INDIANAPOLIS — It’s been a big year for the American Society of Baking (ASB). From celebrating its 100th anniversary and revamping its branding to reorganizing educational offerings and launching its first-ever mentorship program, ASB’s initiatives have been designed with current and prospective membership in mind.
Kristen L. Spriggs, executive director of ASB, shared that part of what has allowed the organization to do so much comes down to rounding out the ASB staff over the past year. This includes the addition of Joanna Evoniuk as education and membership coordinator and Sarah Day as director of education.
“Bringing in the right talent to further the mission was an important need for us, as we had a clear vision and solid business plan of what we wanted to do,” Spriggs said. “Having the best people to support that — and the work of our volunteer leaders — was instrumental.”
The association’s leadership announced its new strategic plan with five focus areas that will help ASB keep growing as it enters its next era. This plan — shared with the organization’s members during BakingTECH 2024 — includes revenue growth for the association’s sustainability, membership development and growth for an enhanced community experience, industry advancement for workforce training solutions, brand awareness to reach new members and emerging bakery markets, and governance built for a modern organization.
One accomplishment under the strategic plan includes the integration of content into ASB’s Education Hub. In the past year, the association has centralized its content from the past 100 years, including webinars and external resources from the American Bakers Association’s (ABA) Baking Basics 101 wholesale bakery training course. The result is a streamlined collection of training, learning and development resources designed for members to easily access.
“We’re taking self-paced digital courses and building those into hands-in-dough courses with instructors to teach them,” Spriggs said, noting the organization is also building curriculum to fill training gaps in the industry.
Although ASB operates on individual memberships, it also connects with baking leaders to emphasize these educational resources and opportunities available to their teams through digital membership.
“It’s a subscription to access our learning and online training,” Spriggs said. “For $99 per employee, they can gain access to a significant amount of training resources.”
With expanded access available to membership, ASB is set on exponential growth. It has seen a solid increase from 2023 to 2024 and aims to reach 10,000 members by 2030.
“That’s big growth between now and then,” Spriggs shared. “We’re focused on retention and new-member acquisition. Where we’ve seen the biggest change has been with new members coming in. We more than doubled [the new members] in September alone compared to last year.”
“We started with a very blank slate to imagine — and reimagine — what we want [the BakingTECH] experience to be." — Kristen L. Spriggs | executive director | American Society of Baking
To not only attract new members but also engage current ones, the association launched the ASB Mentoring program, the first of its kind in the commercial baking industry. Spearheaded by Evoniuk, the inaugural cohort is underway, with 18 sets of mentors and mentees who will work together during a five-month program, culminating with an in-person meeting at BakingTECH 2025 in Orlando, FL.
BakingTECH, ASB’s annual event, will be held outside Chicago for the first time since 1924. It’s the first of several major changes as part of a nearly complete overhaul of the conference that has defined ASB for a century. The association approached the revamp based on membership and attendee feedback.
“We started with a very blank slate to imagine — and reimagine — what we want this experience to be,” Spriggs said.
A key change to this event is the Formulation Floor, formerly known as Marketplace. This section of the show will be organized in a way that will help attendees more easily find innovations that best fit their needs. The reimagined feature includes Bakers Row, which will help bakers identify and locate the optimal solutions for their operational needs, while the Innovation Stations will showcase some of the most informative technologies, trends and services. In turn, attendees can gain the insights and contacts they need to level up their businesses.
Continued collaboration with other industry associations is also on the docket for ASB heading into 2025. The association is partnering with ABA and the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association on a workforce gap study. In surveying the associations’ various members to see opportunities
and gaps in the workforce, the results will serve as a data source to inform ASB’s future related to training, professional development and education.
Looking ahead, the association is placing community, education and hands-on training at the core of its operation.
“We’re really excited about leveraging this new brand positioning and building on that community,” Spriggs said.
With a focus on serving its individual members, ASB heads into 2025 with an array of opportunities for members from all sides of the baking industry.
This has been adapted from the 2024 Innovations Annual of Commercial Baking. Read the digital edition here.
