Discovering Wawel’s confectionery mastery: unveiling the secrets behind the international success of Poland’s Royal-Quality sweets. We talk with Tetiana Gurnevych, International Sales Director at Wawel.
For Polish consumers, Wawel sweets are ‘royal’, and not without reason – this is the association they evoke. How do foreign consumers perceive them? What do they appreciate your sweets for?
We are proud that foreign customers perceive the exceptional quality of Wawel sweets because that is what they are – short in composition and excellent in taste. The numerous foreign opinions of our consumers testify to this and that is the best compliment for us. We are the only major Polish confectionery manufacturer that can boast a luxury composition in every product category. This aspect, of course, has an impact on the price of the product, as we carefully select the suppliers of raw materials and ingredients with whom we work. We want to guarantee consumers sweet pleasure at reasonable prices. Sweets are a pleasure category, so for the sake of the consumer, we want to share a pleasant experience at the highest level, and we are most often appreciated for fulfilling this promise.
In the new year, we will further strengthen communication about the ingredients of Wawel products, which are created in line with the Good Ingredients strategy, which assumes that we offer and create sweets with simple and short ingredients without unnecessary additives. This communication will be highlighted in particular through the Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality project launched in 2016. In 2022, the whole project underwent a general rebranding and in a new iteration of the popular concept we returned to our roots, where we emphasised our strengths and brand associations, namely royalty, quality and chocolate.
This is our proposition to the final consumer, which covers most categories of sweets and educates the consumer through – note the novelty! – QR codes placed on the fronts of our modules, showing the added value of each Wawel brand product.
What is Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality?
Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality are dedicated modular displays for all Wawel branded weight products. They are available in a variety of formats, making them easily adaptable to any shop area. Thanks to this dedicated solution for bulk sales of Wawel products, every consumer can quickly and easily compose their favourite mix of sweets in any quantity. All Wawel sweets available in the Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality modules are available at a single price for the convenience of our consumers.
The project also offers long-term benefits for the merchant and the shop owner, both in terms of selling a permanent assortment and an occasional one. It is a wide personalised range of different categories of sweets and an innovative proposition for the consumer, which is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the freedom it gives them.
Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality has also been created for supermarket chains that have so far not sold sweets by weight and now want to change this. What’s more, this project responds to the challenges of CSR and zero waste. For a long time now, we have been observing that companies are striving to increase their responsibility for every step of the chain, including the producer and the seller, all the way to the consumer. Therefore, it is worth pointing out that with the introduced Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality modules, as a confectionery manufacturer we significantly reduce our packaging consumption and the consumer buys as much as he or she needs.
What other surprises are you planning in 2024 as part of the Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality project?
In 2024, we will tell our consumers in the simple way what is the value of each Wawel item and why we are different. We will educate our clients about ingredients to help them to release smart shopping. Additionaly Wawel presents infromation about social activities we are constantly running and about the Wawel Truck, which is an interactive truck in which, on the one hand, a lot of attractions await the participants, mainly for children, and, on the other hand, at the very end, the entrance to the Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality sweet zone, where you can compose your own mix of your favourite sweets.
How many Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality modules do you currently have abroad?
There are currently 6,715 Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality modules available in the world. At the moment, the QR code directs to a platform that is available in 5 languages. However, we believe that with the planned activities around the project and the addition of the aforementioned QR codes on individual products, the number of Pick&Mix Choose Your Royal Quality modules will soon be even higher. We firmly believe that this innovative solution is the future of sales.
Thank you.
Monika Książek