Recipe for sweet day - Mns puts a ton of chocolate in cakes and pastries every week

They weekly use a ton of black chocolate and annually produce about 2.5m Grandma's vanilla cupcakes, which are filled with 25 tons of homemade apricot marmalade, while 3m profiteroles are filled with 30 tons of homemade cream. Slatki dan (Sweet day) products have found their place in refrigerators of almost all market chains in Serbia. Cakes and pies under this brand are products of family company Mns from Ravno Selo near Novi Sad.

As people at the pastry factory say, these products are made according to old family recipes, with cooked fillings and baked crusts without additives, preservatives, artificial colors and aromas. Profiteroles, Bakine vanilice (Grandma's vanilla cupcakes), Foam-mignon cakes, Bonbon heart, Spanish wind, Hazelnut cake, Kennedy cake, Cokoladnica (Chocolate cake), Forest secret, Egyptian cake, Japanese wind, Chocolate bomb, Srneca Ledja cake are only some of the products that the factory in Ravno Selo makes.

(Nedeljko Milovac)

From a cafe owner to the leader in pastry making

A small production workshop formed in the early 1990's in the yard of the Milovac family house has grown into a contemporary production unit spanning 1,000 square meters.

- I had a cafe in Ravno Selo for 19 years and then I decided to include ice cream in the offer. It proved to be profitable so I imported the first machines for making ice cream from Italy. We soon started producing ice cream for cafes in neighboring places and all around Vojvodina - Nedeljko Milovac, the owner of Mns, speaks about his beginnings in the business for eKapija.

He points out that he and his wife were thinking about leaving for Canada or the USA, but his wife insisted on their staying in Serbia where they decided to further develop the production.

- Since ice cream is usually made in summer, we had to find another activity to engage in during winter. Since the production of cakes and pastries is closely related to ice cream production, we have decided to try our luck in that business. In addition to my wife and me, our daughter and son are also engaged in work of the company - says Milovac.

At its beginning, the company functioned within a catering facility. Two workers were making cakes and pastries in a specially-adapted space. We later had a production unit built at 150 square meters in the family yard, which was soon expanded to span 300 square meters. That is where mainly pastries, mini cakes and, occasionally, cakes for the various needs of customers have been made since 1990.

- With the appearance of large market chains, we adapted our product portfolio to their needs and started production of packaged cakes and mini cakes.

A contemporary unit for production of cakes and pastries, situated on a lot at 1,000 square meters in Ravno Selo, was put in operation in 2006 and it functions according to the standards ISO 9001:2000, ISO 9001:2008 and HACCP. Mns today has about 60 workers.

Milovac says that he is very satisfied with the company's business results and that Mns ha no competition in the market of Serbia.

- We are the leaders in this type of production in Serbia. We have tried to export products, but it is highly complicated to collect all the required licenses and the life of our products is quite short so we cannot wait for long-lasting procedures to finish – says Nedeljko Milovac.

Production starts at 4 AM

- We make our products by unique recipes and we have the production specification for each of them. We constantly do our best to improve existing recipes, but we also introduce new ones – says Dragan Psodorov, a technologist in the factory of Msn.

He says that making of cakes and pastries starts at 4 AM and that they are finished at around 5 PM.

- We have perfect chefs so we do not find any recipe complicated. It is a bit difficult to work with fondant mass, which we plan to start in the following period – Psodorov says for eKapija and adds that his idea is to start the production of diet products in the factory in the near future.

They also plan to procure new machines for the factory in Ravno Selo in 2011.

- We would like to start using new packaging for our products in 2011, the one that will be more attractive and easier to carry.

S.O.