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pizzazz!
Pretzel
Long a fourth, if not fifth, fiddle on the South African savoury snacks scene — pretzels are
starting to give a virtuoso performance. Orchestrating this growing nibbling phenomenon
are two well-known snack supremos and their beautiful new pretzel factory in Cape Town.
Brenda Neall went to find out more about The Pretzel Company.
T
HE Baker Street boys are back!
There’s no keeping a good
snacks man down, and two of
the best — Bernard Immelman and
David Mostert – entrepreneurial snack
masterminds who put Baker Street
Snacks on the South African map and
palate in the 1990s, are at it again, this
time with pretzels.
Following Baker Street’s takeover in
2000 by National Brands and closure
of the plant in Cape Town, Immelman
and Mostert went their separate ways,
but last July regrouped their talents to
do what they know they’re very good
at: making and marketing mainstream
differentiated snack brands, the very
essence of the Baker Street ethos. The
gap they spied this time was pretzels
— a dormant category that, while huge
in North America and Europe, has
barely ever raised a notch on South
Africa’s snack volume charts. This is
changing rapidly.
As Immelman says: ‘If you can’t
own a category, create a new
category.’ And this is exactly what
they have set out to do by establishing
The Pretzel Company. The production
arm is a greenfield, state-of-the-art
pretzel plant adjacent to Cape Town
International Airport. The marketing
strategy is a broad one — to target
markets across the LSM spectrum.
A mere eight months down the line,
the plant operates 24/6 to cope with
the demand. Even Immelman, ever
understated and inherently modest,
is blown away by their pretzels’
popularity and buoyant sales. As
an example, some five million
25g pretzel packs/month are currently
selling just through independent
wholesalers countrywide — and this is
but one market they serve.
Their timing with pretzels would
appear to be perfect: upmarket
consumers are prowling for healthier,
guilt-free, premium snacking options,
while those in the mass market want a
FOOD REVIEW - AUGUST 2004
Bernard Immelman and David Mostert — on the road to snacking success a second
time around, and seated at their boardroom table where it all began. The table used
to belong to Mostert’s grandfather and it was around this forum that their first megasnack hit, Baker Street Snacks, was born.
tasty, filling snack at a cheap price.
Oven-baked pretzels, with their far
lower fat content (from 4g-13g/100g
depending on the variant) and price
point, as compared to other savoury
snack options, fit the bill perfectly.
Immelman is quick to point out that
cheap doesn’t mean inferior in this
context, a business philosophy garnered from the legendary Anton Rupert
who, as a Baker Street Snacks’ shareholder, once visited the factory with
his grandchildren. Immelman has
never forgotten the sage advice he
proffered on that occasion: ‘If you plan
to launch a product that you wouldn’t
use yourself – don’t!’
‘Our business strategy is simple —
we offer an unbelievable product in
stunning packaging at a cheap
price. This appeals to everyone — with
product at the lowest possible cost
being our lever to get into the market,’
comments Immelman.
Despite Immelman being a gifted
marketing man and brand nut, the duo
has taken heed of lessons learnt at
Baker Street, and have committed
themselves to being mostly an
out-source manufacturer, making for
others rather than developing their
own brands. ‘Our model is to eschew
the hassles and costs of marketing, a
sales force and distribution — we want
to keep overheads down and the
business as simple as possible at this
stage of our careers,’ he says.
Before committing their millions
to Reading Bakery Systems,
Pennsylvania-based supplier of the
pretzel line, and other vendors,
Immelman and Mostert first negotiated
a contract with Simba to produce its
new Pretzels brand and were © 14
13
F
thus assured of viable volumes through
their plant. House brands for Clicks
and Woolworths followed soon after
— and all are ‘flying’, reports
Immelman. Pick ’n Pay Choice will
launch shortly.
But they have been dwarfed by the
massive take-off in the informal sector
of micro-bags of pretzels, packed under
The Pretzel Company brand, and
which accounts for half of current
sales. This purchasing behaviour goes
against all preconceptions that pretzels
are an upmarket, even staid, eating
choice. Immelman puts it down to
affordability and great flavour: ‘Our
flavours are brilliant – contemporary
and tasty, really putting pizzazz into
boring dough. The mass market, especially, is driven by taste. Overall, the
whole category has taken a huge leap
forward in terms of excitement and
consumer appeal.’
And talking excitement, there’s
heaps extra in The Pretzel Company
pipeline. Expect to see more and more
of their packs in airport lounges and
on board aircraft — most airlines
are phasing out nuts because of their
allergy risks and replacing them with
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other snacks, especially pretzels.
