“Do your dishes contain gluten? Do you sell gluten free products?”

You’re being asked these questions more and more often because offering gluten free options is now an important requirement for some of your customers. 43% of Brits regularly shop free from and 13% of adults in the UK now eat a gluten free diet.

What better way to increase their loyalty than to offer them delicious, high quality gluten free products that they can have complete confidence in?

However, before deciding which products you’re going to offer, you need to know what gluten is and why some people avoid it. Gluten is a protein found in rye, barley and wheat which forms an elastic network during the making of pastry, bread, brioches and certain cakes and pastries. Affecting more than one in 100 people, Coeliac Disease is caused by a reaction of the immune system to gluten.

According to the American website “Research and Markets”, by 2019 the world market for gluten-free products will reach 6.8 billion dollars. Fortunately, we offer a wide range of products which you can serve your gluten free customers and we guarantee they will delight.

For Mademoiselle Desserts, sales of gluten free desserts in 2017 continued to increase strongly, and now account for over 15% of total sales of the manufacturing unit.

Since 2013, The Handmade Cake Company, one of the Groups brands, have been producing gluten free cakes in a dedicated gluten free bakery. The Handmade Cake bakers have worked hard to develop a wide range of recipes for fantastic, great tasting cakes which are also gluten free. The range has won 10 Great Taste Awards, 2 of which were awarded in 2018 for our Gluten Free Ginger Cake and our Gluten Free Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Gluten free customers are always on the lookout for the Crossed Grain symbol

All of our UK gluten free range meet the below criteria and bear this symbol indicating that they are gluten free and suitable for people with coeliac disease. 

When companies display this logo at European level, they undertake to comply with four criteria:

• To ensure that no more than 20 mg/kg of residual gluten is contained in each product.

• To routinely have independent laboratories analyse the residual gluten present in the finished product.

• To carry out regular audits of the gluten free product on the site where it is manufactured.

• To have the results (analysis and audit) checked by the AOECS at least once a year.

*Association of European Coeliac Societies