2023-06-18 02:21:11
BreadDelirium and Mother’s Yeast are just a few examples of the several bread businesses that have emerged in the heat of the sourdougha more traditional bread made from long fermentations. Javier Cocheteux and his son Javier (the eldest of three brothers), owners of PanDelirio, like Moncho López, owner of Levaduramadre, started in this sector by chance. The Cocheteux were very good at making roscón de reyes (in 2020 its roscón was chosen the best in the Community of Madrid). They did it in the basement of his house, while Moncho López abandoned nuclear physics due to the impulse to undertake. Today the Cocheteux have 3 workshops in Madrid, a cafeteria with an office in the new Gourmet Experience of El Corte Inglés in Castellana and they sell their products in four Sánchez Romero supermarkets. PanDelirio and Levaduramadre have become a clear example of business success. The first closed the financial year 2022 with a turnover of 2.56 million euros and expects to reach 3.5 million euros in 2023. While Moncho López brings together an empire that has a turnover of 30 million euros, thanks to its 121 stores, 30 of which are its own and the rest are franchised.
The Cocheteux relate that they led their own professional lives, the son as a marketing director in a sports agency, while the father was dedicated to the health sector in Latin America. When he returns to Spain he decides with his son to turn what was a “hobby” for them, making roscones de reyes, into a business. «We made them in the basement of my house for friends. The demand increased and in 2016 we decided to buy a warehouse in the south of Madrid, an oven and a mixer, without having any idea of ovens or mixers. We received many orders and in the end, after 5 days and 500 roscones, we looked for a place on a corner in Juan Bravo, with 4 heights, small but magical, which we inaugurated in April 2017. But the sale of roscones is concentrated only in part of the year, so we had to do something new for the rest of the months. There were two paths: pastry shop or bakery and we leaned towards the second one”, says Javier senior. They wanted to make the “best bread in the universe” and Florindo Fierro, an advisor to the bread, cereal, and milling industry, as well as an advisor to small and medium-sized bakeries, crossed paths. «He transmitted to us the concept of good bread, healthy bread, without additives, where the important thing is the process, more than the recipe and we learned that rich bread has to have a sourdough part. Curiosity led us to hire CESIC (Higher Council for Scientific Research) and the Polytechnic University of Madrid to carry out a study on bread. We did it looking for three objectives: to analyze the glycemic index of artisan bread, to analyze the bioavailability of minerals and vitamins in bread, and to break down gluten. We compared this because most industrial bread is made quickly, with rapid fermentation, with poorer quality flour, with additives so that the dough does not stick to the machines. There is a big difference, but this does not mean that all artisan breads are good, nor that all industrial breads are bad,” the Cocheteux explain.
From his workshop –located in a 250-meter warehouse that was an old car workshop- at 7 Naranjo Street in the Tetúan neighborhood, the masses leave, 1,000 kilos a day, which they take to their stores to bake. They do it with great care. «40% of our expenses are labor and 30% come from raw materials. It is of high quality. We use extra virgin olive oil, even though its price has doubled. The flours are organic, the honey is raw organic orange blossom that is only made in Córdoba, the best on the market, and with chocolate we only work with valrhona. The butter is artisan from Asturias and another extra dry French for puff pastry. We do not skimp on the products because we seek to give health to our customers, “they explain. PanDelirio has 14 types of bread, each with its formula, recipe and fermentation times. Real bread (Miga de Oro as Best bread in the Community of Madrid in 2019) is the one that sells the most. The Tetuán workshop is in production from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. 65 people work there and it has 4 ovens and a laminating machine. The ship also houses a large classroom for the Materia de PanDelirio school, aimed at the expert training of professionals in the trade, as well as the general dissemination of the culture of honest and quality bread. PanDelirio has another workshop store at Calle Profesor Waksman 8, as well as a cafeteria with an office in the new Gourmet Experience at El Corte Inglés in Castellana. Another of the most recent milestones of this family business is its establishment with its own points of sale in the Sánchez Romero supermarket chain as a supplier of artisan bread and pastries in all its establishments. At the moment they are in four, but the goal is to be present in the 10 supermarkets that Sánchez Romero has in Madrid the next one in September. “We would like to grow more, but our premise is not to go over to the dark side of poor-quality bakery, fast processes…”, say the Cocheteux.