Further, the snacks sector is driven by
innovation — and if there’s one item
that presents boundless opportunity,
it’s pretzels.
‘Beyond the infinite possibilities of
the flavour playground, either in the
dough or on the snack surface, there
are innumerable shapes to work with,
and we can have fun with different
types of dough, whether it’s wheat,
rice, oats or maize-based,’ notes
Immelman.
Immelman and logistics manager,
Michael Arendse, in a sea of pretzel
baler bags destined for independent
wholesalers.
While all under wraps at this stage,
if The Pretzel Company’s new and very
different prototypes tasted by this
journalist are anything to go by, South
Africa’s snack-loving consumers
have much to look forward to. Oh
yes, indeed, the Baker Street boys
are back! ■
FOOD REVIEW - AUGUST 2004
F
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Company’s
factory
Pretzel
The
Q
UITE contrary to the South
African business norm, this is
a partnership that doesn’t
believe in dilly-dallying. As soon as
their business was bedded down,
Immelman and Mostert‘s factory
building plans shifted into turbocharged mode. Work on the greenfield
site at Cape Town’s Airport Industria
began last August — and was
completed in super-quick time. The
first pretzels left their doors just three
months later in November albeit, they
concede, amid some building chaos.
Immelman and Mostert are stylish
operators, and their factory reflects this
in its modernistic American Prairie
design and tasteful home-from-home
office furnishings. The office quarters
overlook the entire production floor –
giving management ie Immelman and
Mostert, a bird’s eye view of operations. The pair is very hands on at this
stage — Immelman takes care of prod-
FOOD REVIEW - AUGUST 2004
uct development and sales, while
Mostert, apart from his financial sass, is
technically well-versed and readily
gets his fingers dirty tweaking and tuning the whole production and packaging line.
In keeping with their clean-and-lean
business model, The Pretzel Company
has a trim headcount of only some
40 people overseeing the three daily
shifts. Almost all staff are ex-Baker
Street employees who have either come
out of retirement or left other jobs to
join their old bosses — an avowal of
loyalty and trust that Immelman
describes as ‘extremely special’.
Key to the factory is the pretzel
extruder and oven supplied out-thebox by Reading Bakery Systems in the
US, and installed and commissioned
by Heat and Control, its local agent.
Heat and Control also designed the
processing plant layout, and undertook
the turnkey design, manufacture,
Looking down the line, from extruder
to the stacked oven and drying kiln.
installation and commissioning of
the seasoning system and distribution
conveyors.
‘Reading has supplied the Spectrum
oven which includes a convection © 16
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The application of Honey
Mustard, Sweet Chilli, Cheddar
Cheese, BBQ Tomato, Salt &
Black Pepper . . . pretzels lend
themselves to infinite flavour
options.
Pretzels leave the extruder and head
for a caustic bath before baking.
module above a convection drying kiln.
It has a capacity of some 200kg/hour of
finished baked pretzels — and there’s
plenty of space available to lengthen
the oven to incrementally increase this
volume,’ says Jeff Rossouw, GM of Heat
and Control SA.
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The oven and kiln are separate
zones stacked on top of each
other to save space. Temperature
is controlled by the penthouse
burner and all circulation air is
controlled by fan speed. While
the convection oven zone is used
for setting or colouring the product, the kiln is used for low temperature drying.
At the front end of line is a
low-pressure dough extruder
that allows high-speed production of complex shapes by forcing
it through dies mounted on its
end. These dies are interchangeable,
with The Pretzel Company having the
option to produce a variety of pretzel
shapes as well as pretzel sticks with an
installed guillotine cutter. Before entering the oven, the pretzels pass through
a bath of caustic solution, a stage
which creates their traditional glazed
finish.
After flavouring
(oil-based slurry)
and further drying,
the pretzels move
through to two
TNA Robag vertical form-fill-seal
systems for packing. Making a
big entré into
the local snacks
m a r k e t , these
machines offer
impressive capacity combined with
a low reject rate
and excellent bag
seal quality.
The whole
operation is clean
and clutter-free,
with ample room for
the expansion that
seems likely on its
current growth path.
With clients as highprofile as Simba and
Woolworths, T h e
P r e t z e l Company
is working towards
HACCP
a n d
ISO9001 accreditation. ■
Packers at The Pretzel Company battle
to keep pace with the packaging capacity of the two TNA Robag VFFS systems. The pretzel oven is at the rear.
QC matters are handled by Jackie
Williams and Joyce Luthuli. Pretzels
have a 26-week shelf life.
FOOD REVIEW - AUGUST 2004