Jörg Barowski
The Justus Bakery in Bramsche, with new concepts and after a merger, is still the oldest bakery in the chamber district.
Whether “Opa”’s tasty butter cake, a load of “Kalles Abendbrot” or the regionally popular spent grain bread from Osnabrück’s Rampendahl microbrewery, it is not just the special recipes that have a long traditionat th e Justus Bakery. Last year, the Bramsche business celebrated its bicentenary. Since it was founded in 1823, the family company has evolved from a small bakehouse into a successful craft bakery and baked goods catering business with 150 employees.
To mark the bicentenary, Justus is also absolutely up to date in terms of technical equipment and energy efficiency. “Last year we invested 650,000 Euro in a modernfurnace for our bakehouse in Bramsche-Engter. This new technology, with furnace shutdown plans in the branches, helps us reduce our energy consumption by up to ten percent. Furthermore, since 2012 we now also have a photovoltaic array on the roof of our production facility”, reports Jörg Barowski, managing director and proprietor.
“We are very glad to see that some businesses still remain in family management,” declares Andreas Nünemann, President of Osnabrück-Emsland-County Bentheim Chamber of Skilled Crafts, commenting on the company’s long history and rich traditions. In recent years, the chamber has registered a mas-sive concentration process, particularly in the bakery trade, with an increasing number of mergers and businesses being sold. Justus craft bakery also recognised the advantages of joining forces with a trade rival and merged at the start of the year with Berelsmann bakery.
“We worked on the merger preparations for a long time, and are really looking forward to our joint partnership,” explains Jörg Barowski. The two long-standing companies have been working hand-in-hand since 1 January 2024, each retaining their own branches and brands for the time being. The merger has pooled the administration and production of both businesses. No layoffs are planned. On the contrary, both sides benefit from the fact that they are now better able to compensate for staffing departures, due to retirement, for example. “We are glad that the work of company manage-ment can now be shared out over several shoulders with a more targeted approach,” explains Jörg Berelsmann, who runs Wallenhorst bakery together with Elena Berelsmann. The new size of the team should also allow greater flexibility for the employees. “The merger was based on the strengths of both bakeries to make our branches more viable in future,” explains Jörg Barowski.
According to the Central Association of German Bakers, the bakery founded by Franz Justus in 1823 is one of the oldest bakeries in Germany.
Today, Jörg Barowski runs the family firm in the sixth generation. Justus has remained loyal to the skilled crafts tradition through to the present day, while constantly modernising and expanding the range of services in the course of time. The company now has 19 retail outlets in and around Bram-sche and in the neighbouring state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The name of the “Café 1823” located right on Bramsche marketplace already refers to the long tradition. “The café is our flagship. In 1994 we were the first non-smoking café to open its doors, and have brought it back to life again in 2010 after it had been leased out”, says the confectioner, master baker and skilled crafts’ business manager.
Despite the positive developments, Justus is also clearly feeling the skillsshortage. “It’s years since we had any apprentices. That’s not because we don’t want them. We simply can’t find any young people who want to learn the baking trade. In the past, we even often produced the Guild Champion. But our sales team now includes lateral entrants, and we’reconstantly looking for more staff“, says Jörg Barowski. “Generally speaking, during the pandemic people realised that they could get by with working not quite so many hours. When four full-time employees each reduce their working hours by ten hours, in the end a whole fulltime position is vacant. That’s why we now have more part-timers on salesteam.”
Justus takes many different approaches to finding employees and skilled workers. The company has intensified its efforts particularly on social media and online marketplaces to draw attention to a job at Justus. Jörg Barowski then emphasises the benefits. These include the attractive lifelong working time accounts that the company has offered since 2011,resulting the Guild Oscar being awarded to the firm in 2017.
Besides the skills shortage, progressive digitalisation is another growing concern for the bakery boss: “It is a huge challenge for the bakery trade to im-plement effective control of optimised processes.” One big issue is purchasing order control. “Sales used to be predictable, with returns accounting for between five and eight percent. But today we have twice to three times as many returns as before.” Barowski sees the reason for thisin the increasing unpredictability of customer behaviour. “In the past, you’d have some idea more or less of how high the sales would be when the weather was good, or if it was a public holiday. Today, t here’s nothing to gauge it by anymore,” explains the managing director.
Barowski is therefore keeping a keen eye on possible chances emerging from the use of artificial intelligence. On the basis of data, artificialintelligence tries to find patterns to make the sales of baked goods more predictable. Since 1997, the Justus Bakery has been working with the food banks in Bram-scher and Osnabrück to ensure that any leftover baked goods are put to good and use.
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