Itsu, the London-headquartered chain of Asian-style food shops and restaurants in the United Kingdom, has rolled out retail frozen sweet bao buns in four-packs at Tesco stores that sell for £3.50. Two flavors featuring melt-in-the-middle Chocolate and Salted Caramel fillings are currently available, and they will be listed at Waitrose outlets in April.
The new products, which were in the research and development phase for about a year prior to launch, may be quickly prepared by steaming for microwave oven zapping. In promoting them at the Itsu website, the company stated:
“These sweet bao buns are, in truth, a small but historic breakthrough. After more than 50 failed trials, we managed to get rich quality chocolate and miso salted caramel to flow, molten warm, from inside a fluffy bao bun. Serve them hot with ice cream or dust them [cappuccino style] with chocolate powder.”
The launch is being backed with a multichannel marketing blitz embracing social and digital advertising, public relations campaigning and in-store sampling.
