About Us
Our Businesses
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About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
The Golden brand is synonymous with crumpets for Australians. Golden has been producing crumpet rounds since 1959 and was acquired by ABF in 1987. We quickly began to expand our product range to include pikelets, similar to a scotch pancake, and pancakes. Encouraged by our success, we continued to innovate in subsequent decades, introducing mini pikelets, flavoured pikelets, sliced snacking loaves and, most recently in 2018, waffles.
Today our products are stocked by leading retailers. We are proud to be one of Australia’s most recognised grocery brands with strong penetration among households: half of households purchase at least one Golden product a year and the average consumer purchases five. We are also one of Australia’s most trusted brands: more than two-thirds of consumers agree that Golden is a ‘brand they trust’.
This popularity and trust is driven by our flagship product, the crumpet round. This product accounts for more than 60% of our sales by value and 50% of units sold. According to recent consumer data, our crumpet rounds ranked first in the Bakery Snacks category and second in the Total Bakery category.
Crumpets appeal more to customers in winter as colder weather draws us all towards ‘comfort foods’. So our products have a seasonal skew with sales of crumpets and other baked products higher during winter. To support the popularity of the Golden range during winter we use limited time offers (LTO) to introduce seasonal flavours and generate news coverage and customer interest. Our most recent LTO was a sconeflavoured, sliced snacking loaf. Launched in April 2022, it received huge press coverage reflecting the excitement that our products generate in the Australian media and among consumers. We supported the launch with point of sale materials, branded social media posts and special features in customer catalogues. Consumer feedback has been very positive. By the end of July 2022 more than 1.1 million scone loaves had been sold. These LTOs talk to the brand’s ‘never a boring bite’ positioning and are rotated each season, introducing new flavours or bringing back older flavours based on consumer feedback. Previous flavours have included crumpet toast and cinnamon donut toast, and this is the second time we have featured the scone loaf since its first appearance in 2013.
At Golden, we cherish how much our customers love our products and we want them to enjoy their crumpet moment and have a light and positive emotive response to the brand. This consumer response is reflected in our brand essence, ‘joyfully scrumptious’, which we protect and enhance through communications campaigns and positive engagement with consumers on social media featuring our distinctive logo, font, colours and Mr Golden character. Star of the show in our winter 2022 communications campaign was Golden’s hero product, the crumpet round. Rolled out across TV, social media, digital and e-commerce channels, as well as being supported by expanded in-store and catalogue promotions, the campaign was a great success and we saw increased sales, particularly in crumpet rounds where growth was 18% compared with the previous winter.
The Bakery Snacks segment is worth some AUD $470m and we have identified two main opportunities for growth: increasing the number of occasions for customers to embrace snacking; and expanding the product portfolio to offer more variety and choice. We are well positioned to serve this growing market as our products are already often consumed outside traditional mealtimes The introduction of waffles into our product range in 2018 gave consumers a new Golden product to enjoy and we are continuing to innovate to meet growing demand. A number of our new product concepts have had very favourable feedback and a high level of consumer purchasing intent during testing and we are excited at the prospect of bringing these to market.
The major retailers have also identified bakery snacks as a key area for growth and we have been working closely with teams at the leading retailers who are keen to use our expertise and knowledge. To support this growth, we have invested AUD $20m in a new production line in Queensland.
Investment in new product development can also be seen across other brands in the George Weston Foods family. Abbott’s Bakery has become the market leader in gluten-free sliced loaves since launching our first gluten-free loaf in 2016. Tip Top too has recently launched a gluten-free range, offering sliced white and smooth wholegrain options. Tip Top now offers cranberry and coconut toast, and premium buns which include potato buns and gourmet burger buns for the quick service restaurant sector.
Consumer preference and taste will continue to evolve. We are confident that our focus on innovation and our investment in our brands will position us effectively to develop new products that will meet consumer expectations in the years ahead.