New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays 2009

This year we are excited to be a part of the Southern Hemisphere's largest agricultural show. If you're there come and visit us at our stand, we would enjoy meeting you. For more information, and a map of where we will be see our Fieldays page at www.fieldays.co.nz

Tauranga Garden and Arts Festival - November 2008

As part of this biannual event The Lakes held an Artisan Market and pottager garden display. A huge marquee was put up and the theme was ‘rustic‘, so we got in the spirit of things with our table display. We had a fantastic time talking to 1000's of people over the week and doing tasting of our breads. We enjoyed meeting people not only from Tauranga but from all over New Zealand. It was great to talk with you and answer your questions on all things Gluten Free. We're already looking forward to 2010 and the next festival.

Ntolerance Pukekohe, now stocks our mixes - November 2008

We are very pleased to announce that our range of mixes are now stocked at Ntolerance. This will give those in and about Auckland a place they can buy our mixes while shopping for other allergen free products.

Yeast - Are you having problems? - October 2008

Thanks to our customer feedback and questions it has come to our attention that not all yeast is as fresh as it needs to be to work properly. Several of you have reported problems in getting your yeast to ‘reach the top of the jug' or  to bubble and grow at all, and the yeast you were using had been brought from one of the large supermarket chains.

When we make our bread at home, we have always used active dried yeast brought from Bin Inn Tauranga and have found it performs as yeast  should.

So the conclusion we have drawn is that despite containers of yeast often having months until reaching the ‘use by' date it may already have sat on a supermarket shelf for far too long to work effectively e.g.; its not fresh enough. We would recommend buying your yeast from a "bulk bin" retailer as we suspect they have a faster turnover of their yeast, therefore they sell yeast that is fresher and will produce better bread.

Gluten Free Food & Allergy Show

Auckland 5th & 6th July 2008 Goodness Me decided to have a stand at this show, held at the ASB Showgrounds, as we were looking forward to giving people in Auckland a chance to meet us and sample our delicious range of breads. Also to be a part of a dedicated Gluten Free Food show was too good an opportunity to miss. Our first impression of the event was that it was bitterly cold, that weekend being the coldest winter's day in Auckland for decades. I don't know how many Aucklanders found it too cold to stir from their heaters to travel across the city in such conditions. But they missed a great opportunity, as thousands of people stopped by our stand to taste our loaves, and discuss our bread mixes.

We baked our Maxigrain, Exseedingly Good, Orange and Poppyseed and Spicy Fruit loaves for tasting at the show thinking that White was well White - a bit plain and predictable, so didn't need tasting (though we may have been wrong in that assumption). These flavours proved very popular, with the tasting providing the opportunity to ‘try before you buy', which is something still not available online yet!

It was very interesting to learn through frequently asked questions, about what was in our bread, relating to other food allergens that many visitors were coping with a range of allergies not just gluten intolerance in many cases. So for the Sunday to make it easier for everyone to see, we posted notices all over our booth listing what our mixes are free from (wheat and gluten, dairy, soy, sesame, potato, additives and preservatives).

Another comment that interested us was the one "So it's lovely now fresh baked, but what about in a day or two later when it will fall apart?" This was easily and confidently answered by the fact that the bread being tasted had been baked on the Friday morning (in our Tauranga kitchen) and therefore was already 48 hours or more out from the oven.  The fact that visitors found it soft, delicious and still holding together, again set our product apart from other breads that they had already experienced.

The other constant surprise to visitors was the size of the loaves which we had baked in our Goodness Me jumbo tin (which we had specially imported as we can't find that size in NZ). To be able to bake a loaf the size of "regular supermarket wheat based" bread was a real winner, and the envy of many. No more fishing your bread out of the toaster with a knife! It was encouraging to see people had travelled from the South Island - Balclutha and Timaru that we met, to be at the show. So now our baking mixes have been introduced to the southerners too. It was also delightful to meet up with some of our regular online customers whom we had only known as names and now we could put faces to, and chat about their experiences with baking our bread. All round we found the two days at the show a great opportunity to meet many of you, and also proved to be an invaluable research and marketing exercise to learn how our product stacks up with those breads available in shops nationwide.

Also to hear what you as customers want in a product, and the "foods" you want to avoid (such as other allergens) So we will be very busy over the next few months doing product development and testing, so we can add to our range some new bread flavours that you are asking for.

 Thank you to all of you who purchased our mixes at the show, please do email us at feedback@goodnessme.co.nz to let us know how you have enjoyed baking them fresh in you own home. Any comments, questions and suggestions are welcomed.