Each year around late November things tend to get somewhat hectic at bakeries in anticipation of the upcoming Easter season. Pre-production for one of the most loved Easter symbols, the bun, starts two to three months in advance in order to meet the demand for the sweet bread, which starts selling like hot cakes by the beginning of February.

The months of work that precede the first moist bun baking in the oven start out with examining projections of anticipated sales both locally and internationally. The previous year’s sales are reviewed and an estimation is made on how to increase the year’s bun production from the numbers the year before.

Next on the list for the bakery’s management is sourcing raw materials. At Honey Bun, a bakery on Retirement Road in Kingston, the cardboard sheets which create bun boxes need to be ordered weeks in advance from the US and then sent to local printers to imprint the Honey Bun logo.

Then there is the sourcing of the ingredients which are used to create the perfect bun. Yummy bakery in Mandeville orders flour from JF Mills and raisins, mixed peel, sugar, spices, shortening and “secret ingredients” are sourced from local distributors who place orders ahead of the kick-off to the January production schedule.

“When customers are enjoying our Easter buns, they probably never think about the hectic process behind their creation, but it gets crazy around here,” says Krystal Chong, a marketing and export manager at Honey Bun.

Now in their second year of exporting Easter buns to the US and the UK production at Honey Bun began in late January, while the manufacturing of local orders started at the beginning of February and will go all the way through today (Thursday) before Good Friday.

To make sure that all these buns get made on time, Honey Bun operates a facility which runs 24 hours a day and employs a staff of around 100, who all work in 8 hour shifts and sometimes longer depending on the demand for supply.

“One of the busiest nights during the season is Sunday night, as stores tend to do the majority of their stocktaking on a Monday morning,” says Chong.

Freshness of the product is of major importance to any baker and because buns have a relatively short shelf life, most bakeries tend to deliver a new batch of buns each day to retailers across the island.

At Honey Bun the last batch of buns for morning delivery are packaged by the latest 10:00 pm, are packed on trucks leaving for the western end by 12:00am. Departure from the Retirement Road factory takes place by 2:00am midnight to ensure arrival in parts of St Elizabeth and Montego Bay by 6:00am in order to distribute to schools which open their gates at 7 o’clock and stores which open usually by 10:00am.

Yummy bakery, which is a sister company of National bakery, wrapped up Easter production last Sunday after a gruelling season. “We are pretty satisfied with the volumes this Easter as they were up,” said Ian Gentles, a plant engineer at Yummy.

After 16 to 18 hour production days during the season, Gentles says that he is looking forward to the upcoming holiday weekend which he will use to relax, catch up on sleep and of course, eat lots of bun and cheese.

“I make bun, so I will definitely be eating it,” he said.

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