Sirha Lyon is all about chefs with chef's hats, great smells and culinary competitions... But it's also the place to showcase equipment that makes cooking easier. The Simply Bread company offers bread ovens and received a Sirha Innovation Award. Meet Tom and Romain at Sirha in Lyon.
The Sirha Innovation Awards recognize the year's best products, materials, equipment and new technologies in the food and catering sector. Of the 465 entries received, 13 were selected, including a Walloon company: Simply Bread.
This company, founded by a Belgian in the United States, has been in existence for four years. After achieving good results in Uncle Sam's country, Simply Bread is now looking to expand into Europe from its base in Liège.
The company offers a dedicated oven for baking bread, particularly sourdough bread. “People often ask if you can bake anything other than bread. The answer is yes, but it's primarily designed for bread,” points out Tom Pongerard, VP of operations and present at Sirha in Lyon. “For example, you can bake pizzas. But the Italians will probably disagree with us,” smiles Romain Trigaux, COO Europe for Simply Bread.
“It's a compact, professional floor oven. One of the qualities of this oven are the patented stones that give the bread a nice even crust. The oven has an integrated algorithm that enables precise temperature control at each level of the oven,” explains Romain Trigaux. The oven is also single-phase, which means no special installation is required. It can be plugged into any “conventional” outlet.
“Developing our reputation”
Simply Bread's oven is designed for restaurants and micro-bakeries. “You can bake between 12 and 15 loaves at the same time. The oven doesn't take up much space in the kitchen. In the United States, we're starting to develop well with a community of micro-bakers. We're trying to expand in Europe, and a prize like the Sirha Innovation Award is helping to raise our profile,” say Romain and Tom.
In addition to the oven, Simply Bread is currently developing an application that enables micro-bakers to manage order preparation. “Where a baker knows from experience how many loaves of bread he needs to produce each day, a micro-baker will work with pre-orders to avoid having any unsold products. The application facilitates this pre-ordering stage”, conclude our two interlocutors.