Sourdough is a symbiotic culture of yeasts naturally present in flour and water. The fermentation is natural, it takes more time and that gives the bread some very good characteristics.. “It’s like cooking in an express pot or in a pot for 8 hours,” he explains. moncho lopez. He went from directing a Decathlon – he says he is in love with sports, he has “one hour of exercise a day” tattooed on his arm – to becoming rich with healthy breads. «I studied nuclear physics, but all my life I have defined myself as a shopkeeper. I started selling boots at Decathlon and ended up as a director, and there I learned a lot »he recounts. His experience as a “grocer” and his desire to “recover forgotten flavors” led him to the world of bread. «The bread had become industrialized, made from very fast fermentation, a lot of volume lacking flavor and my idea was to do the opposite. I learned the trade based on courses and experimenting, and it’s not an easy trade but it’s not particularly difficult either. Now you could formulate a bread and how much sourdough it takes. To learn bakery, two lives are needed, but you can make good bread at home.
In 2006 Moncho López laid the foundations of his business, now an empire, with relatively little knowledge “because there was no bakery culture in my house, but I was good at sales.” He opened his first store at Sainz de Baranda 16. «I rented the cheapest place and I ran the business alone, for two years every day from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. The first year he billed 200 euros a day and made 20 loaves. Now we invoice 1,500 euros a day in the store in general and we make almost 12,000 loaves a night and 100,000 loaves of bread”. He opened his second bakery at Alcalá 179 and then another on Diego de León street. He explains that Mother’s Yeast moved to a rebound franchise model. «In 2015 I divorced and my ex-wife kept the stores, I kept the workshop and as the owner of the brand. I went on to have a franchisee who was my ex-wife. From there I began to rebuild the brand and rebuild myself. I was opening some of my own stores as I was able to capitalize again and little by little. Now I have 121 stores, of which 30 are owned and the rest are franchises”. To set up a franchise, an investment of 80,000 euros is needed, which can be recovered in two years, explains Moncho. “There are two types of stores, the one with rocket and the pick and shovel that costs more because you have to make the neighborhood fall in love”.
In Madrid, there is a Levaduramadre practically in every neighborhood. In other cities they are still building the brand. . This is the case of Barcelona where they have 7 stores and a workshop, Valencia with 8, Alicante with 3 and a workshop and Benidorm with a store. In the 500-square-meter Madrid workshop located at 68 Atalayuela Street, there are 150 employees. From there, all the goods are taken to the stores in the capital of Spain, a distribution that is made from 3:00 to 8:00. “We finish making the loaves as late as possible so they arrive as tender as possible in stores. The loaves arrive baked from the workshop and the bars are pre-cooked and are finished in the stores. Sourdough breads take 24 hours to make. We reverse the process. Instead of kneading, fermenting and cooking, we cook, knead and ferment to have a greater fermentation based on the sourdough, thus we obtain a digestive, more nutritious and flavorful bread”. To drive growth nationally, Levaduramadre has the support of Corness Group, its main partner since June 2021. «Each store costs between 300,000 and 600,000 euros, our central workshop costs three million euros, so it is necessary to rely on capital. If I do all this in a personal capacity and crash, I would leave a debt even to my great-grandchildren. Yeast registered a net turnover of 12.1 million euros in 2020, 21.4 million in 2021 and in 2022 it reached 29.8 million euros (39% more than in 2021). For this year he hopes to approach 40 million euros. “We struggled a lot in the formulation of breads. It’s a slave job. Whoever has a store that attends it and if not, closes it, “says López. The founder of Levaduramadre says that now he makes everything except bread.
Bread turnover record
The industrial bakery, pastry and pastry industry in Spain has consolidated the recovery of the production of frozen dough lost during the health crisis, to approach the production record reached in 2018, when 969,519 tons were produced. Thus, last year 949,754 tons of frozen dough were produced, 5.1% more than in 2021. This, in turn, has translated into a 27.4% increase in turnover, from 1,303.79 million euros in 2021 to 1,661.14 million in 2022, in this case, due to the inflation registered over the last year, according to data of Asemac (Spanish association of the bakery, pastry and pastry industry).
In its latest report from last April, Asemac specifies that the production of bread in Spain in 2022 reached a volume of 745,896 tons, a 4.1% more compared to the production data for 2021. As far as billing is concerned, the bread, registered a historical record in 2022 with an increase of +26.3% compared to the data for 2021, and a total of 988.86 million, the highest figure since 2015. However, Spanish households consumed less bread in 2021. If we make a comparison regarding bread consumption corresponding to the period from January to November 2020, 2021 and 2022, a decrease in bread consumption is observed in 2021 compared to the year previous figure of 113,152 tons, 8.2% less, a trend that continues downward in 2022, reducing bread consumption this year by 89,296 tons (-7%) compared to 2021. DIn the same way, there has been a brief decrease in the amount of money that households allocate to bread, and it is that while in 2021 this figure decreased by -9.3%, 308.4 million euros less compared to 2020, in the year 2022 there is a decrease of -10.5% compared to the year 2021, which means 314.9 million euros less.
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