Moving to spice up top-line growth, food company Mother’s Enterprise Limited (MEL), through its bakery division, has started to export Easter buns to markets overseas.

The revamped product, which MEL Managing Director Sheldon Seymour said ranks as top-rated following a number of market taste tests, is already heavily pushed in the local retail market, with more emphasis now being placed on sharing its deliciousness with members of the diaspora and other customers outside of Jamaica.

“When we bought the company they had the product but the distribution was not heavily done. It’s an amazing product and it’s quite an exciting experience as we take this brand and grow it.

“We have already started to export and have so far sent a few 40-ft containers to Canada and a number of pallets [consisting of about 2,400 buns] to New York. We’ve so far had good entries into these markets since the start of exports this year, and so we are trying to take all the right steps in growing this business,” Seymour said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.

“We want to expand in these two markets as we look to also enter others, including the United Kingdom. We are not yet in the Caribbean in a big way, but we are currently looking for partners to push our products into the region,” he added.

Noting that current efforts open up a platform for growing the bakery business, which already produces a number of other single-served products such as sugar buns, cakes, breads, and doughnuts largely sold at its stores and at retail locations, Seymour said the ramping up of activities aims to further push up revenues for the company.

“We are looking to add growth of about 25 per cent from our bakery business to revenues, and so we are working towards that target for this year,” he told the Caribbean Business Report.

This target, if realised, will result in about $1 billion being added to group revenues, which, up to the end of 2023 trended above $4 billion. MEL, aside from its bakery division, now operates 18 food stores, nine school canteens, a catering business, and the recently opened Mother’s Café at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

The over-four-decades-old food establishment, acquired by the Kevin Donaldson-led Roots Financial in May 2023, has since then been on a mission to transform operations, springboarding it into a global Jamaican food company.

After receiving a number of catering jobs over the last few months, the managing director further singled out this division as another area in which much focus is being placed.

“We have the luxury of having multiple kitchens islandwide from which we are able to provide a diversity of meals, and we can cater for up to 5,000 persons easily per event. And this is another area which we are pushing. There are lots of events we are now doing as we bring our team into a different culinary space,” he said, pointing to catering jobs such as reggae artiste Protoje’s Lost in Time Festival and Le Champ Cosmetics’ upcoming brunch.

Taking steps to further grow clientele under its concessionaire business, the addition of a corporate canteen, expected to come on stream in short order, will also strategically add to growth in this area, Seymour said. “We are now looking for others that are viable to provide them with food/lunch services for their staff.”

“In order to ensure our customers are satisfied we are trying to get the efficiencies going as we improve experience through the look and feel of our stores. It’s a commitment we have made, and I think people are now beginning to realise, especially after the opening of our latest stores. We continue to make the necessary investments to ensure this,” he stated.