Market innovation

A bakery industry snapshot from 2011 by the Center for Economic Vitality indicates that the U.S. baking industry was comprised of commercial and retail baking operations that combined to generate $33 billion in annual revenues. Biscuits continue to experience a higher current value sales growth. This is largely due to consumers trading up to more expensive products and consumers preferring smaller pack sizes, which helps contribute to a higher value sales growth. Savory crackers and biscuits experienced the highest value sales growth, but as consumers become increasingly health conscious, more have become inclined towards savory crackers and biscuits such as wheatmeal biscuits as compared to sweet biscuits. Within sweet biscuits, filled biscuits registered the highest current value sales.

In order to survive in the ever-changing marketplace, both bakery wholesalers and retailers must adapt to challenges faced by the industry. This might mean coping with widely fluctuating food and fuel prices by using futures products to hedge against losses, or dealing with a saturated and consolidating market where large supermarkets are producing in-house products, increasing competition. Small bakeries, unless they automate or provide some other distinct value to their customers, may find that they cannot compete with larger bakeries and their economies of scale. In some cases, the latter buy out the former, as when Flowers Foods acquired Lepage Bakeries in 2012. Through 2016, the number of companies in the U.S. bread sector is predicted to shrink by 2.3 percent.

The bakery is a stable market around the world, which as been consistently giving revenues. By only looking at the industry in Singapore, it has a SGD 193 millions in revenue in 2012.(Orissa International,2013) Judging from the industrial size and demand, there is an opportunity for a better innovation that benefit the industry. This can increase the production efficiency and thereby giving competitive edges to the companies.

BakerBot is hereby introduced as a system that manufactures cookies autonomously.