational challenges around their muffin category, including intensive labor needs, inconsistent results and unacceptable food waste. In addition, the customer was juggling a patchwork of US muffin manufacturers, all with differing product and process needs. To realize efficiencies, the retailer wished to transition to a national program and gain a more consistent, Clean Label ISB muffin — all while reducing labor and waste.

Conducting a top-to-bottom bakery process review, our Muffin R&D team discovered the customer was still using scoop and bake muffin batter. This is a labor-intensive process whereby buckets of frozen muffin batter must be thawed slowly to a workable temperature and then manually portioned into muffin pans, only after which the kitchen staff can manually add the messy toppings like sprinkles, drizzle, nuts, chocolates, berries and streusel. The slow thaw time of scoop and bake muffin batter buckets meant the in-store bakeries were continually struggling with shortages, overages, and un-used batter expiration, resulting in waste and sub-optimal sales.

The Craftmark Bakery Solution:
Pre-Topped, Pre-Deposited Muffin Batter.

CraftMark Bakery presented a time/labor study comparing scoop and bake muffins to frozen pre-deposited muffin batter (PDM), and quantified the savings opportunity. Our research showed the customer how they could save millions of dollars in labor and dramatically reduce bakery ingredients waste by switching to frozen, ready to bake muffins. On top of the in-kitchen labor efficiencies, we showed that our pre-portioned muffin innovation solutions — where frozen trays of pre-topped muffins simply go from freezer to oven — could deliver additional benefits such as greater consistency, reduced waste, and better inventory control. Lastly, operations could be streamlined and made consistent all across the USA.

The detailed business case we developed convinced this well-known ISB bakery to make the switch to pre-topped, freezer to oven muffin batter.

CraftMark’s Muffin R&D team worked closely with the customer’s culinary team to develop a muffin recipe formulation for Clean Label pre-deposited muffin batters and toppings that met their strict quality, flavor and texture criteria — and the delicious results can be enjoyed today across the chain’s hundreds of ISB locations throughout the United States.

Muffin R&d Best Practices:
Pre-Topped is the Icing on the Cake.

When it comes to muffin research and development, it’s not just about muffin recipe formulation. Process innovation — the how — is a critical component for success, whether you need muffins for Foodservice or Instore Bakery. No matter how good the muffin recipes, when a bakery is using inefficient processes — either commercial muffin mix or scoop and bake muffin batter — the in-kitchen operations are messy, wasteful, inconsistent, and labor intensive.

With today’s operational challenges, there’s no better way for quick service restaurants or in-store bakeries to produce freshly baked gourmet muffins with delicious toppings than with frozen, pre-deposited muffin batters.

CraftMark Bakery’s pre-topped muffin manufacturing was the icing on the cake, and the reason for our success with this customer’s RFP. Since reducing labor was a key goal, having frozen muffin batters pre-topped with streusels, berries and chocolates was a major differentiator. Our high-tech muffin line capabilities for handling toppings allows us to remain a muffin supplier of choice, even when going head-to-head against the largest muffin manufacturers in America.

Muffin Innovation Take-Aways:
It Takes a Business Case.

A key takeaway from this muffin innovation case study is about process. CraftMark Bakery consulted closely with our ISB muffin customer to take a hard look at what was actually happening in the kitchen. Deep discovery and analysis process built the foundations of a multi-million dollar business case, which in turn enabled our customer to make difficult but fact-based decisions to change a process across hundreds of locations, coast to coast across the USA.

Change on this scale isn’t easy, but when you have a strong partner at your side, advocating for your interests and being fact-based, the result can be incredible bakery process improvements and a huge financial return on investment.

At CraftMark Bakery, our bakery Innovation and R&D team includes not just muffin recipe development experts, proof and bake bread specialists, flatbread authorities and cookie adepts . . . we also have seasoned Process Innovation people who know the stresses of commercial kitchens, and can pinpoint where things go wrong operationally in Foodservice and ISB spaces. That knowledge and expertise is then applied as we go the extra mile in developing innovative bakery solutions for our customers.

Make the Switch to PDMs for Your in-store Bakery.

Are you ready to bring the benefits of pre-deposited muffin batter to your ISB Bakery? Contact the wholesale frozen muffin batter experts at CraftMark Bakery to get started with PDM muffins for In-Store Bakery.