“The demand for all our flours is simply unprecedented.” That was Carey Underwood of King Arthur Flour talking to The Boston Globe in April 2020, when lockdowns had turned millions of kitchens into bakeries. Her company had shipped almost three times as much flour in March 2020 as it had in March 2019.
Yeast went first. A grocer quoted by the Globe called it one of the first things to sell out, and plain all-purpose flour became “as precious as gold dust”, in the paper’s words. Underwood said there was no shortage of wheat itself. The bottleneck was getting it milled and moved, so the company added shifts at its mills, signed a new mill partner and moved parts of its distribution from rail to truck to cut transit time.
The phones told the same story. The Baker’s Hotline took more than 14,000 calls in four weeks, more than double what the company usually sees at that time of year. King Arthur also launched an “Isolation Baking Show” with bakery director Jeffrey Hamelman and pastry chef Gesine Bullock-Prado. “People are baking for a lot of reasons,” Underwood said, listing more time at home, baking as a family activity and “great bread”.
Sourdough on top
By March 2021 the numbers for the whole of 2020 were in. Yahoo Finance reported that King Arthur Baking Company, as the firm had been renamed in July 2020, sold over 156 million pounds of flour that year, a 58% increase over 2019. Bread was the big winner, and sourdough in particular. It ranked as the number one recipe on the company’s website, and searches for sourdough recipes shot up 460%.
Not everyone was chasing a starter. Co-CEO Karen Colberg told Yahoo Finance Live that the site’s top searches were pizza, banana bread and cookies. A surprise hit of the year was the company’s Better Cheddar Cheese Powder, up 152% year over year. The Baker’s Hotline logged a 43% rise in calls over 2020.
Colberg admitted that the company let customers down early on. “We disappointed a lot of customers early on in the pandemic in terms of not being able to be in stock,” she said, both online and on grocery shelves. Supply caught up around the holidays. At the peak, she said, volumes ran at three times the usual level. By early 2021 baking was still 25% to 30% above the prior year.
Would it last? Colberg bet it would, predicting that sales would stay 20% to 30% above pre-pandemic levels. “I think baking brought a lot of comfort to people, as well as an activity,” she said, “and it’s grown into a hobby.”
Sources
- King Arthur Baking Company sees flour sales rise 58% amid pandemic
- King Arthur Flour dealing with unprecedented demand these days – The Boston Globe
