Robin Jones is the owner and chief executive of Golden Bake, a frozen bakery snacking company company specialising in pastries and cookies, and best known for itsr Jambons pastries. Jones trained as a chartered tax adviser and previously held the role of global head of tax at Cuisine de France parent, Aryzta.
Founded in 1987, Golden Bake now employs roughly 150 people at its production facility in Coolock, Dublin. The company supplies retail and foodservice customers across Ireland, Britain, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.
What vision/light-bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
I have always been interested in business and understanding how businesses are managed. In school I worked as a kitchen porter in a local restaurant, was DJing events at weekends, selling personalised CDs to students in the local area and renting out DJ equipment when I wasn’t using it myself. Studying commerce in UCD and qualifying as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser gave me a great foundation for where I am today.
In 2016, after working in the corporate world for 10 years, I made the move into entrepreneurship by completing the acquisition of Golden Bake and have been an owner and chief executive of the company ever since.
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Describe your business model and what makes your business unique
At its core, our business model is about producing delicious products that create moments of happiness for our customers. The company tagline is “Bakeable Happiness”. We pride ourselves on balancing the production of high-quality products at scale – which enables us to supply large retail and food-service customers – with remaining flexible enough to develop innovative and bespoke products through our in-house product development team. All of our products are shipped frozen, which helps reduce food waste and locks in quality. Our products go from flour to frozen in under an hour.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
We are seeing a much more informed retail shopper, who is looking at the ingredient list on the back of products and seeking products made with more familiar and high-quality ingredients. We are listening to our consumers on this point and, as a result, we have recently relaunched our bestselling Ham & Cheese Jambons with no-added-nitrites Irish ham – the first freezer aisle product in Ireland to offer this kind of ham.
In addition, and again in response to consumer demand, we have recently launched Mini Cheese & Onion Jambons, which have all the flavour we are known for, just without the meat.
In three years’ time, our plan is to have further expanded our product range into new categories and to be a trusted bakery partner of the biggest retail and food-service companies in Europe.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
We are constantly innovating at Golden Bake, with about 100 new or improved products launched since I joined the business in 2016. These products have been the catalyst to our growth over that same period.
In August we will launch a range of unique deep-filled cookies called Cookie Cups. These will be available from the in-store bakeries of Dunnes Stores nationwide, as well as being available in our first Golden Bake retail store in Dublin, from where we will also be servicing home deliveries for the first time. We are also speaking with a number of international customers about launching Cookie Cups in their markets.
What moment/deal would you cite as the game-changer or turning point for the company?
Until 2022 every cookie being baked off in all retailers in the Republic was being imported from the UK and Europe. We saw an opportunity to expand our product range and to be the first Irish industrial frozen cookie manufacturer.
While we are no longer alone as a frozen cookie manufacturer in Ireland, we remain the market leader. Adding the additional category to our range not only added a new revenue stream for the business but it also seemed to change our retail customers’ perception of Golden Bake from being a niche puff pastry supplier towards being a wider bakery partner.
