Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly moved from being a futuristic concept to a practical business tool that organizations of all sizes can use today. For the baking industry, AI presents an opportunity to streamline operations, strengthen marketing efforts, improve communication, and empower employees to focus on what they love: creating exceptional products and experiences for customers.
During BEMA’s Convention, AI expert and Lakefish Group founder, Jon Lakefish, emphasized that AI isn’t about replacing people; it’s about helping them work more efficiently, making better decisions, and unlocking new opportunities for growth. Overall, AI offers practical solutions that can help businesses stay ahead while preserving the creativity and craftsmanship that make bakers the baking industry unique.
Empowering Teams with AI
Jon claims one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding AI is that it exists to eliminate jobs, while in reality, the most successful organizations are using AI to enhance the work their teams are already doing. Whether it’s creating marketing content, organizing information, analyzing customer feedback, or drafting communications, AI handles repetitive and time-consuming tasks so employees can focus on strategy, innovation, customer relationships, and product development.
This means marketing teams can spend more time building meaningful customer connections, managers can dedicate more attention to staff development, and business owners can focus on growing their company instead of getting buried in administrative work. As Jon explained, the goal isn’t to reduce your workforce – it is to give your team the tools they need to perform at a higher level and position your business for long-term growth.
Smarter Marketing
Creating high-quality marketing content has traditionally required significant budgets, creative agencies, and lengthy production timelines. AI is changing all of that as organizations across industries are already demonstrating what’s possible.
The impact of AI on marketing is already measurable. Google’s AI Lab recently created its first fully AI-generated commercial—without an agency or creative team—reducing production costs by 95% and development time by 90%. At the same time, a small business used only its existing product photos and Gemini 3.1 to produce highly effective marketing campaigns. These examples illustrate how AI is democratizing creative work, enabling organizations of any size to produce high-quality content faster and at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Instead of waiting weeks to launch a seasonal promotion, teams can quickly create social media graphics, promotional videos, website content, customer newsletters, and new product descriptions all in a matter of minutes. The results aren’t generic as AI allows businesses to refine messaging until it accurately reflects their brand voice, values, and personality.
AI-Powered Training
Traditional training materials can quickly become outdated and revising manuals, recording new videos, and distributing updated instructional materials takes time and resources. AI-powered video and voice tools you can access using Gemini 3.1 and ElevenLabs allows businesses to update training content almost instantly.
Imagine changing a formulation, introducing new equipment, or updating food safety protocols. Rather than recreating an entire training program, AI can help revise videos, scripts, and instructional materials in minutes. This ensures employees receive accurate, up-to-date information while reducing the workload for managers responsible for training.
Tools for Teams
Jon points out that there isn’t a single AI platform that does everything well. Most organizations benefit from using several tools depending on the task. Here is a list of the platforms he uses and how he uses them:
ChatGPT is great for brainstorming ideas, strategic planning, research, content creation, and problem-solving. Claude is best used for collaborative writing, analyzing documents, and managing larger projects. Gemini is excellent at multimedia creation, graphics, and video-related tasks. ElevenLabs creates realistic voice generation, training material and audio content. Manus quickly builds websites and digital experiences. Lindy automates administrative work, daily summaries, research, and workflow management.
Each platform offers different strengths, which allows teams to choose the right tool for the job rather than expecting one solution to meet every need. Jon emphasized that organizations should provide employees with secure AI tools rather than assuming they aren’t already experimenting with free versions on their own, which can create data security issues. He explains that providing employees with business and enterprise subscriptions offer strong privacy protections, so company data is safe and secure.
AI In Action
One of the biggest advantages of AI today is its ability to do more than simply answer questions. With the right direction, AI can help teams research, create, analyze information, organize workflows, and solve complex problems in a fraction of the time it would traditionally take.
A key part of getting the most value from AI is learning how to give clear instructions. The quality of the results depends heavily on the context and direction provided. For example, a company could connect AI to its marketing platform and ask:
“Can you analyze our last 100 email campaigns, identify which ones performed best, and draft a new campaign based on the messaging, timing, and strategies that were most successful?”
Instead of manually reviewing months of campaign data, AI can quickly analyze results, identify patterns, and help teams create more effective marketing strategies.
Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing the passion, creativity, or craftsmanship that define the baking industry. Customers will always value skilled bakers, thoughtful customer service, and authentic experiences. What AI offers is the opportunity to remove friction from everyday work by reducing repetitive tasks, improving communication, and accelerating content creation. As technology continues to evolve, the most successful businesses will be those that combine skilled people with intelligent tools.
