bake - May/June 2022 - 29

" bake magazine and bakemag.com are the quintessential
resources - both online and in print - for all
things baking in the retail bakery and bakery foodservice
segments of the North American baking industry, "
Unrein says.
Made to measure
bake is certainly the Sosland brand that has seen the
most transformation in concept, content and format,
thus reflecting the dynamic food retailing marketplace.
Its mission today is far different, both more mature and
more innovative, than the one that launched it in 1987.
The magazine started as a project of Sosland's
Baking Equipment (now known as Baking & Snack)
because competitive pressure forced a demonstration
of the ability of Sosland's bakery audience to respond
to advertising. It was a gambit in the numbers game of
reader inquiries.
In pre-internet times, publishers urged readers to
respond to ads and editorial items by filling out reader
service cards, a.k.a. " bingo cards. " Introduced in the
early 1960s, these cards could be found in most trade
magazines a decade later. The postcards, bound into
the magazine, carried a grid of numbers linked to ads
and supplier new product news items.
The greater the number of inquiries a magazine
generated, the more favorably it was viewed by many
advertisers. Ad agencies, in particular, liked such response
data because they made it easier to justify ad " buys "
during an era that emphasized cost-per-thousand circulation
analytics.
Sosland Publishing's problem was that its bakery
publications, Milling & Baking News and Baking Equipment,
had far fewer recipients (by just more than half) than
Bakery Production & Marketing (Gorman Publishing),
the leading competitor. Baking Buyer supplemented its
circulation to approach that of the competition.
Magazines that specialized in new product news
were fairly common in the 1970s and 1980s. Usually
published in tabloid size (11 by 17 in.), their business
purpose was to generate sales leads. They circulated
free of charge to qualified recipients, often the same
list used by another of that publisher's roster.
Baking Buyer covered product news from vendors
and suppliers and was targeted at retail and intermediate
wholesale bakers - the prime users of the
Baking Equipment reader service card
program. Mike Gude, publisher of
Baking Equipment, headed up
Baking Buyer sales, and Laurie
Gorton, then editor of Baking
Equipment, supervised the
new magazine's editorial
content. The company
worked with a University
of Kansas journalism
student to write the news
items on a freelance basis.
" Those early issues
look downright primitive
when compared with
the sophisticated approach,
design and reader audience of
today's bake magazine, " Gorton
says.
As the 21st century approached, the
bakemag.com | MAY-JUN 2022 > 29
Porto's Bakery on
the West Coast and
Termini Bros. Bakery
on the East Coast exemplify
the innovation
and fortitude of retail
bakeries in America.
PORTO'S BAKERY/TERMINI BROS. BAKERY/MANRESA
http://www.bakemag.com http://www.bakemag.com
bake - May/June 2022

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