Felix Neuberger – Lieken Bread and Bakery

Felix Neuberger is a Head of Marketing at Lieken Bread and Bakeries. Lieken is one of the biggest German manufacturers of bread and other baked goods, with heritage brands such as Golden Toast and Lieken Urkorn. Lieken produces more than 500,000 tons of bread a year in its seven factories, using 270,000 tons of wheat. With a rising focus on price due to the various crises, Neuberger’s main task consists of communicating the brand’s values, such as tradition and quality, as well as each product’s additional unique selling points.

TACKLING THE IMPACT OF CRISES AND PRIVATE LABELS

“It is no secret that price inflation and the energy crisis have a huge impact on all steps in production and distribution. ”All ovens operate on gas, which makes the current situation very challenging with operating costs increased fivefold,” explains Felix. “In addition, employee costs are increasing, and as a consequence, profits are crippling severely. It was inevitable to partially compensate for this increase in costs with some higher consumer prices,” Neuberger further elaborates.

Compared to the price increases that bakeries reported, Lieken’s prices remained moderate. Due to its size, the company has the means to plan and, consequently, buy and store key ingredients such as flour and oil seeds in large quantities to reach lower prices. While this gives Lieken a clear advantage compared to smaller bakeries, their biggest competitors currently are the private labels of supermarkets and discounters.

Neuberger describes their position. “We are a well-established brand focusing on high quality and innovation.” However, competitors have large media budgets and campaigns to demonstrate that they offer a much cheaper private-label alternative.” As Neuberger explains the message of these campaigns, “Look, we have a cheaper option, and that option is not the well-established brand.” Next to this, the competition follows us in a slipstream, copying our improvements and changes in categories and colouring.

“Lieken does pioneer work, but we get copied quickly by private labels.”

VISIBILITY AT THE SUPERMARKET SHELF IS OUR MOMENT OF TRUTH

As said, these direct comparisons and quick copies pose a great challenge for Lieken. With a strong focus on price, Lieken’s Moment of Truth is having a good position on the supermarket shelf. To justify Lieken higher prices, Neuberger is currently working on expressing the brand’s values such as tradition, high quality, reliability, innovation and the German and European ingredients that come with Golden Toast and Lieken Urkorn more clearly.

“With a rising focus on price, our main task lies in communicating the brand’s values as well as each product’s additional unique selling points.”

PRETESTING AND PREDICTING PRIOR TO THE NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH

Whereas the recent crises have created a strong focus on the price and thusly turnover and revenue, pioneer Lieken also looks at performance in product-market combinations. “For instance, we analyse which target group in a specific age group purchases what products in which market, so we can identify gaps per market,” explains Neuberger. Part of the responsibility of his market research department is to spot and predict trends. New ideas are pitched and discussed with Lieken’s product board consisting of decision-makers from sales, management, marketing, and research and development. Afterwards, approved concepts get assessed on calculability and future potential. If a product withstands these checks, the concept is further developed and then implemented. Finally, a product line test reveals whether the factories can produce the new product at a constant level.”

“For special innovations, concept and pack tests have been proven essential for a successful product introduction.”

This process has resulted in quite some innovations with recent product introductions of Lieken’s bagel, mini toasts, Purkorn (a bread entirely made from seeds), Urkorn (a traditional bread), two organic sandwich bread, and a spelt toast, winning the German consumer award Produkt des Jahres 2023!

THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING INNOVATIONS ON THE MARKET

While Lieken clearly has no issues finding and developing new ideas, getting the product listed currently proves to be a challenge. According to Neuberger, the demand for innovation is currently low.

“It’s all about the price, which makes it a challenge if you want to be innovative”.

Felix continues: “Like every year, we wanted to launch our new products in March or April, but not until October were they listed.” But a creative mind like Neuberger won’t get disheartened by that. With a promising smile, he happily ends the conversation by teasing us with new upcoming innovations.