Marketing Monday Marketing & nutrition inspired thought to start the week

~ Bread - delicious & nutritious? ~

13/01/2025

Marketing Monday ---- (supermarket) bread, delicious & nutritious?
Is bread category differentiated or standardized?
Last month I've joined the second session of 'graan gesprekken' about 'tasty tarwe' (wheat).

Herewith some marketing & nutrition thoughts;

· Whole grain industrialized bread contains more additives to improve its taste,
what the impact is on digestibility is unknown but questioned by traditional bakers like René van der Veer – Veldkeuken.

· Eat variated first advice for healthy food pattern, but is bread variated,
wheat dominates bread category = a lot to gain and chances to differentiate e.g. the title of this second session was 'tasty wheat' not 'tasty grains'😉
Grain grower Zonnespelt minimized share of wheat to the benefit of other grains with the aim to bring variety in the category = more nutritious and differentiate

· For how long will (standard) bakeries remain part of the local shopping street? I wonder for 2 reasons
1) offering in general bakeries is similar to supermarket, only true specialty bakers like Veldkeuken, Vlaamsch Broodhuys, Le Fournil de Sébastien etc clearly differentiate
2) we're not like the French who'll spend easily 15 minutes to fetch a baquette, instead we're including bread purchase in the one-stop-shop supermarket visit (80% bread purchased in supermarket – stated by Incubaker

· Delicious & nutritious bread more expensive? The true specialty bakeries more expensive than supermarket bread?
Maybe not if you look at dry matter per recipe and the number of slices you need for satiety.
With fewer slices to be satiated, less toppings are used = lower cost per nutritious calory.

· Story Living & concious consumption
Community centers facilitate local bread baking initiatives where people from the neighborhood bake their own bread together = power of bread category to create this story living and with this more conscious consumption

· Hybrid in bread, following meat and milk also in bread?
Not from an animal to plant protein approach but from a taste/health vs price/palatability point of view?
Challenging if you think back on the Blue Band Bread that was on the market receiving limited consumer enthusiasm and scrutiny from for example FoodWatch (Gouden Windei 2011 article)

· Branding in bread category challenging?
I can't name or recall strong bread brands, you?
However, (smell of) fresh bread has high appreciation = strong story telling, yet there's not a category champion that act as a anchor brand and guides the category = work to be done by specialty bakers, concept developers & food marketeers!