A multi-million dollar agreement between supermarket giant Coles and Homestyle Bake will see the Toowoomba bakery showcase their products on a national stage.
According to The Chronicle, the family-owned and operated bakery has signed a deal to beef up its baked goods supplies to the supermarket chain.
The business currently supplies about 20,000 loaves a week to 124 Coles stores in south-east Queensland.
"The meeting was essentially about further growth and focusing on increasing our volume to Coles," Homestyle Bake director, Brett Pascoe, told The Chronicle.
Pascoe said the deal with Coles is an opportunity for the business to grow further, having already expanded its staff from 11 when the company was established in 989 to more than 200 today.
"The agreement will allow us to grow even more.
"It will really allow us to put back even more into the community in which we operate from," he said.
Earlier this year, Coles conducted an extensive research program of its customers and found they wanted access to more local products from local suppliers and producers.
While the supermarkets' bolstered alliance with Homestyle Bake is in-line with this sentiment, just last week legal action was launched against it by the ACCC for engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct.
It's reported Coles bread marketed as ‘Baked Today, Sold Today’ and/or ‘Freshly Baked In-Store’, has actually been partially baked and frozen off-site – in places as far away as Europe and Ireland – transported to Coles stores and then ‘finished’ in-store.
In a statement issued by Coles, the supermarket expressed its intention to "vigorously defend the action brought against it by the ACCC.