Case
Convenience food specialist, Easyfood ramp up the production
Norwegian food giant Orkla believes in Danish food production: invests more than DKK 100 million in a state-of-the-art production line in their Danish subsidiary, the convenience bakery Easyfood.
Easyfood manufactures innovative quality baked goods for the convenience category. Founded in 2000 the company from Kolding takes on a unique position in the convenience market by combining the industrial bakery's volume and efficiency with proud Danish handicraft traditions, quality and professionalism. In the end of 2018, the Norway based Orkla bought 90 % of Easyfood.
Flexible production systems enables Easyfood to be agile and innovative
The flexible production lines produce baked goods for a constantly changing market. With over 200 different products, the production setup is extremely adaptable and can handle all types of baked goods and bake-off. This allows Easyfood to translate market trends into new, well-thought-out concepts to be scaled, which in the end can strengthen the business of their customers.
As big international brands such as McDonald’s and Starbucks are knocking on the door at Easyfood, the upcoming third – and new – production line is going to help Easyfood to do larger scale production. The new state-of-the-art bakery production line, an investment of more than DKK 100 million, is entirely going to produce sausage rolls.
Meanwhile this will allow Easyfood to stay on top of bread concept development for in-store bakeries, kiosks, cafees and service stations.
“Our two current production lines give us the opportunity to be very flexible which is essential for us to be able to develop new innovative and specialized products.”
Using design thinking as a method for innovation – involving consumers and employees
The road to success cannot be solely ascribed to digitalization and automation.
“We have been working with design thinking as method for innovation now for more than 10 years. We started out looking at the needs of the users, involving them in user driven innovation sessions. But we also use design methods to involve our employees. They are the ones having to put together the ingredients, bake the products and operate the production lines, so their input often adds high value to the products.”
Such innovation processes make the workers at Easyfood – on all levels – an important asset for the production site in Denmark.
”When managing a production site in Denmark you should make use of Danish values as the backbone of the company culture – this being trust, openness, courage to try things out and not being afraid to be heard or make mistakes.”
In fact, back in 2013, Easyfood reshored production from Poland in order to keep being innovative, and thus develop new high quality products that meet the needs of the customers. The drivers for this decision was to some extent the opportunity to digitalize and automate the manufacturing setup. But just as important are the many skilled workers in Denmark and their approach to working with new tasks or to solve problems.
"In Denmark, we straight away learn in primary school to say our opinion, be critical and ask questions. We can use such cultural behaviour when we create new products, and this is why we can produce something unique."
About Easyfood
Location: Koldingapp. no. of employees: +130
Product: manufactures innovative quality baked goods for the convenience category
Prizes: Easyfood has been elected a gazelle (fast-growing) company and received several innovation prizes
Why production in Denmark?
Understanding the concept of design thinking
Innovation by design means applying design thinking as an innovation method. When a manufacturer such as Easyfood develops new products, they use design to find inspiration, develop ideas and create new products as well production processes. As an example, with an attempt to understand and solve future challenges companies can adopt a visual and experimental approach using the design tool “constant wonderment”.
“User and lead user involvement requires special processes that have developed to become a special part of the design industry. Specialisation in user-driven processes has gradually developed into the concept of “design thinking” where design and design processes are a central part of a company’s form of management, strategy and manner of business development. Design thinking therefore refers to the way a company – in cooperation with designers within or outside the organisation – works strategically with design.”
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