Sir, Just a bit of fan mail to Joanna Blythman for having the ovaries to say the obvious: ingredient quality matters, and is what drives the quality of the final product (‘What’s hiding in your pudding?’, 3 December).
Seems obvious, but it needs to be said more often as consumers are being lulled by large food retailers into thinking food prices should be falling, when food raw material prices are rising, and sharply, as Paul Lindley rightly states (guest editor Q&A).
Honeyrose Bakery is one of the few remaining wholesale bakeries that can also bake organic. We have now started producing non-organic for own-label customers that request it. They come for our 100% organic Honeyrose brand, but some ask us to engineer their products, which we are adept at, to meet their lower-cost targets.
We were, for example, going to make cakes for the UK’s largest chemist as we realised their own-label chocolate cake did not have any real chocolate, rather cocoa and “mayonnaise”. We got disheartened by their constant focus on price over quality, so in the end we had to walk away.
Our wish for Christmas: please retailers - treat consumers with respect and give them clean labels on honest products. They will reward you with their loyalty.
Lise Madsen, MD and founder, Honeyrose Bakery
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