In Poland, VR is Teaching People How to Bake Bread

It looks like a familiar and timeless sight: in a pristine kitchen, two hands stretch out towards a tray of freshly made bread rolls, ready for the oven. In the background, the word ‘Piekarnia’ – Polish for ‘bakery’ – is lit up, besides which a cheery ladybug smiles: the logo for Polish supermarket giant, Biedronka. But this isn’t just any kitchen.

With a turn to the digital in almost every walk of life, even the way workers are trained to make bread is becoming high-tech. Biedronka—Poland’s largest retail chain—has rolled out a new method of training for baking, which solely uses virtual reality.

The VR baking system, which has so far been launched in eight stores around the country, is fully interactive and guides trainee workers through the process of making bread in a virtual store, from fulfilling health and safety practices to loading up the oven and distributing products. Biedronka explained in a press release that the VR sets covered “all those activities that the employees of the shops do on a daily basis ‘in real life.’”

The move to virtual reality has been cooking up for a while #

Biedronka is one of many stores in Poland facing an acute shortage of workers—an issue that has been attributed to difficulties in securing long-term work contracts for immigrants to the country. The VR headsets were introduced to streamline training, helping Biedronka teach new employees quickly and conveniently. Milena Bałon, junior e-learning manager at Jeronimo Martins Polska, the group which owns Biedronka, said that VR meant the company could “quickly and fully safely teach our employees skills that are difficult to be taught in real life.”

And one of the most demanding tasks workers must learn is how to make bread, a staple of Biedronka stores. The chain launched in-store bakeries in 2012, stacking shelves with bread, golden stacks of baguettes, tumbling rolls, glistening cakes, and croissants, all under the slogan: ‘fresh baked goods at any time’. Now, they need enough workers to meet demands from hungry Polish shoppers—baking is a Polish institution.

“Additionally,” says Bałon, “VR technology in baking training helps us to reduce food waste—while learning in a traditional form, the bread used for baking would not go on sale, which means it would be a waste.”

Jan Jaszczyński, who runs PureVR, a virtual reality entertainment salon in the central Polish town of Płock, sees an “immense growth of VR technology” in recent years. He thinks the technology is “an inevitable solution to many innovative applications,” including in technical and engineering – but also in more traditional areas like baking. “We will for sure see more of that in the future,” he explains. “VR as a means in training and AR as a means of live service advice is gaining ground every day in new fields.”

“And most of all the learning outcomes are as good or even better than in traditional ways.”

However, Jaszczyński adds that life is on hold at the moment. After the coronavirus outbreak hit Poland, the company initially took extra precautions, including regularly using anti-bacterial cleaners. But on March 11, the Polish government ordered the closure of all schools, museums and cultural institutions. Jaszczyński says some of his employees—who are mainly students—have been forced to move out of their student accommodation, and have returned to their family homes.

In response to the government’s order, Biedronka has also shortened its working hours and is limiting the number of customers in stores. Employees have been split into teams that work in rotation, with any workers over 60 allowed to be exempt from shifts.

But that’s not to say VR development has also been interrupted. Jaszczyński believes the technology could “theoretically” step into the breach for companies during the coronavirus outbreak, as “it’s becoming more and more affordable.”

“Big companies could buy and send their employees cardboard VR headsets and an application,” he explains. But he emphasizes that the quality of content available on cardboard or plastic headsets would be limited compared to the technology available on more advanced models.

Coronavirus aside, Poland has been developing its virtual reality technology fast – in business and in culture #

Away from the workplace, VR headsets have also been adopted by museums to launch innovative, immersive exhibitions. In 2018, a film entitled ‘Kartka z Powstania’ (‘Postcard from the Uprising’) was produced, a 15-minute account of experiences during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the largest military operation by resistance forces in German-occupied Europe. ‘Kartka z Powstania’ was the first-ever fictionalized historical VR show in Poland. There are also VR games covering Soviet repression in the pipeline.

And VR is also making headway in Polish society: PureVR is just one of many virtual reality studios set up across the country, helping to introduce the technology to a wider audience. And another Polish VR company is Immersion.pl, which implements AR and VR in business and entertainment.

Bartosz Rosłoński, from Immersion, also thinks that the use of VR is becoming more widespread in Poland. “With the development of VR headsets and with all the upgrades and easiness of usage, I can see that companies are starting to use VR more as a day to day tool to increase effectiveness and to decrease costs,” he says.

And he agrees that this particularly applies to the workplace. “VR in training is one of the top promising directions of this technology.”

"People in VR are learning more efficiently and companies can reduce costs of complicated training all over the world.”

Similar concerns also inspired Biedronka’s decision for VR training: Kozyra explains that “the advantage of VR goggles is that they allow multiple exercises, but also to make mistakes in a safe environment.”

With the sets, workers have the time to learn hygiene standards, as well as how to safely operate the chiller, oven, and even complete any logistics tasks, like essential paperwork for the bakery. Employees using the Biedronka VR sets are trained three times to ensure the techniques are fully developed: first, they participate in a step-by-step baking process; then they bake independently, with running feedback from the device; and finally, they complete a skill check.

The final stage, however, is in real life—a test observed by a store supervisor.

Aleksandra Kamińska, a deputy store manager in Warsaw, explained in a press release that the goggles were first “a real novelty, but after the first moment of uncertainty and getting used to operating the joysticks I entered the virtual world of the shop quite quickly.”

To help employees adapt to the world of the supermarket, Biedronka has also developed an internal chatbot, available 24/7, which provides answers to any questions they may have. According to Rosłoński, VR is at the forefront of a global technology boom, and recent successes prove Poland is leading the way.

“Poland has a great pool of talented developers who are able to create very complex applications for VR headsets. Poland is also growing really fast which is reflected in new technologies and investments.”

Jaszczyński however, feels that despite the advancing technology of the headset, the only limitation is in the mindset. “People consider VR as a child’s play,” he explains. “The Polish market will greatly benefit from the widespread use of VR as soon as we in Poland will all recognize it as a useful and handy tool.”

One supermarket is already taking a slice of the action.