Pepe’s Bakery in downtown Sunnyside was bustling with activity Wednesday afternoon. Several customers were at the bakery’s self-serve section picking items from displays of doughnuts, pan dulce and other baked goods. Other customers were placing custom cake orders with co-owner Jose Cortez.
Over 16 years of business, Cortez, 41, and business partner Anna Gutierrez have gained a loyal customer base drawn by the bakery’s ability to deliver on tried-and-true offerings such as pan dulce, a traditional Mexican sweet bread, and tres leche cake, which is soaked in a milk mixture.
Cortez, who heads up the baking end of the business, likes to play around with flavors. During a meeting about a custom cake order, Cortez showed a customer a marbled cake that combined chocolate and vanilla flavors.
Dawn Foods, which has provided cake mixes for Pepe’s Bakery since it opened, took notice of that creativity. Pepe’s Bakery and three other bakeries were chosen to help the Jackson, Mich.-based company develop new cake mix flavors through its Inspired by You program.
Sales representatives from each of Dawn Foods’ four U.S. sales regions provided recommendations, and the company chose a bakery from those lists. The other three bakeries chosen were Pinho’s Bakery in Roselle, N.J., ABC Bakery in Albuquerque, N.M., and Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago.
Pepe’s Bakery, located at 636 Decatur Ave., was on the top of the list for the West Region, said Phil DeWester, senior director of category marketing for Dawn Foods.
“They’re a real innovator in the cake category,” he said.
With Latino-owned bakeries making up one-third of its customer base, it was important to include such a bakery for the collaboration, the company said.
Cortez and Gutierrez said participating in the Inspired by You program provided a break from the daily production grind and gave them a chance to try new things.
“It’s an opportunity for us to grow as business owners,” said Cortez in Spanish through a translation from Gutierrez.
Cortez and Gutierrez, along with the owners of the three other bakeries selected, gathered at Dawn Foods’ Michigan headquarters twice last spring. During those meetings, Dawn Foods officials shared their research about cake trends and allowed the bakery owners to brainstorm ideas and try out prototypes of potential cake mix flavors.
“We played around with colors, smells and tastes,” Gutierrez said.
They tried trendy flavors such as bourbon chocolate and lavender, but the bakery owners were ultimately drawn to simpler flavors. The final flavors for the new cake mixes were honey, coconut and coffee.
One of the initial flavors the bakers tried was a coconut lime cake, Gutierrez said. While the flavor was good, she felt the combination of two flavors in the cake mix would limit what the bakery could do with the mix. Ultimately, she, along with the other bakery owners in the program, recommended sticking to a pure coconut flavor.
The bakers “needed some strong base flavors,” said DeWester of Dawn Foods. “We started with a mocha, but they said, ‘We can add chocolate, but we can’t take it out.’”
Once the flavors were chosen, the bakers were given an opportunity to make different cakes with the mixes. Pepe’s Bakery used the coffee mix to create a new twist on its popular tres leche cake. The bakery added another twist by adding Kahula, the popular coffee-flavored liquor.
After the spring meetings, Dawn Foods took the feedback from the bakeries and finalized the development of the three new cake mixes.
The four bakeries met a third time in September at the International Baking Industry Expo in Las Vegas, where Dawn Foods officially released the new cake mixes. The bakeries had an opportunity to talk to other bakers at the event about their experience working with Dawn Foods on the development process and their thoughts on the newly released mixes.
The four bakeries, of course, were the first to get the new mixes. The bakery provided samples of cakes made with the new mixes to customers recently. Pepe’s Bakery is in the process of developing products with the mixes. The coffee tres leche cake will return. Cortez and Gutierrez, inspired by their recent experience, also want to come up with other new ideas for the mixes.
“For me, (the takeaway is) don’t be afraid to try something new or different,” Gutierrez said. “It might sound crazy, but you never know, it may take off.”
Dawn Foods considers the venture a success and plans to do another cake collaboration with bakery customers in 2020, DeWester said.
“I found it inspirational how they took these base flavors and found all the creative things to do with them,” he said.
Overall, the experience participating in the Dawn Foods Inspired by You program was a positive one, Gutierrez said.
They also gained new friendships with the other bakery owners; they plan to visit Pinho’s Bakery during a future trip to the East Coast. “We were able to talk to the different business owners and find out what works for them,” she said.
She and Cortez enjoyed learning what went into the process of developing a new product. And there’s a satisfaction knowing they participated in that process and contributed to a new product that bakeries around the U.S. and the world will use, Gutierrez said.
“It’s a good feeling,” she said.
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