Career initiative Shadowing: Pagiriai gymnasium students visited Vilnius bakery

"It's better than Christmas here!", – this is how the gymnasium student from Pagiriai gymnasium evaluated the visit of the Šešėliavimas initiative to our Vilnius bakery .

"My dad wanted to work in this bakery!" commented another young man.

During the Career Week, high school students had a rare opportunity to visit our bakery and see up close the place where "Toste", "Sostine" baguette, portioned breads, toasted breads and other wheat pastries of ours are born.

He learned a lot of new things about Vilnius bread

"I didn't know that you were baking Beata's bread," another participant of the tour wondered.

During this visit, the students really learned a lot of new things about Vilnius bread in order to:

🍞 We need 65 different professions to bake bread (he said he will invite moms and dads to take an interest in a career with us, and in a couple of years from 18 they will come themselves 😉

🍞 we bake about 90 tons of bread or a quarter of a million products every day;

🍞 we have a great responsibility to supply almost 40% of the market;

🍞 we have earned a certificate of production quality equivalent to the Michelin of restaurants –

all this was presented to them in a very interesting way by the head of the factory herself, Dalia Zdanovičienė. Although the bakery is currently very busy, all lines are working at full capacity, and she has dedicated time to it. 🫶

🍞schoolchildren also had the opportunity to be the first to taste "Beata ragaišis" – a new product that will reach IKI stores only this week.

Our colleague Aurimas Jurevičius worked on the recipe for this pastry, who introduced the work of a food technologist to the students.

🍞 The bread path in the bakery includes many stages – from sourdough preparation, kneading, rising to baking, cooling, packaging and logistics. In the bakery, Alina Zibalienė, our great production technologist, accompanied me along this path. Not only is she a great connoisseur of her work – but she could also be a guide! ✨

They told us so cheerfully and engagingly, gave them baked goods and even gave them a warm baguette to taste – that the gymnasium students were impressed.

Became quality assessors

🍞Also, the students became quality assessors themselves for a short time and performed the entire sensory path of bread evaluation: from taste, moisture, smell, softness, binding, even to the size of the holes in the slices or the width of the sink.

Oh, to see how reluctantly they allowed bread to be "tested" – it's nice that bread is still something sacred to us. 🫶

"It's like putting my baby on the table!", one high school student commented emotionally as she removed all the bread from the package. The sensory assessment was wonderfully conducted by our quality manager Viktorija Lėgaudaitė-Lydekaitienė. 👏 And Jurga Staniukėnienė, who curated the event, of course, handed out gifts from Vilnius bread to everyone.

Lithuanian Junior Achievement Program

Thank you to Lithuanian Junior Achievement for a great #Šešėliavimas initiative, which helps students get to know so many professions that they would not have tried and learned otherwise.

And thank you to all our colleagues who, after stepping away from direct work, took the time to welcome the Pagiriai Gymnasium squad so sincerely and attentively for their stay.

Vilniaus Duona participated in the initiative for the third time. Last year, students interested in professions visited our bakery in Panevėžys, and the year before last also in this bakery in Vilnius.