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Wheat Montana finds market for half-size loaves of bread
Sometimes, half a loaf is enough.
That’s what Wheat Montana Farms & Bakery http://www.wheatmontana.com is finding as it markets loaves of bread with eight slices and two heels – 50 percent less bread than the standard loaf in stores. The regional bakery and grain farm in southwestern Montana next plans to sell burger buns packaged four to a bag, instead of the usual eight.
Independent Record
Wheat Montana, which makes 86 bread products, ventured into mini-loaves for empty nesters, people living alone, single parents with one child and other small households. They’re reason enough to bake the abbreviated loaf. Then there are the carbohydrate-conscious dieters. Wheat Montana says it has benefited from low-carb adherents who embrace whole grains, but for those practically bypassing bread, the half-loaf satisfies the occasional indulgence.
"Demographics are changing," said Dean Folkvord, Wheat Montana’s chief executive. "People were looking for half a loaf of bread because they can’t use a full loaf in a week. It goes bad and they throw it out. Then you have people who can use a whole loaf, but he likes wheat and she likes white."
Wheat and white are the choices for buyers of the half loaves that Wheat Montana first began selling about two years ago. But demand picked up this year, leading the company to plan the half-size package of buns that it hopes to have in stores this spring.
"We take home hamburger buns from our own bakery and end up throwing half away," said Folkvord, married with two children.
Half-loaves and even packages with just four slices of bread are popular in Japan, where the population is aging, households are small and storage space minimal.
The company sells the half-loaves statewide but hasn’t worked out distribution elsewhere in the seven-state area where the company’s regular line of bread is on supermarket shelves.
At about $1.35 a loaf, half-size bread costs consumers more per ounce. But Folkvord finds them willing to pay for the convenience of a package that provides just enough bread, eliminating moldy slices or freezers cluttered with partial loaves that are forgotten, dry out and get discarded.
As the loaf shrinks, however, so does the profit.
"The labor is basically the same, the distribution costs, the packaging," Folkvord said. "You save a little on ingredients."
The company has a national reputation for innovation in the baking industry, said Laurie Gorton, executive editor of Baking & Snack magazine, published in Kansas City, Mo. The product line recently grew to include bread made with spelt, a grain tolerated by some people with wheat allergies.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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