The story behind Coles hot cross buns
Find out why Coles hot cross buns are so delicious.
Unlike most Australians, Thea Comino thinks about hot cross buns all year round. As a Coles Product Developer for Bakery, Thea’s job is to maintain the quality of your favourite flavours and develop fun new varieties, too. It’s a job she takes very seriously. “It’s hard to imagine how many hot cross buns I eat a year,” she says. “Hundreds and hundreds!”
The most important part of her job starts once hot cross buns arrive in stores, which involves listening to you, the customers. Thea and her team read customer feedback that comes in about hot cross buns: what you liked, what you thought could be better, what you want to see next. And when it comes to what customers care most about in their buns? ‘Soft and fluffy’ comes in top of the list, so that’s a big focus area for Thea. “We have a fantastic range of core classics that Australians know and love, but we’re constantly seeking to expand and each season we go to great lengths to provide our customers with amazing products. We’re always looking for little improvements we can make to the range,” she says.
Jason Oven, Lead Sensory and Development Chef in the Coles Test Kitchen works with Thea on maintaining product consistency. “We look at the quality of the fruit, quantity of the fruit, and then obviously the actual bun itself,” he says. “We check that it’s got a nice soft, fluffy texture inside but that it still has a bit of a chew to it.”
The right ingredients
Not surprisingly for Thea, quality is her main consideration when it comes to the entire hot cross bun range and this starts with the ingredients and how they’re sourced. “It’s always really important for Coles to create great products,” Thea says. “So we get together as a team for tasting sessions. We also benchmark our products against what’s in the market. As a team, we discuss our preferences and how best to expand our range to keep our customers satisfied.”
Jason says the quantity of fruit is also a priority. “As you take each bite, you get juicy raisins and sultanas – that’s what you want from a hot cross bun,” he says of the traditional flavour. “You don’t want to be searching for the fruit and it doesn’t matter which way you cut it, there’s plenty in there.”
The quality of ingredients goes beyond the taste and texture of the buns. It extends to the sourcing of ingredients across the range. The Coles Chocolate Hot Cross Buns, for example, contain 25 per cent real chocolate chips with cocoa sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. This means that the cocoa is sourced ethically and sustainably*
A range of flavours
Coles’ range of hot cross buns now includes traditional fruit, traditional mini fruit, chocolate, apple and cinnamon, fruit-free, and Vegemite and cheese, as well as gluten-free varieties and a new top-tier offering with Coles Finest Luxurious Fruit Hot Cross Buns. These Coles Finest buns include plump vine fruits, golden apricots, sweet cranberries and candied orange peel.
“When developing our Coles Finest Hot Cross Buns, it was important to create an offering that provides a sophisticated twist on the humble hot cross bun. Of course, it’s important to be well educated, so I ran a ‘food safari’ for the team,” Thea says. “We visited bakeries to get the whole in-store experience and purchased about 20 different hot cross buns available in Melbourne. We brought all the hot cross buns back to the office and judged them all on flavour, texture, visuals and aroma.”
Award-winning buns
Last year, Coles won the 2023 Canstar Blue Most Satisfied Customers Award for Supermarket Hot Cross Buns. Thea is particularly happy about this achievement. “We’re so proud to have won this award, because it reinforces the great lengths we go to for quality,” Thea says.
Based off consumer feedback, this award also shows Thea’s level of commitment to Coles customers and what they think of the hot cross buns. “I want Australians to know that there’s a lot of care and consideration that goes into the product,” she says. “We’re benchmarking ourselves against competitors, and we spend time in store and at our third-party manufacturers making hundreds of hot cross buns for our customers.”