Our New Product: ‘Halos’

The middle of 2022 saw us looking into new horizons. Whilst scones were always going to be a staple product for us, we wanted to begin working on something that was fresh, new and modern. Our NPD team started looking into mini doughnuts which were both steamed and low calorie. Whilst similar products had been sold for some time internationally in places like Japan and the Netherlands, they were unlike anything in the UK market at the time.

We worked with bakers in the Netherlands and learned how to perfect the recipe and steaming process to create a donut base that was light and airy, a welcome contrast to the texture of fried, oily doughnuts that we were used to in the UK. We then worked with chocolatiers to learn how to create a chocolate coating for our doughnuts that would be easy to incorporate into our production process but wouldn’t compromise on flavour.

After a lot of trial, errors and learnings by our bakers, the project quickly evolved from an interesting, innovative idea into a reality, and very soon we transferred the project from our test kitchen to a small pilot plant at our bakery. We went from being able to make a small amount of donuts per day to being able to make around 15,000.

We created a new brand which we named ‘Halos’ to reflect the low calorie, light texture of the products. By this time we were extremely passionate and confident in the product, and our sales team headed off to the Asda HQ to pitch the idea. We secured a listing in hundreds of stores for two flavours, double chocolate and chocolate orange Halos, at the beginning of 2023. Our Halos can now be purchased in most stores around the country. More information can be found over on our instagram, @halos_official  and on our website, www.halos-official.com