New GFF study highlights baker opportunities

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New GFF study highlights baker opportunities

5 Nov 2025

Mari Rydings

Mari Rydings is a versatile content creator, editor and marketer with experience developing dynamic, results-driven materials for B2B and B2C audiences. As the editorial director for Avant Food Media, she leads the day-to-day editorial operations for the company’s print and digital magazines, newsletters and social media platforms. Outside of work, she loves reading, hiking, putting together jigsaw puzzles and spending time with her husband and their twin daughters.

KANSAS CITY, MO — A recent survey of 5,000 consumers revealed six needs driving perceptions of grain foods. The survey, which was commissioned by the Grain Foods Research Institute and conducted by NielsenIQ (NIQ) during summer 2025, included people who had purchased at least one grain food in the past 30 days.

Erin Ball, executive director of the Grain Foods Foundation (GFF), and Lorraine Hale, former GFF board of trustees chair and veteran food industry leader, shared the results during the webinar, Consumer Conundrum: Grain Foods on Today’s Plates, hosted by the American Society of Baking as part of its Coffee Break Webinar series.

“We wanted to know what grain foods consumers were buying and eating,” Ball said. “We wanted to know about their perceptions and how these foods played into their lifestyle and their quest for wellness.”

Six consumer themes around grain foods

Scale | Grain foods are available in different forms across nearly every household.

Essential needs | Consumers view grains as meeting daily needs for value, nutrition and convenience.

Wellness evolution | Consumers connect grains to wellness (satiety, energy, fiber and protein); the rise of GLP-1 medications is shaping their choices.

Transparency | Ingredient lists and nutrition facts drive purchasing decisions; consumer knowledge of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is limited.

Versatility | Grain foods are popular options for sandwiches, sides and snacks.

Comfort and self-care | Grain foods support emotional wellness by providing comfort, satisfaction and familiarity.

The opportunities for bakers

Ball and Hale identified increased transparency, more consumer education on UPFs and positioning grain foods as snacks as key areas of opportunity for bakers.

“In the current dialogue about food, even at the policy level, transparency is being wielded almost like a negative thing, like there isn’t enough of it,” Ball said. “Transparency is an area where the industry can be heroic. Manufacturers do a good job on pack with bringing transparency to ingredient lists, claims, and the nutrition facts panel, but could we do more?”

Ball cited data showing that nine in 10 grain foods consumers read ingredient lists at least some of the time when purchasing a new product, and many of them read the ingredient list or the back of pack every time.

“Talking about our transparency on pack and underlining it in every way is a huge opportunity to reach consumers right now,” she added. “They are clearly focused on information they can find on pack, and behind that is a desire to trust manufacturers to communicate clearly.”

Effective communication will also be important as the industry works with the current administration to clearly define ultra-processed foods.

“It’s tricky because the science doesn’t have some of that clarity of message we would like to take to consumers concerning UPFs,” Ball said. “They understand that the ambiguous term probably means something bad, and they are applying that label to foods as they grocery shop.”

“Transparency is an area where the industry can be heroic. Manufacturers do a good job on pack with bringing transparency to ingredient lists, claims, and the nutrition facts panel, but could we do more?” — Erin Ball | executive director | Grain Foods Foundation

Another area of opportunity is leveraging the current snacking needs state with the grain foods category. The NIQ study identified two baked goods emerging as anytime snacks.

“Two of the products that popped up as snacking occasions are muffins and croissants,” Hale noted. “In other areas around the globe, there’s a culture of coming home from school and having a piece of bread with cheese. How can we provide different choices in the afternoon for snacking? There are many places where grain foods can be consumed as snacks.”

Hale also encouraged bakers to find new product inspiration by tracking what’s popular on restaurant menus, citing consumer willingness to sample new items in a restaurant vs. purchasing them for at-home consumption.

“Keeping an eye on menus can help inform what we want to make available on the grocery store shelf,” she said, “so consumers who have adopted it after trialing it at a restaurant have the opportunity to purchase it in the store and enjoy it at home.”

Understanding consumer attitudes on grain foods and how that perspective impacts their purchasing decisions and consumption patterns can open up opportunities for education, marketing and product development that will keep the industry moving forward.

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