The insight didn’t come from a spreadsheet. He came from the street to observe the daily life and behavior of retail. It was on a work trip to Espírito Santo that Rafael Mendes, co-founder of Ultra Pão, saw what would later change the course of his career.
“I took care of an important commercial area at Ambev () and on one of those trips what caught my attention was that along with the beer trucks there was always a bread truck. The frequency was very high. And as it was perishable… frozen, the bread had priority for unloading. At that moment we said: ‘It looks like there’s an interesting business here”, he says.
What would go unnoticed by many became the golden key to Rafael’s dream of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur participated in the program From Zero to Top, recorded during the immersion, an event held by XP Educação, Galapos, InfoMoney and XP Empresas.
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With the great insight, he and a college friend transformed observation into scale. “We can’t compete with AMBEV, but maybe with a good face we can”, he says jokingly. “So, we started to study baking. It was a bulky product, for daily consumption, recurring and crisis-proof.”
Bread was present every day in the consumer’s life and despite already seeing more sophisticated trends, such as special breads, the initial decision was practical.
“We’re going to do the basics, the perfect basics. It’s French bread and cheese bread. Perhaps the most important part is surviving. Once we’re alive, we can improve the margin and then innovate”, says Mendes.
The company, which is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary, began by opting for the B2B model, focused on retail supply. Ultra Pão supplies frozen products that are finished in supermarket bakeries, guaranteeing freshness without requiring the retailer’s own production. Which allows for scale, standardization and operational efficiency.
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“The French bread market is three times larger than all industrialized bread combined. Today, 70% of French bread sales in Brazil still come from bakeries. 30% is already in an industry like ours. So, what we have seen, and what is inevitable, is a process of consolidation of this market”, reveals Rafael.
To find out more details about Ultra Pão’s trajectory, see the full episode on . The program is available in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , and
About From Zero to Top
The Do Zero ao Topo podcast is a production of InfoMoney and brings, every week, the stories of prominent women and men in the Brazilian market to tell their story, sharing the biggest challenges faced along the way and the main strategies used in building the business.
