About Back Journal direkt

Back Journal direkt

Back Journal direkt is the quarterly German-language trade magazine for the sales staff of the baking industry, published in Osnabrück by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft mbH — the specialist publishing house for the baking and coffee trades. Launched in autumn 2010 and appearing quarterly since 2011, it addresses everyone working in bakery sales across Germany, Austria and Switzerland — the bakery salespeople (Bäckereifachverkäufer) behind the counter, whose advice, presentation and service determine the customer's experience and the branch's success. Its program covers the sales profession's requirements: offer presentation, customer loyalty, raw-material knowledge and hygiene — alongside the training and further-education tools for owners and the practical tips for customer interaction and selling. Under editor-in-chief Dirk Waclawek and publisher Trond Patzphal, Back Journal direkt extends the Back Journal brand from the entrepreneur's desk to the sales counter: the specialist journal for the people who sell the bread.

Overview

The bakery sale is the craft's moment of truth: the customer decides at the counter, and the salesperson's competence — the advice on the bread's qualities, the presentation of the new products, the handling of complaints, the upselling of the snack — determines the revenue. Yet the sales staff has traditionally been the trade's underserved audience: the entrepreneur reads the trade journals, the salesperson learns on the job. Back Journal direkt addresses this gap with a quarterly program built around the sales profession: the practical knowledge and the selling skills that make the counter successful.

The editorial mix follows the sales year. The offer-presentation coverage addresses the visual and communicative craft: how to present the assortment so the premium qualities are visible, how to stage the seasonal products from the first Advent stollen to the Easter specialties, and how to communicate the quality differences — the sourdough's long fermentation, the regional grain's origin — in the few seconds at the counter. The customer-loyalty coverage treats the relationship business: the regular-customer care that turns the morning buyer into the decade-long patron, the complaint management that converts the dissatisfied into the loyal, and the service culture that distinguishes the craft bakery from the bake-off station. The raw-material knowledge (Rohstoffkunde) gives the salespeople the product competence: the flour types and their properties, the sourdough stories worth telling, and the ingredient knowledge — from the ancient grains to the seeds and toppings — that turns the seller into the advisor the customer trusts. The hygiene coverage addresses the regulatory and practical requirements: the food-hygiene rules, their implementation in the shop routine, and the training documentation. For the owners, the magazine provides the training tools: the further-education instruments, the staff-meeting topics, and the practical tips for customer interaction and selling — the management side of the sales operation that determines whether the counter team performs.

History

Back Journal direkt was launched in autumn 2010 by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft — the Osnabrück baking-media house that had published the monthly Back Journal since 2002 under publisher Trond Patzphal. The launch recognized a structural shift: the baking trade's branch operations employed growing sales teams, and the sales profession's professionalization — the Bäckereifachverkäufer as a trained occupation — created the audience for a dedicated journal. Since 2011 the magazine has appeared quarterly, establishing the rhythm: four issues per year for the sales counter.

In May 2018 the magazine was revised in content and layout — the relaunch that modernized the title for the digital-era sales profession, with a fresher visual language and a sharper focus on the actionable. The development tracks the baking retail's transformations: the snack business's growth (making the salesperson a gastronomy advisor), the coffee business's professionalization, the hygiene regulation's tightening, and the customer-expectation inflation — the service standards the sales staff must meet. Through these changes, the quarterly rhythm and the sales-staff focus remained the title's constants: the journal that speaks to the people behind the counter in their professional language, not the entrepreneur's. The ISSN 2192-1342 identifies the title in the journal databases.

Coverage and Content

Each quarterly issue follows the sales profession's agenda. The offer-presentation features address the counter craft: the assortment presentation, the seasonal staging (from the Christmas stollen to the Easter specialties), and the product communication — how to tell the bread's story at the point of sale. The customer-loyalty coverage treats the relationship management: the regular-customer programs, the service standards, and the complaint handling — the soft skills that determine the customer's return.

The raw-material knowledge provides the product education: the grain and flour types, the sourdough and preferment basics, and the ingredient stories — the knowledge that lets the salesperson answer the customer's questions with authority and sell the premium qualities. The hygiene section covers the food-safety requirements: the regulations, the practical implementation, and the training obligations. The owner-oriented content provides the management tools: the further-education and training instruments, the staff-motivation topics, and the practical tips for customer interaction and selling — the leadership side of the counter business. The seasonal focus structures the year: each quarter's issues aligned with the baking calendar's rhythms, from the summer snack season to the Christmas business.

Organization and Ownership

Back Journal direkt is published by the INGER Verlagsgesellschaft mbH of Osnabrück — the medium-sized specialist publishing house for the baking and coffee industries, with locations in Osnabrück and Bochum. The editor-in-chief is Dirk Waclawek (also editor-in-chief of the monthly Back Journal); the publisher (Herausgeber) is Trond Patzphal. The editorial team works within the INGER group's baking newsroom, drawing on the same industry networks — the master bakers, the sales trainers and the retail experts — that feed the group's titles.

Commercially, Back Journal direkt follows the B2B trade-press model within the INGER portfolio: the subscriptions from the baking industry's companies (distributed to the sales teams through the branch operations), advertising from the industry's suppliers — the shop-fitting, the snack and coffee suppliers, the hygiene and training providers whose customers include the sales operations — and the portfolio synergies with the monthly Back Journal, the Bäcker Zeitung and the group's other titles. The audience — all employees in bakery sales across the German-speaking market — is the baking trade's front-line readership: the people whose daily work determines the customer's experience and the branch's revenue.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is baeckerwelt.de — the INGER group's baking portal — carrying the brand's presence alongside the monthly Back Journal and the group's other titles. The portal's news flow and the abonet.baeckerwelt.de article archive extend the quarterly's reach: the sales-relevant articles retrievable between the issues, the concept features and the practical tips searchable by topic. The digital strategy follows the group's logic: the print quarterly for the curated sales-profession reading — the issue the owner distributes to the sales team — and the portal for the continuous industry coverage.

The newsletters deliver the news selection to the baking industry's inboxes, including the sales-relevant topics — the seasonal preparation reminders and the training impulses that reach the owner between the quarterly issues. On social media, the brand family maintains the industry's community channels. After more than a decade — from the autumn 2010 launch through the 2018 relaunch to today's quarterly — Back Journal direkt operates as the baking trade's sales-staff journal: the print magazine for the counter profession's practical knowledge, the portal for the continuous coverage — the specialist journal for the people who sell the bread, in print and online, quarter after quarter, year after year.