About Filialmanagement

Filialmanagement

Filialmanagement is the German trade magazine for bakery-branch management, published six times a year for the operators of bakery chains and their retail decision-makers. Founded in 2009 by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft of Osnabrück, the magazine serves the filialisierende Bäcker — the medium-sized bakery businesses running multiple branches across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — with management knowledge for the bakery shop: staff leadership, POS systems, logistics, controlling, assortment design, and sales practice. In a trade where the craft of baking meets the discipline of chain retail, the magazine is the management handbook for the branch operator — and, since the 2018 move to bimonthly publication, the industry's fastest-reading record of how the bakery branch is professionalizing.

Overview

Filialmanagement appears bimonthly — six issues a year — and addresses medium-sized businesses in the bakery craft as well as managers and decision-makers in bakery retail sales: the owners, managing directors, and sales executives who run bakery branches as a retail business. The ISSN 0940-0362 marks the print edition. The target group is the branch-operating baker in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: the entrepreneur who has grown from the single craft bakery into a multi-branch retail business and needs professional management for dozens of shops, hundreds of employees, and the daily logistics of fresh products — the merchandise that perishes by evening and must be baked, delivered, and sold fresh every single day, the operational constraint that makes bakery retail unlike any other.

The magazine's premise is that running bakery branches is retail management, not baking: the decisive questions are staff leadership and retention in a labor market where qualified sales staff are scarce, the POS and cash-register systems that connect dozens of branches, the logistics of fresh delivery, the controlling that distinguishes profitable from loss-making branches, and the assortment design that balances craft tradition with the snack and coffee business that now drives much of the revenue. Single issues are sold through the Inger kiosk (abonet.baeckerwelt.de) at 29.99 euros; the 2026 issues (1/2026, 02-03/2026, 4/2026) document the continuing bimonthly rhythm. The magazine is part of the Bäckerwelt portfolio — the INGER publishing house's 13-title bakery-media universe at baeckerwelt.de — which unites the trade journals of the baking, organic, and coffee industries on one portal, described as the most comprehensive source for specialist information from and for the industry.

History

Filialmanagement was founded in 2009 by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft mbH of Osnabrück — a modern B2B specialist publisher with locations in Osnabrück and Bochum, serving entrepreneurs in the baking and coffee industries. From 2009 to 2017 the magazine appeared quarterly; since 2018 it has been published bimonthly, doubling its frequency as the bakery-branch market professionalized and the demand for management knowledge grew. In 2018 the title was taken over by the Convention Verlagsgesellschaft of Osnabrück, remaining within the Osnabrück bakery-media cluster — the city's concentration of bakery trade publishing.

The publisher and editor-in-chief since the founding is Trond Patzphal — the continuity of a founder-led specialist title, unusual in an industry where trade magazines frequently change hands. The magazine's history mirrors the structural transformation of the German bakery trade: the consolidation of craft bakeries into branch networks, the rise of the bakery café and the snack business that turned the bakery into a gastronomy competitor, the digitalization of the point of sale with networked cash registers and merchandise management, and the labor shortage that made staff leadership and retention the industry's central management question. Each wave created new management challenges that the magazine addresses — the title's evolution from quarterly to bimonthly tracking the market's increasing complexity.

Coverage and Content

The magazine is organized in the rubrics Tipps und Ideen (tips and ideas), Kongress und Messe (congress and trade fair), Titelthema/Themenschwerpunkt der Ausgabe (cover story/issue focus), Management, EDV (IT), Weiterbildung (continuing education), and Kolumne (column). The emphasis is on bakery-retail topics: staff leadership and retention (Mitarbeiterführung, Mitarbeiterbindung) — the industry's existential question as skilled sales staff become scarce — cash-register solutions and POS, logistics, controlling, returns (Retouren), assortment design, sales practice, snack refinement (Snackveredelung), coffee and coffee machines, quality assurance in the shop, and self-management for the entrepreneur.

The Filialmanagementtag — the magazine's branch-management day — is the brand's event, the physical gathering of the branch operators the magazine serves, with the "Verkaufsleiterin des Jahres" (sales manager of the year) award as a fixture: when the event had to be cancelled, the editorial team presented the certificate virtually at the Bäckerwelt trade fair, honoring Steffi Dickow of Bäcker Dick (Heinsberg), with the company since 1995 — the continuity of the award reflecting the magazine's institutional role in the industry. The Bäckerwelt portal extends the coverage with constantly updated news, a weekly newsletter, the seminar program, the industry awards and how to apply, networking opportunities, an interactive map of visited businesses with downloadable reportage, a bakery-only job portal, and an events calendar — the full service infrastructure around the print title.

Organization and Ownership

Filialmanagement is published by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Luisenstraße 34, 49074 Osnabrück (with a Bochum location), a medium-sized publishing house that describes itself as making markets transparent, presenting the industries' best companies, offering readers practical value, and maintaining its own opinion: critical, constructive, and independent — premium magazines for premium markets. The publisher and editor-in-chief since the founding is Trond Patzphal; the management includes Monika Kordhanke.

The bakery publishing program includes Back Journal, Back Technik, BäckerGastro, Bäcker Zeitung, Cereal Technology, DBZ Magazin, and Filialmanagement, plus the organic title BIOwelt and the coffee titles Aroma and Coffee Business — a 13-title portfolio that covers the baking industry from technology to retail to the coffee that the bakery café sells. As a founder-led specialist publisher's title, the magazine's economics combine subscriptions and single-copy sales with advertising from the bakery industry's suppliers — POS and cash-register systems, coffee machines, logistics, and shopfitting — the companies whose products the magazine's readers buy for their branches, the natural advertising fit of a management title for retail operators. The 2018 takeover by the Convention Verlagsgesellschaft kept the title in Osnabrück, the bakery-media city. Circulation figures and financial details are not publicly confirmed.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is the Bäckerwelt portal (baeckerwelt.de) — "alles, was Bäcker wissen wollen" (everything bakers want to know) — which unites 13 specialist journals in one appearance, with the Inger kiosk (abonet.baeckerwelt.de) selling current and back issues as digital editions and even individual articles. The abonet+ portal, requiring registration, serves digital subscribers with download options for individual articles; the weekly Bäckerwelt newsletter delivers industry events to smartphones and computers — the rhythm of the industry's week in the inbox.

The portal's interactive map — showing all businesses visited by the specialist editorial teams in the past year, with search function and downloadable reportage — exemplifies the publisher's service journalism: the editorial visits made visible and reusable, the magazine's reporting as a browsable database. The job portal, exclusive to the bakery industry, and the events calendar complete the service infrastructure around the print title and its digital extensions. For a trade where the branch manager's daily reality is staff rotas, fresh-product logistics, and the coffee machine's profitability, Filialmanagement's combination of print depth, portal news, and the Filialmanagementtag event provides the management knowledge that turns craft bakers into retail professionals — the bimonthly handbook for the branch operator who must be both baker and manager.