Dough, Team, Speed: The Recipe for Success
Interview with Jürgen Rosar, Managing Director of BAKER & BAKER Germany GmbH
After carving out from the CSM Bakery Group, BAKER & BAKER has established itself as an independent player in the European frozen bakery goods market. Jürgen Rosar, Managing Director of BAKER & BAKER Germany GmbH in Bremen, explains how the company is embracing cultural change, strategic focus, and digital innovation to set a course for sustainable growth and reach a turnover of one billion euros.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Rosar, BAKER & BAKER emerged from CSM Bakery nearly five years ago and has since stood independently in the market. What decisions did you have to make since joining to ensure that the company now stands as profitable and culturally stable?
Jürgen Rosar: The most important step was to form a real identity from just a 'spin-off'. We therefore tackled three levels simultaneously. First, the organization: clear roles, flat hierarchies, matrix instead of silos. My colleague and co-managing director Kristina Weiss is responsible for Finance & Admin, and I lead the market-oriented functions. Then, the culture: appreciation plus result orientation. It sounds trite, but when the CEO no longer has an office but sits in the open space, 70 colleagues in Bremen feel that transparency is not just a buzzword. And finally, the business model, moving away from purely volume sales to a key account approach with four strategic sales channels: Discount, Retail, QSR-Foodservice, and Wholesale. We deliberately handed over small, low-margin customers to the wholesale and instead invest in those partners who can scale. This has streamlined our cost base and at the same time improved the EBITDA.
Wirtschaftsforum: The competition for shopping cart spaces at Aldi, Lidl, Rewe & Co. is fierce. How does BAKER & BAKER differentiate itself in content?
Jürgen Rosar: We score with strong brands: Through the exclusive license from Mondelez, all Milka muffins, Oreo donuts, and Cadbury cookies in the European frozen shelf reliably come from us. Added to that is speed of innovation. We operate a pan-European trend radar, with twelve factories in eight countries reporting consumer data weekly. This leads to products like our Tomato-Franz, a savory Franz roll, which was a hit at Internorga. What also matters is category expertise: Frozen bakery goods must not only taste good, they also need to be logistically functional: thaw and bake stable, few food miles, predictable supply chains. Here, AI-supported forecast tools that cushion the impact of pandemic and war volatility help us. And finally, we convince with genuine partnership: For a leading QSR client, we rebuilt the snack range so that he reports 18% less food waste. This creates a bond beyond price.
Wirtschaftsforum: Many small and medium-sized enterprises talk about New Work and digitalization. What specifically happens at BAKER & BAKER, beyond the buzzwords?
Jürgen Rosar: New Work begins with the environment: Our office in Bremen's Überseestadt is a 1,600 m2 space freely adaptable with focus cabins, café lounge, and maker kitchen. Here, developers taste-test right next to key account managers. For us, digitalization is not just about SAP updates, but rather applications close to the market: We are currently testing an AI chatbot that answers back-office questions in real time for bakery operators. Moreover, we are piloting an Image Recognition Tool that detects empty shelves in self-service baking stations and automatically triggers reorders. Internally, we rely on data democratization. Every executive has access to live dashboards showing sales, waste, and energy consumption. This embeds responsibility.
Wirtschaftsforum: Where are we headed in the next five years – in terms of numbers, markets, and topics?
Jürgen Rosar: We want to continue to grow, both organically and through targeted investments in food startups that accelerate our pace in plant-based and protein-supported segments. Internationally, Germany/Austria continues to grow as the largest continental market, but we are currently establishing a national company in Poland and have opened an office in Dubai in 2024 to serve the Middle East and Asia more smartly. Thematically, three goals drive me: profitable growth, customer-focused digitalization, and employer branding. We want to convey that one can work here without politics but with a lot of creative power. My vision is: We inspire the market with moments of enjoyment, while internally creating a learning environment where change is fun and people are happy to take responsibility.
Wirtschaftsforum: What is your personal motivation for facilitating this change time and again?
Jürgen Rosar: I have been in the food environment for over 25 years. From my corporate years at Aldi, Metro, and Oetker, I now draw recipes for almost any crisis situation. In medium-sized businesses, I can act entrepreneurially, with full P&L, quick decisions, and close customer contact: I am out in the field myself. Change is my elixir of life because it moves people from A to B. When colleagues see that changes have an effect – better numbers, proud customers, positive feedback from England – then this famous flywheel effect is created. Continuously driving it forward honestly brings me joy.