Sheila Eggleston Somerfield Group is making a substantial investment to develop its bread offer across both its fascias, introducing instore bakeries into its Kwik Save estate and enhancing the range in Somerfield. Kwik Save is trialling a variety of instore bakery concepts with a view to making them a permanent fixture. The trial in 52 stores will last for 12 weeks before a possible roll out to the rest of the stores. Senior projects manager for franchise developments Mike Sully said: "This is something completely new for us. Eventually we are hoping to install 300 instore bakeries into Kwik Save. "We are working with three companies ­ Country Choice, Cuisine de France and Speedibake ­ which have been trialling various bake-off concepts around the country in different stores." Kwik Save, which has never had this facility before, hopes to be able to offer crusty bread, baguettes and rolls as well as hot food. Sully said there were no early plans to include speciality bread but it was perhaps something to consider for the future. The move coincides with Somerfield's upgrade of existing instore bakery products such as rosemary and sea salt focaccia, a walnut coussan, and a gruyere and mature cheddar loaf, to its So Good premium range which will be part of a corporate launch for So Good in September. It is also launching its first speciality prewrapped range in July. Bakery buyer Rebecca de Dulin said that these products will be placed into its more progressive stores to attract the more progressive customer. {{NEWS }}

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