10 THE INSPIRATIONAL
BIRTHDAY CAKE

Walls started producing ice-cream in 1922. In the intervening years, it has become one of the world’s best-known brands, always seeking to grow and develop new ideas. While it has introduced hundreds of innovations in its time, perhaps the strangest source of any was that of a birthday cake.

In 1980, one of the Walls’ new product development team received a special birthday cake. His wife had come across a recipe for “mille-feuille”, the French confection made from layers of puff pastry and cream. Translated, the name means “a thousand leaves”.

After a splendid birthday supper, she revealed her surprise – the mille-feuille. The reaction was all she could have hoped for. He loved the unique textural combination of thin, crispy pastry and rich, smooth, thick cream.

The next day at work, he was telling a colleague what a wonderful birthday cake his wife had made him, when inspiration struck. What if he recreated the delicious eating experience of a mille-feuille in the form of an ice-cream?

Ice-cream was a natural alternative to cream and after only a little thought, it was agreed that very thin layers of chocolate seemed a mouth-watering alternative to the pastry.

Like many other innovations, while the idea seemed simple, the execution was far from it. New processes for layering ice-cream and spraying ultra-thin layers of chocolate had to be developed, piloted and finally put into practice.

At last everything was in place and the first Walls Viennettas were produced, distributed and sold. Today, Viennetta is still a top-selling ice-cream in over 50 countries.

And the moral is that inspiration for innovation can come from adjacent markets. Where are you looking for your next innovation?