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3 Bread Industry Trends Every Microbakery Owner Should Know | Episode 139

  • 2 days ago
  • 7 min read

Listen on Apple Podcasts


If you asked me whether ingredient costs have climbed across the board over the last few years, I would have said yes without thinking twice, and I would not have had a single real number to back that up.


So I went and found the actual numbers, for that and for two other things I kept hearing repeated in baker groups and on Instagram. Some of what I found confirmed what I already believed. One thing genuinely surprised me. None of it means you need to change your menu, but all of it is worth knowing before you make your next pricing or menu decision.


This is not a how-to episode. It is a look at three things that actually moved in the bread world this year, backed by real sources rather than whatever is circulating in a Facebook group.


Sourdough demand is not slowing down

Almost two years ago, back in Episode 48, my assistant at the time, Melissa, turned the tables and interviewed me for a year-end episode. She asked whether sourdough baking was a passing trend or something here to stay. I told her then that people who are already making their household food choices intentionally, the people still baking or buying sourdough three or four years after 2020, were not going back to mass-produced grocery store bread. The one piece I was genuinely unsure about was whether the social media side of it, all the sourdough content and creators, would eventually taper off.

It has not. If anything, the last few months have looked more like a resurgence than a slowdown.


An industry survey published this year, based on responses from 2,300 people across 56 countries, found that products launched with a sourdough claim on the label are up 31 percent, with another 33 percent of growth expected in the coming year. Searches for "sourdough bread near me" are up 178 percent in a single quarter. When people were asked why they choose sourdough, 70 percent said it simply tastes better, and 58 percent said they believe it is the healthier option.


Worth saying plainly: that survey came from an ingredient company that sells to bakeries, so it is not a neutral source. Even so, the same basic story shows up across four different measurements at once, which is a reasonable amount of agreement for one direction. And I can see a version of it in my own town, where I have kept growing while several other local bakeries have opened successfully around me at the same time.


So what does this actually mean if you are running, or starting, a sourdough business? You are not too late. If your business feels hard right now, that is almost always a pricing question, a capacity question, or a marketing question, and all three of those are answerable. I covered this in depth in Episode 121 on the plateau phase: when sales flatten out, it is almost never because your town has too many bakers. Nine times out of ten, it means you have already reached everyone in your immediate circle, and it is time to get in front of people who have never heard of you.


Your customer is eating differently than she was two years ago

Next time you are at the grocery store, walk down the bread aisle and actually read the packaging. The big commercial bakeries are visibly reformulating right now for customers eating less bread overall. Grupo Bimbo, which makes a large share of the bread on grocery shelves in this country, has said publicly that it is redesigning products for people on weight loss medications, specifically higher protein, smaller portions, and shorter ingredient lists. I am reporting that from a bakery trade publication, not something I witnessed firsthand, and the same caveat applies to this next figure: UBS projects 40 million people nationwide will be on those medications by 2029.


You may also have seen a claim floating around that some large percentage of people are trying to eat more protein. I went looking for a clean source on that specific number and could not find one that held up, the versions I found disagreed with each other, and both came from companies that sell protein. I am not going to hand you a number I cannot stand behind. What does hold up is the underlying direction: people are being noticeably more intentional about protein.


Here is the part I actually love about this one. Most of you already bake the answer. Your whole grain loaf, your seeded loaf, the one you already describe as hearty, is already a higher fiber, more filling, more nutrient dense option than a mass-produced grocery loaf loaded with preservatives. The move here is not a new product. It is language. Rename it, describe plainly what is actually in it on your menu and your label, and let the customer already hunting for that thing find it on yours.


This is the same idea I covered in Episode 92 on organic ingredients, telling your customer plainly what they are getting and why, and in Episode 93 on building a signature product, where leaning into whole grains and natural fermentation is one of the strongest ways to stand out.


If you are not sure your own customers care about any of this, do not guess. Ask them. Back in fall of 2024, I sent my own customers a simple poll through a Google Form and asked what they prioritize in their food choices. I learned that 29 percent of my customers prioritize organic ingredients and are willing to pay more for them, a specific number that let me confidently expand into more heritage and organic flour on my own menu.


The wrong response to any of this is adding five new products to your menu. That means more ingredients to keep in stock, more decisions every single week, and heavier prep days, and it rarely translates into meaningfully more revenue. I talked through this in Episode 115 on menu rotation: a core menu of no more than five products is a genuinely healthy place to operate from. Ask your own customers what they actually value, and then try one new thing, not five.


Ingredient costs are more complicated than "everything is more expensive"

This is the one that surprised me. I hear bakers say constantly that ingredient costs are climbing across the board, and I have said it myself. Some of that is absolutely true. Chocolate is genuinely expensive right now, and I watched my own Costco flour price go up just last week.


But I wanted to actually check whether that was true across the board, so I pulled a government survey that tracks exact prices every single month across 75 cities. Comparing June of 2024 to June of 2026: all-purpose flour went from 57.5 cents a pound down to 54 cents, about 5 percent lower. Butter went from $4.70 a pound down to $3.82, a 19 percent drop. A loaf of plain store-bought bread went from $1.97 down to $1.81, down 8 percent.

Butter is the one worth sitting with for a second. It peaked at $5 a pound in September of 2024, and has come down about 24 percent since. It is actually cheaper today than it was back in 2019!


None of this means the price spikes you lived through were imaginary. Flour bottomed out at 36 cents a pound in June of 2021 and sits at 54 cents now, up by more than half across five years. That spike genuinely happened and everyone felt it. It just is not happening right at this exact moment, and prices will always move in both directions from here, even if the long-term pull is upward. Your own experience may differ if you are buying organic flour, butter, or milk specifically.


Here is why this matters for your business. If you calculated the cost of your ingredients back when butter was $5 a pound and never revisited it, your margin on croissants or cinnamon rolls today may genuinely be better than your own spreadsheet thinks it is. That is a good problem to have. I am not telling you to drop your prices, but it is worth actually checking rather than assuming. Episode 98 walks through the full method for calculating the cost of your ingredients if you want to run this for your own menu.


One more implication worth naming. Store-bought bread coming down 8 percent means the price your customer is used to seeing at the grocery store has softened slightly. That is not a reason to lower your own price. Your price comes from what your product actually costs you to make and what you need to earn from it, not from what a mass-produced loaf in a plastic bag is charging. If your own numbers show you need to move a price, pick one confident number, set it a little higher than feels comfortable, and carry on. No announcement, no explanation, no apology.


Final thoughts

Three things moved this year. Demand for sourdough is still climbing. Your customer is looking for something a little different than she was two years ago. And your ingredients may have gotten a little cheaper while you were not watching!


None of that means you should change your menu or make any big moves right now. It just means it is worth occasionally stepping back and checking what is actually true, instead of running on what everyone in the group chat agrees is true. I would genuinely love to hear what you noticed in your own town or your own numbers when you read this.

On a much smaller note, I finally bought an inexpensive immersion blender for the bakery after years of using ours at home for everything from whipped cream to mayonnaise, and it has already earned its spot on the counter.


Cheering you on,

Caroline


Keep going

If the numbers side of this got you thinking, these three go further.


Links to things you might like!


Sourdough microbakery owner looking back at lessons from her first year selling bread

 
 
 

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