Wholebake’s goodness goes beyond its products as it strives to make a sweet impact
This year, Wholebake, one of the UK’s top manufacturers of gluten-free snacks, is celebrating its 40th anniversary, marking four decades of transforming brands with gluten-free goodness. The business is widely recognized across the country for its dedicated brand partnerships and broad scope of capabilities, with flexibility and a more bespoke approach to innovation setting it apart.
From the very first concept to the final product, Wholebake is proud to offer a full project management service, assisting its clients every step of the way. Its unique blend of scale and flexibility enables Wholebake to cover a comprehensive collection of varying production and management processes providing a high degree of bespoke product design and modest batch sizes, which led by in-depth category and market insight data, allows its partners to respond quickly to current industry trends, innovate with pace and keep their businesses on top. 
Clients looking to experiment with snack foods and really gauge everything that Wholebake has to offer can take a trip down to the business’ NPD kitchen based in its Chester headquarters. The kitchen – suitably named ‘The Bar’ – is a contemporary, innovative space equipped with a range equipment including ovens, hobs, mixers, mincers and an enrober. Guided by Wholebake’s expert NPD team, clients can get creative with a large variety of high-quality ingredients to design and formulate their own unique recipes. All processes used in the kitchen are replicable in Wholebake’s factory, and from experience the business understands what readily transfers from lab to factory. Indeed, sometimes the factory produces different results than the kitchen, requiring modifications as they go from lab to full production. This demonstrates the value of factory trials pre-production, as clients can be sure they are gaining a realistic representation of what their final product will look like.
Wholebake holds its customer relationships close to its heart and is passionate to deliver dedicated, bespoke services. It works closely with all prospective clients to complete a comprehensive product development brief to allow the team to obtain a complete understanding of what the customer needs and how to bring their product to life. To speed up the process, an initial concept brief is readily available on Wholebake’s easy-to-use website, where customers can share their vision, as well as any preferences regarding the desired weight, shelf life, estimated yearly volume of the product, and any further nutritional values and dietary requirements (Halal, Kosher, etc), from which the team can then build upon..
Product-wise, Wholebake has launched over 200 tasty new snacks over the past five years and has no intention of slowing down. Its extensive and expansive portfolio offers a multitude of different snack products, all gluten-free, healthy and delicious, all of which can be customized to meet the clients’ specifications.
Expansive product portfolio
Wholebake’s specialisms include seeded bars, flapjacks, fruit bars and balls, along with several other fruit, nut, seed and protein recipes. Its famous flapjacks, muesli and protein bars can be made using a wide assortment of freeze-dried fruits, nuts and nut butters. To sweeten the deal further, the bars can be coated in a wide range of flavored coatings, including the development of bespoke toppings for specific customer needs. It also manufactures a selection of extruded bars, balls and bites, including cold-formed fruit bars and raw fruit molded balls. These snacks are produced using freeze-dried fruits, nuts, nut butters, fruit pastes and syrups, and each one can be infused with protein and enriched further with natural flavors.
Wholebake
ensures that it only uses the highest quality ingredients and is committed to maintaining close, caring relationships with its suppliers. Whilst it opts for ingredients grown or prepared in the UK where possible, Wholebake’s technical team work alongside its trusted supplier network to source the most exquisite ingredients from all over the world including cutting edge new functional ingredients and flavors. Network relations go beyond transactional partnerships as Wholebake strongly values the relationships it holds with its suppliers.
‘Operating with conscience’ is one of Wholebake’s core company values as it aims to uphold the highest standards of integrity by only trading fairly and openly with its network. Similarly, the business prizes the relationships it has with its employees and local communities, and it constantly strives to make a real impact on the lives and organizations it touches.
Ethical production
In the interests of the wider community, Wholebake supports the Llangollen Festival – a Welsh music festival that takes place every July – to promote local culture and tourism, proudly partners with UK charity GroceryAid, which supports individuals working across the grocery industry and actively supports and encourages employees to volunteer with local charities, with a number of charity trustees and volunteers amongst its employee base.
Furthermore, Wholebake’s other internal company values are centered around passion, entrepreneurship and customer care. In 2021, the company achieved B-Corp status and made the pledge to use the business to spark change. With the formal accreditation already aligning with its internal values, sustainability comes naturally to Wholebake, and the business is always keen to improve even further. Remaining consistent with its open, transparent and honest ethos, Wholebake’s B-Corp report is available on its website, and the company is proud to show how its assessment results will govern its environmental strategy for the next three years to come.
The past few years have been tumultuous for the food industry, but Wholebake continues to succeed despite the current economic climate. By empowering its clients, Wholebake affirms its position as a leader in contract manufacturing as it flies the flag for healthy foods and ethical production. Most importantly, Wholebake shows that, by protecting both people and the planet, businesses all over the world can make a real difference.