Natasha Prince
There are no cookies crumbling at the Compass Bakery in Kommetjie, where the business is enjoying the sweet taste of success for the 29th year.
In 1976, Robert Horton, then a bakery technologist at Woolworths, decided to open a bakery in partnership with his two friends, Rodney Cottrell and David Bruce.
While he provided the baking expertise and Bruce and Cottrell provided the finance and saw to marketing, they set about realising their goal of employing people from the Kommetjie area in a general purpose bakery. They soon had 12 staff baking and selling biscuits, pies and breadrolls.
But the three had bigger dreams and wanted more.
In 1978, their famous "crunchie" was born. Horton presented this biscuit to representatives from Woolworths in the hope of marketing the bakery's expertise. Woolworths agreed to sell the crunchie in its stores across the Western Cape and since then the two companies have developed a solid business relationship.
By 1979, Compass Bakery had moved further up Kommetjie Road to larger premises with a new factory and expanded production team as orders came flooding in.
Horton travelled to Europe to purchase huge ovens for the bakery. The ovens, known as Les Dawe oven, are used to bake the cakes and biscuits.
Today, about 90% of their produce is sold through Woolworths, said Horton.
"We wanted to be with the best and Woolworths is very strict on their quality."
At the start of the 1990s, Compass Bakery changed its management structure, as the original directors' sons took over the daily running of the business while their fathers retained ownership despite having retired.
According to Richard Cottrell, its human resources manager, the size of the workforce may fluctuate depending on the time of year, so the bakery has a production team of between 180 and 550 employees each year.
From January to June a smaller production team is needed to run the bakery, while from July through to the festive season business picks up and more people are employed to cover the 24-hour production process.
Employees work eight-hour shifts with two-hour breaks in each shift, which allows for the cleaning staff to do their duties.
"We're 100% as far as employment equity goes," said Cottrell, explaining that the bakery strictly adheres to all the labour laws regarding employment.
The bakery is only semi-mechanised so most of the cakes are decorated by hand, which requires a training programme developed to help staff members improve their skills and maintain the quality of the products.
The baking programme is headed by Vernon Wheatcroft, who has been baking for 40 years and is the master baker for the company.
"It's lovely; there's nothing I enjoy more than training people and giving them a chance," he said.
Compass cakes and biscuits can be bought at Woolworths stores throughout the Western Cape and the bakery has a few national lines which are delivered to other cities in South Africa.
One of its accomplishments was a three-tier wedding cake transported to Durban for the celebration of the nuptials of King Goodwill Zwelethini's daughter, Princess Nombuso Zulu, two weeks ago.
The cake, which was big enough to feed 220 people, was accompanied by 2 000 miniature cakes. It was decorated by company employee Hettie Jordaan, who also attended the wedding.
Marketing manager Miguel Howell said the bakery still has big plans for future expansion. "We've grown exponentially and we're still going to grow, that's the main aim. We are going to keep growing along with Woolworths," he said. - Staff Reporter.
natashap@incape.co.
