What used to be just Doolie’s Bakery at Land of Canaan on the East Bank Demerara is in the throes of a transformation that seeks to provide its customers with a service that matches the very best that the industry has to offer.
The rebranding begins with its new ‘catchy’ name, Dem Bake but more than that the company’s owner has decided to secure the services of Kenneth Scrubb, a Marketing-trained General Manager who has told Stabroek Business that Dem Bake’s ambition is nothing short of seeking to take a place of prominence in the local market.
Scrubb believes that Dem Bake is already batting on a friendly wicket arising out of the reputation that it has already built with its clients. “We are moving in the direction of a vision that has been seen by Peter Abia, the company’s owner,” Scrubb says. The new General Manager has himself been with the company for about five months and talks enthusiastically about its investment in a training partnership with the local Action Coach franchise.
The sought after upward move is unmistakable. In its earlier incarnation what is now Dem Bake had expended much time and effort ‘putting down’ roots in coastal communities in Georgetown, East Coast, East Bank, Parika and Linden. Six trucks currently serve these areas. Insofar as Scrubb is concerned it is simply a matter of ‘changing gears’ whilst taking its traditional customers along on a more exalted journey.
One senses in Scrubb’s marketing instincts a recognition not only of the popularity of baked products – bread, cakes and pastries – among Guyanese consumers. He is, it seems, also aware of the sense of adventure that attends their consumption pattern. The priority, clearly, is to compel the brand to challenge itself to match the best in the business and to seize its own fair share of the market.
Dem Bake begins, he says, from the perspective that for all its significant growth over the years the local bakery industry remains “underserved.” Accordingly, going forward, management will be challenging its eighty staff to take the production ‘controls,’ its baking prowess largely in the hands of a twenty-four-year old Head Baker whom Scrubb says is both skillful and disciplined. The internal transformation, the company’s General Manager says, includes the imminent acquisition of a range of upgraded baking equipment. Those, along with an ambitious marketing campaign that seeks to put Dem Bake’s brand ‘in lights’ comprise the company’s preoccupations at this time.
