Indonesia: BEAU Bakery

Artisanal bread and pastries producer in Indonesia

Overview

Founded in 2014 by Talita Setyadi, an Indonesian world-renowned pastry chef, BEAU Bakery & Café (BEAU or the “Company”) is a leading specialty bakery and café brand focused on producing artisanal, high-quality bread and pastries using locally sourced ingredients. BEAU’s full-service restaurants and cafés offer a wide selection of beverages from smoothies to coffee, over 100 baked goods products, and hot kitchen items. BEAU serves approximately 400 dine-in and takeaway customers per day through its retail network and its wholesale business supplies over 100 food and beverage (F&B) businesses. BEAU is widely known by its customers for its delicious brunch options, extensive vegan choices, and extensive range of coffees, juices and smoothies.

Having grown up in New Zealand and studied in France, founder and CEO Talita Setyadi developed a vision of infusing higher standards around ethics, transparency, training, and food quality into the F&B industry of her home country of Indonesia. BEAU’s mission is to raise the standards of quality and ethics in the F&B industry in Indonesia by 1) leading by example in transparency and commitment to quality, 2) increasing accessibility to healthy staple food, and 3) providing culinary education. In addition to raising ethical standards around food labelling and advertising standards, Ms. Setyadi is passionate about training Indonesian bakers on all aspects of production to try to change the status quo in the country’s bread and pasty industry where today’s chefs, bakers & other kitchen professionals are provided with negligible onsite training and at times, minimal professional respect.

BEAU serves sit-in and take-away customers at its cafés and supplies a wide range of baked products to wholesale customers.

• Retail Segment BEAU operates 4 retail outlets, including two full-service restaurants and two cafés. BEAU’s customers are generally aged 21-45 years old and fall within the affluent middle to high-income bracket. About 69% of the customers are women and generally, BEAU’s customers have a healthy and active lifestyle and want to ensure they consume preservative-free, nutritious bread, and pastries.
• Wholesale Segment BEAU’s bakery supplies baked goods to over 100 wholesale customers. Wholesale goods include bread, Viennoiserie, and pastry. BEAU’s largest wholesale customers include Common Grounds Group, The Green Door Kitchen, Lewis and Carroll, and Hermitage.

With the SEAF Women’s Opportunity Fund investment, BEAU has opened one new full-service restaurant in Jakarta, built a new central kitchen facility to increase its retail and wholesale capacity by 10x, and hired additional employees to support the expansion plans.

Key Facts

Current Activities

Talita believes in developing talent and has developed a strong training culture which is setting a new standard in the Indonesian baking industry. Around 50% of the bakers join the Company with zero knowledge of baking and are trained from scratch to learn every aspect of production and the science behind it. BEAU has so far enjoyed high retention rates and driven high employee satisfaction through its culture of encouraging creativity, growth and learning.

With her extensive experience, BEAU has developed a reputation for offering a signature array of European breads and pastries that appeal to both local and foreign tastes. Talita credits this to the collaborative effort of her team and the shared conviction of developing world-class products in taste, texture, and form.  Recently, BEAU participated in one of the biggest events in the Indonesian patisserie world, Jakarta Dessert Week 2020. The festival was conducted virtually and allowed dessert enthusiasts to order special, limited edition menu items and enjoy them from the comfort of their homes. BEAU generated so much attention from the event and as a result, its online sales increased seven-fold compared to the previous month’s sales.

Talita is committed to working with SEAF to continuously improve its policies and practices to promote women’s economic empowerment, particularly in improving gender diversity in its procurement department and supply chains.  She is also strong proponent of women’s economic empowerment in the community through Women’s Interest Collaboration where BEAU, The Fountain Wellness and Liberty Society have come together to support women refugees in Indonesia by empowering them with skills, training, livelihood, and safe community, and promoting a holistic and sustainable lifestyle by eliminating single-use/paper/plastic bags and celebrating sustainability through Zero-Waste production and design.

BEAU’s SEAF Gender Equality Score©

Indonesia Gender Demographics

• According to the World Bank, Indonesian female labor force participation rate stood at 53.15%, still lower than the average female labor force participation rate in East Asia and Pacific region at 58.19%.1
• Though women’s employment as a share of total women population increased from 50.77% in 2016, it is still significantly considerably lower than the proportion of male employment, which was 82.43% in 2019.
• WEF’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Report ranks Indonesia 85th out of 153 countries and 8th in East Asia and the Pacific in gender equality, having closed 70.0% of its gender gap. The global average stands at 68.6%.2
• Indonesia boasts the world’s largest share (55%) of senior and leadership roles held by women and is one of the six countries in the world where the majority of such roles are held by women.

Women Economic Empowerment Highlights

Pay Equity

• There is no significant pay discrimination for the employees at BEAU. Equitable pay is demonstrated in the compensation ratio of women to men salaried employees at 97% and solid representation of women in the Company’s top 10 percent compensated employees
• The SEAF WEE Team is working with the Company to establish a compensation policy explicitly supporting pay equity and will put in place employee surveys and benchmarking studies, with disaggregated data to further improve pay equity

Benefits & Professional Development

• The Company adheres to all regulations on labor and social insurance, including the requirement to provide employees with leave and insurance coverage
• The Company conducts employee performance reviews every 3-6 months intervals
• Training programs are key to talent retention. Seasoned bakers like Talita shares her knowledge and science from her many years of experience
• Training of management and key office staff also differentiate BEAU from its industry peers

Workforce Participation

• Women workforce participation is about 32%. The SEAF WEE Team is working with BEAU to increase through continuous efforts to create a more women-friendly kitchen environment, a new standard of staff training, adoption of new technologies, and the expansion of the restaurant network which tends to employ more women
• Over the last 6 months, no woman employee has left the Company, largely as a result of the flexible working hours the Company has put in place

Workplace Environment

• Since the opening of its Central Production Facility, there are no longer night shifts to maintain production levels resulting in improved work-life balance
• The Company has implemented waste-water-treatment for both Central Production Facility and the Cikajang outlet
• The facilities in the kitchen are also strictly monitored to ensure workplace safety and are located where transportation is easily accessible
• Written policies on sexual harassment and inclusion, transparency and respect are currently not in place at the Company. However, Talita has led by example on these issues and worked to incorporate them into the Company’s culture. The SEAF WEE Team is working with the Company on the establishment of such policies

Leadership & Governance

• Talita has been managing BEAU with the support of a management team comprised of 80% women. She is supported by a Board of Directors that are all women
• It is expected that future business growth will provide more opportunities for women’s career advancement

Women Powered Value Chains

• About 69% of BEAU’s customers are women who have active and healthy lifestyles and are passionate about fresh food, authenticity and natural ingredients
• Talita leads the product development team. BEAU’s marketing strategies are conceptualized and implemented by women
• There are no policies and practices on gender diversity in its supply chains. The SEAF WEE Team is working with the Company to promote these practices to achieve more women participation to achieve a diverse, stable and efficient supply chains