Chinese Bakery Suppliers Visit Blueberry Country - Bakersfield!

Here is the concept: China is a nation of 1.3 billion.   Each family buys at least one birthday cake each year!   This is a land of small and medium sized bakeries.   How do they receive ingredients.  Just like their peers in the USA, they are supplied by vast networks of bakery supply companies who sell flour, eggs, sugar and specialty ingredients like blueberries.   Bakers are too busy to shop each day and they rely on thee important channel partners to connect.
USHBC is connecting with the Chinese bakery suppliers from throughout China who visited the USA the week of June 5-10 as part of a USDA-Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) trade mission led by the Agricultural Trade Office (ATO) Shanghai.
A group of eight important bakery suppliers and ingredient importers first visited the Dairy-Deli-Bakery Exposition in Houston and then onto the Central Valley of California where they experienced blueberries first hand.   Many thanks to the Murray Family Farm in Bakersfield where the group experienced blueberry production, picked blueberries and enjoyed the 100 F heat!
The group left with a positive understanding of blueberries and in the end we charted our plans for promotions and further activities in the booming China bakery sector!

Thanks to Susan Zhang, Marketing Specialist for the USDA-FAS ATO in Shanghai for bringing these new blueberry friends to California!

We took a farm tour on a hay wagon and saw the hundreds of acres!

This farm is carved out of the desert east of Bakersfield in the foothills of the Tehachapi mountains.  A most unique experience!

The guys loved picking the fresh blueberries!  

Susan from ATO Shanghai and Carrie, from a Shanghai Bakery Supply company

I felt like a dried dried blueberry at the end of the day!