The past few weeks of operations have been busy for our bakery teams as we gear up to meet the sales goals for our new distribution partnership in Kigali and launch the One Bread Project across all three bakeries for the new school year. As we embark upon this new period of growth for The Women's Bakery, we stand stronger together than ever before thanks to the hard work and dedication of each and every team member.
Early in October we launched a new partnership with a wholesale distributor in Kigali that has increased our production by 400 percent! Yes, you read that correctly. Our bakers in Kigali went from baking about 50 KGs to 250 KGs daily! Currently, we are selling 8 different types of bread through this partnership. This variety includes our big round loaf, our small round load, our big square loaf, our sandwich rolls, our ronde rolls, our tresse, and our standard 40 gram rolls. We anticipate that our relationship with this wholesaler will continue to grow and help us tap into new markets.
Along with the new distributor, we have also had a busy summer expanding The One Bread Project, our school feeding program. So far, we are working with 8 schools serving 6,800 students across all three bakeries (Gicumbi, Ruyenzi, Kigali). This is double the number of students we served in the last school year!
The increased production has come with its own set of new challenges. While we have historically faced a space shortage for our raw materials in bulk, we now have to get creative with storing our finished products. In Kigali, this has forced us to close sections of our cafe to the public so that we have sufficient space to package and store our finished products. Additionally, we quickly learned that our staple equipment has reached the end of its life. All of our equipment has started breaking down with our increased use. As a result, we are looking into procuring new (and used) equipment. A full wish list of our equipment needs can be found here.
Despite the challenges we have faced, our team is ready to rise to the occasion! The level of optimism and enthusiasm shared across all of our team members only motivates us to do more and process improve. We are excited to share that the increased level of bread production equates to a pay raise for our #StrongWomenBakingBread!
