About the Bakery Business

If necessity is the mother of invention, then maybe a pandemic is the father of a new business. It's a reasonable assumption, particularly because economic upheavals often embolden people to start businesses. If the forces in your life are pointing you in the direction of the bakery business, begin acquiring bakery information, especially with regard to industry forecasts. Whether you want to buy a bakery, open one in a vacant space, or launch a bakery business from your kitchen, any intelligence should give rise – like a package of fresh yeast – to new ideas for your small business.

Brush Up on the Background of the Bakery Business

Even with a global pandemic slowing, supercharging, and then slowing shopping habits again, the baking industry attained a total value of more than $455 billion in 2020, according to IMARC. If you ever attend a bakery association conference, you'll find that the industry is broken down into four categories: Biscuits (which includes cookies), breads and rolls, cakes and pastries, and – believe it or not – rusks (which are hard, dry biscuits or twice-baked bread).

The industry is expected to experience moderate growth in the next five years, fueled by bakery goods that are made with interesting ingredients, new flavors and in distinctive shapes and sizes. So while bread may be the most popular baked good in America, the timing may be right to build a bakery business around an unusual bakery treat. Many people did just that during the pandemic, following the lead of the Food Network and other influencers who tout such creative concoctions as croissant-donuts, peanut butter and jelly cookies, and kouign-amanns (pronounced "queen-a-mahns"), a blissfully rich cake created in France.

If people have been complimenting you on your baking skills and offering to pay you for your creations, you may have unwittingly gotten a jump on market research – not to mention a focus group that can advise you on future product offerings.

Did You Know These Facts About the Bakery Business?

You would probably be surprised if the pandemic didn't have an effect on the baking industry; it did on practically every other sector of consumer goods. Along with health care, the airlines, hotels, restaurants and performing arts venues, retail stores that carry baked goods were among the hardest hit by the pandemic, Yahoo Finance notes. Fast-thinking owners began offering online ordering and delivery, as well as curbside pickup to blunt some of the red ink.

Still, Mordor Intelligence says the effects were "significant," forcing many bakeries to close because of worker shortages and supply chain disruptions that snarled the delivery of raw materials. Ironically, consumers' demand for bread – a longtime household staple – helped sustain the market during the lockdown. So did the ongoing preference for baked goods advertised as "organic," "natural" and "healthy." It also helped that health-conscious consumers continued to read labels looking for ingredients such as multigrains, whole grains and whole meal. They didn't want to forgo such products, no matter how many other sacrifices they may have made during the pandemic.

Rather than let anyone dismay you by pointing out the dichotomy between consumers' taste for sweets and their quest for healthy ingredients, try to acknowledge if not embrace it. It will probably be the first of many contradictions you witness in consumer behavior. Moreover, you can view these market forces as an opportunity, which they definitely are. They can lead you to carve out and fine-tune a niche product that differentiates you in some way from the competition.

You May Find Some Bakery Information Easy to Swallow

Future trends show that the pandemic is hardly out of the industry's sight; it has even further to go before it's out of mind. At least, this is the conclusion you might draw from Bakery and Snacks.com, which is looking toward the future with the help of Spoonshot, an artificial intelligence company that focuses on the food industry. The background of the bakery business, leavened by the pandemic, appears to be a recipe for at least three results in consumer behavior:

• Shoppers will remain on high alert for nutritious products. They'll want to know specifics, such as how consuming a product with certain ingredients will benefit their body.
• Shoppers, in general, have been sensitized to how coronavirus can affect the lungs. Those who are aware of research that underscores the connection between stomach and lung health may seek out products that specifically promote gut health in the hope that their lungs might benefit too.
• Shoppers will seek out information about the loss of taste and smell, two symptoms of coronavirus. For bakers, this interest could present an opportunity to introduce not only new flavors but also bold flavors and enhanced textures that can wake up the taste buds – much like, perhaps, you've become roused to the many opportunities that await you in the baking industry.

References

• IMARC: Bakery Products Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026
• Food Network: Outside the Pink Pastry Box: Unique Bakery Treats From Coast to Coast
• Yahoo Finance: The 10 Industries That Have Been Impacted the Most by COVID-19
• Mordor Intelligence: Bakery Products Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forcasts (2021 - 2026)
• Bakery and Snacks.com: The Trends That Will Shape the Industry in 2022 and Beyond