Booting up breakfast: Federation of Bakers pushes toast for kids
Kids can slot their pieces of toast into the breakfast boots holder – a play on the traditional British breakfast ‘egg and soldiers’ where toast (soldiers) is dipped in soft boiled egg. The 100 give-away products were snapped up by members of the public within a day.
Speaking to BakeryandSnacks.com, Gordon Polson, director of the Federation of Bakers, said the campaign was another example of its commitment to promoting bread as part of a healthy diet.
“Fundamentally, all we’re trying to do is remind people about the nutritional benefits of eating bread… To try and make that more attractive and quirky, we came up with this idea of toast soldiers. It is as simple as that,” he said.
Bread, he said, was a traditional product and one that had started to be taken for granted, but shouldn’t be.
Correcting misinformation… If we don’t do it, who else will?
Polson said there was a lot of misinformation in the public domain about foods and bread in particular. “People forget how important complex carbohydrates should be as a portion of the diet, and clearly bread is a part of that,” he said.
Breakfast remained one of the most popular eating occasions for bread, or toast, he said.
Asked if it was industry’s job to promote what foods should and should not be eaten, Polson replied: “Why not? What’s the alternative? There’s a lot of misinformation about bread, and if industry doesn’t correct that or put across an alternative message, then who will?”
Perfume, breakfast boots, what next?
In October last year, the Federation launched a toast-scented fragrance as part of the same on-going campaign – launched to coincide with London fashion week to encourage young women to think differently about bread.
“The Eau de Toast campaign was targeted at a slightly different audience. This breakfast boots campaign is clearly more aimed at families and children,” Polson said.
He said it was still early days for the Federation of Bakers when it came to launching national campaigns but, so far, they had generated plenty of interest and media noise.
He said the campaign work was something the Federation would continue to invest in particularly as traditional bread became less prominent in a diversifying and changing bakery sector.
“There’s a much greater variety of bakery products out there and our members are making those wider range of products. Somebody who 20 years ago may have made half a dozen types of bread may be making as many as 15 varieties now, including sandwich thins and even gluten-free,” he said.
