For four decades Jamaicans have grown accustomed to delectable treats and tasty snacks from Honey Bun Limited (HONBUN).

But the Honey Bun journey hasn’t been a bed of roses, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michelle Chong recalls the early days of the business when she and her husband Herbert Chong were forced to figure things out on their own.

“Because we were new to that business, we had to do everything on our own. We didn’t have the luxury of YouTube to show us how to do things,” Chong told the Jamaica Observer.

But the couple was determined to figure things out and make a name for themselves in the Jamaican market.

The CEO further revealed that the origin of Honey Bun started hundreds of miles away in Toronto, Canada.

“My husband and I met in Toronto and we both wanted to come back to Jamaica to live so we needed to find a business to do. He was in the pizza business up there so we came to Jamaica looking for a similar business, I went into teaching and then when he found a business to buy, I left teaching and came with him and we bought Honey Bun. It was making pizza at the time,” she said.

She admitted it was a little easier to open a business in Jamaica at that time, noting that her husband practically bought Honey Bun on a handshake.

“Banking was very friendly, you could do things almost as a handshake so that was the climate at the time,” Chong stated.

It wasn’t long before Honey Bun was officially established in 1982. Since then the family-owned company has blossomed into a regional and international corporation.

The latest company financials show that Honey Bun continues to grow with net current assets up 21 per cent at $394.5 million at the end of the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

This in spite of a 46 per cent dip in net profit during the quarter which resulted in a $41.2 million net profit out-turn compared to the same quarter in 2021.

Honey Bun disclosed that the decline in net profits was attributable to a number of factors including the rise in raw material costs absorbed by the company and repositioning to increase distribution channels.

Notwithstanding, Honey Bun is one of the fastest-growing wholesale bakery in Jamaica. The company was publicly listed on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange in 2011 and was the first Jamaican bakery to be hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) certified in May 2016.

The company now operates a 24/7 baking operation, located in Kingston, Jamaica, and exports throughout the Caribbean region as well as to the UK and in Canada.

The Honey Bun CEO noted that all these achievements required discipline and determination, pointing out that there has been rapid transformation in the economic and business landscape in Jamaica over the last three decades.

“One of the big changes is how you do marketing. Now you have digital marketing and that has been a huge shift. One of the things that the pandemic has taught us is that you have to be ever ready and flexible for change. Once upon a time you could do business and almost do the same thing over and over, now it’s a matter of what are we going to be doing tomorrow? Where’s the innovation? Where do we look to? You always have to have one foot on the mark and one foot ready to prance.”

She continued, “Sometimes that’s not a bad thing when you’re small, because smaller businesses can flex more easily than bigger businesses but even bigger businesses have to build themselves on a foundation where they can do things on the spin of a coin. What I sometimes advise through the Honey Bun Foundation is that you build the business in a way that keeps you flexible. So, instead of investing in a whole lot of equipment, you might invest in different aspects of the business separately so if you have to close one it doesn’t affect the next.”

At the same time, she complained, “if I could change something it would be less bureaucracy in doing business especially for SMEs and to have more businesses encouraged to be more eco-friendly. I’m just working with a new company that I’ve invested in that is more focused on values as opposed to just making money.”

In the same vein, Honey Bun has become a mentor to many small businesses over the years. Chong said supporting and collaborating with other companies is a part of the business mantra.

“We have the Honey Bun Foundation which supports SMEs and there was even one time when I was supporting a bakery. I don’t think that we ought to look at competition as something bad,” she argued, pointing out that “collaboration is a better way to do business than competition, because if we collaborate we can do more. No one bakery can serve the global market and we have to always be thinking globally.”

With that said, Honey Bun continues to focus on collaboration and helping other small businesses to growth.

“Even now as we speak we’re looking to collaborate with another bakery who has more capacity in one particular product line than us and that’s collaboration and a win-win situation as opposed to always trying to compete and hold down the small man. We don’t work like that, we don’t try to hold down anybody in fact we would more try to find a way to encourage them and support them,” she told the Business Observer.

She explain that the zeal to help SME is rooted in the desire to see national growth.

“The Honey Bun Foundation is for small and medium-sized businesses because it is our ambition to help smaller businesses so that nationally we can grow more because that’s where growth comes from. As a country our buyers have to earn more in order to pay more so we have to build our country and that’s what the foundation is about, supporting these smaller businesses to become better businesses by developing the business model that will help them to be successful.”

She noted that a lot of small businesses are not operating up front and are doing business under the counter.

“We would like to see more of them become formal businesses. If smaller bakeries come to the foundation we would not be opposed to giving them the support because we’re not teaching them how to bake, we’re not giving them formulas. What we’re doing is telling them best practices, corporate governance, social responsibility and we believe that these things are important so they can become better companies, contribute more to the taxes, contribute more to exports and nationally for our growth,” she stated.