4 ANALYSES AND RESULTS
As next, I will present four stories based on narrative analysis explained in the previous methodology chapter. After the stories, I will answer my main research question at first: How do the Finnish and Italian entrepreneurs describe the connections and lack of connections between branding, COO and the quality schemes? Then, I will answer my first sub-question: How do the entrepreneurs describe their branding?
Thereafter, I will summarise and illustrate the results for those two questions by means of the table. Lastly, I will focus on answering my second sub-question: How do the descriptions differ between the Finnish and Italian entrepreneurs?
4.1 The Finnish stories
In this sub-chapter, I present two Finnish stories. The first Finnish story is fictitiously called Lady Baker and she owns a bakery and catering company where she produces traditional blueberry rye pies among the other bakery products. In this respect, blueberry rye pie could apply for the EU quality scheme since it has the qualifications for it (as commented by ProAgria Northern Savo 2016). Then, the second story is fictitiously called Mr Restaurateur. He owns a distillery with a shop and restaurant. Furthermore, he could start to use the ready applied quality schemes for Finnish berry liqueur and fish pie, and his blueberry rye pie could apply for the quality scheme as well.
Story 1: Lady Baker
Back in the day, I was a returnee from Helsinki, who was looking for a permanent job, but found only temporary ones. At first, I fretted about the situation, but then I decided that it was my time to step forward. That’s how I participated in an entrepreneurship course. When I went to that course 17 years ago, it was clear for me that I wanted to open my own bakery with a boutique and catering.
Ten high-flying years later, we needed to close the boutique. We were so overbooked due to our bakery and catering, and we didn’t have time for everything. In those days, I started to believe deeply in catering as our main business and guess what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained! Nowadays, our bakery and catering make around 200,000 euros turnover per year with the help of two workers.
At the beginning of our journey, we baked and subcontracted the big and small sizes of traditional blueberry rye pies.
Today, we have only the big size left and we don’t subcontract the pies anymore because also the other bakeries are baking on their own now. The thing is, we only bake around 150–200 blueberry rye pies per week, so it’s not a big success.
Therefore, I have never looked ahead that blueberry rye pie could apply for the quality scheme, and I have not been even aware that it could apply for it. In any case, I would prefer that every baker would use approximately the same raw materials though. Come to think of it, the EU scheme would standardise the used raw materials.
For me, it is important that the used ingredients are domestics and it makes a difference. Therefore, I buy berries and rye flours from here, but wheat flours are hard to come by locally. I have noticed that, especially, the household customers are happy when they hear that our homemade pastries are prepared by using domestic ingredients, and it increases our sales too. That is also our secret, we stand out from the competitors since we work as traditional as possible and we bake everything on our own hands.
True to form, our customers favour our pastries even if they are a bit more expensive than in the local supermarket.
Sometimes, I even cough out, ‘We can start to toy with the idea of using cheap raw materials in order to have cheap prices’.
Yet they answer me to bake like always and to use real butter. We base on genuine raw materials. That’s why, our customer relationships are meant to last! We will always continue the tradition of the well working service with the high and steady quality of our products.
In any case, the competitive spirit has changed since we have started this journey. Back in the days, there were no frozen products, and now they are dominating the markets. Come to think of it, the better it is, the more we have the EU protected foods in Finland.
Apart from the changed competitive situation, we are also poormouthed because of our tasteless food around the world.
With the help of the quality scheme, we could create a small new export product and blueberry rye pie could have potential for that role. The marketing of the scheme could increase the sales of blueberry rye pies in Southern Finland too since they have more tourists there.
Alone I will not do anything anyway because I don’t have time for that. I also think that for the organised marketing of blueberry rye pie abroad, two or even ten helping hands are not enough. What ever happens, I see that the scheme will be helpful after a longer period of time, but not over the next five years.
In the future, the quality scheme could attract publicity for blueberry rye pie. It could also secure that the next generations would preserve the recipe of blueberry rye pie too. I am reasoning that blueberry rye pie would bear fruit if it used the EU quality logo. Think about all the traditional foods that we have in Finland, if nobody keeps the recipes, those will die in the future. We must write down the recipes and preserve our traditional foods.
Story 2: Mr Restaurateur
My wife and I bought this company in 2009, but the company has been founded in the 60’s already. That is to say, the company has a long history and tradition, which we respect carefully in our business.
Nowadays, we are running a distillery with a shop and restaurant that make around one million euros turnover per year with the help of twelve employees. Our liqueurs are sold also through the Finnish governmental owned monopoly company called Alko, but the sales volumes are truly marginal. The thing is, we sell most of our products, but due to the Finnish law, we are allowed to sell only mild alcohol products at our shop, so we need Alko to sell our stronger alcohol products.
At our restaurant, the customers eat because of the quality, not the quantity, and they want to experience a beautiful panorama too. Besides, they can always enjoy fish pie, blueberry rye pie and berry liqueurs at our restaurant because they have used to have them. Thus for us, as a travel destiny, it is truly important to have the portions made with domestic raw materials and we favour local as far as we can. The thing is, we make our liqueurs by using local berries, but they are sometimes hard to get. It is a great product but problematic.
To use the quality schemes for my products is old news already. I know that Finnish berry liqueurs and fish pie have the ready applied quality scheme logos, but I don’t use them since we sell those products so few.
However, if I marketed internationally together with other entrepreneurs several traditional foods, it could work out. On a marketing material, there should be a list of companies where foreign tourist could taste these products. Apart from, if we started to market a single quality scheme food for the Finnish tourists, it could be a way to make a difference between the Finnish provinces. The marketing could attract Finnish to taste traditional foods while they are moving from one place to another.
Still the fact is that we are so few people here. We don’t need similar kind of hype than they have in Southern Europe. I am thinking about the amount of foreign tourists, who are interested in, it’s so marginal group.
In any case, the use of the schemes would not affect our prices; we haven’t been able to raise the prices for years. If I became interested in the quality schemes, I would not even know whom to ask help. I don’t have much time or energy either. If I worked in some other sector, I could be more interested in it. With so many ifs and buts, it is easier for my wife and I to go without.