"I WANT MY MOLENBURG ...."

 ..... or I did before some bastard started changing it. Admittedly I haven't bought and tasted it for some years but ....

I've been making our own bread for a few years now using a bread-maker which some purists like Robert might say is cheating and I should do everything by hand, taking several hours each day to roll out dough, wait for it to rise and cook in a wood-fired oven that I'd built earlier in the day- all while listening to Radio New Zealand. Well, fuck that. My answer would be - "and you never use a toaster, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, a microwave oven, a cake mixer....? Sheesh!"

Moving on.

Yesterday when grocery shopping, as I hadn't cooked a fresh loaf, The Old Girl texted me to buy a Molenburg loaf while I was out. We used to enjoy this brand as it made nice soft sandwiches with a slightly nutty flavour from the grains. I bought a loaf and - boy were we disappointed.

"This isn't as good as the bread you make" she said and, sure enough, when I tried it, it wasn't. That nice milky, almost creamy texture of the bread has gone and there doesn't appear to be as much grain added as I remember.

This morning I made toast with it and - shock, horror - as I put two slices into the toaster I noticed that the bread was smaller. No longer are there the nice slabs and instead the slices have shrunk in thickness and width and depth. Bastards!

I showed The Old Girl and then went on-line to search if anyone else had noticed this. Sure enough there were lots of examples and a year ago there was a Fair Go discussion about it.

So some smart arse at Molenburg (or its new owners) decided, for cost  and savings reasons to production engineer Molenburg downwards in both size and quality. This exercise, which probably saves a couple of hundred thousands of dollars per year and got the engineer, accountant or marketer a bonus. What it also got them though, as has been shown by other brands that have done this, is a drop in consumer confidence and eventually brand extinction.

Supermarkets are greedy bullies when it comes to dealing with suppliers and no doubt Molenburg has, to stay on shelves, had to drop their sell-in prices drastically and have been screwed by shelf placement charges, promotional fees and all sorts of other usurious extortions that can 'legally' be wielded. They caved in and paid all that and eventually decided to gouge the consumer - not by price increases but by cheapening the product. I've seen this before in the wine industry where good product has been engineered downwards to meet price points and margin necessities after being squeezed by the grocers. The result has invariably been the loss of brand equity and ranges of wine brands eventually being discontinued.

Molenburg had an enviable consumer loyalty that was nurtured by a great product that stood out and by clever TV advertising.  I WANT MY MOLENBURG

It looks like, to me that they've shot themselves in the foot. I won't be buying it again.

I DON'T WANT YOUR MOLENBURG!