KANSAS CITY, MO — Consumer interest in purchasing sustainably produced goods is growing. In fact, in the past year, 93% of consumers have either maintained or increased their sustainable product purchases, with younger consumers, namely Millennials and Gen Zers, being the go-to segment.
For commercial bakers, telling their sustainability story can be a viable strategy for attracting consumers who are willing to spend more on baked foods manufactured with sustainability in mind. Yet, the concept of sustainability has so many pathways, it may not be easy for bakers to determine how to get the storytelling started.
“To make an immediate impact, you want to do something online,” said Abby Ceule, senior director of functional ingredients at Corbion. “You want to do some LinkedIn messaging, get onto Instagram, TikTok … wherever you’re marketing your products.”
Bakeries don’t necessarily need a formal sustainability program to start telling their story. They just need to take the first step.
“They are doing things that they aren’t taking credit for, or they’re not really thinking of them as sustainable practices,” said Jennifer Halliburton, senior manager of global insights at Corbion. “If you look across the environmental and social aspects, as well as the economic, there are things that all companies are doing already. They’re just not talking about it.”
Sustainability comes in many different forms. For example, adding a shelf-life extender to baked goods can give consumers a few extra days to finish a product, which results in reduced food waste. Switching from plastic packaging to cardboard or upgrading equipment to reduce water usage can become part of a company’s sustainability story, too.
“The key is not to eat the elephant all at once,” said Mark Hotze, VP of sustainable food solutions at Corbion. “It’s one bite at a time. If you have good relationships with your suppliers, you can leverage what they’re already doing in your story, and then just build on that.”
Ceule recommended relying on industry associations for help identifying resources that can help a company understand how to build a program.
“I think that most bakers, once they feel that that rush of sales come in and they start to see people more interested in their products, they’ll want to do more,” she said. “It’s just taking that first step.”
“One thing that’s really cool about the baking industry is that so many of our products already have that aura of sustainability because they’re grain-based,” Hotze added. “They already have a bit of a feel-good-for-the-world type of thing. Just a little bit of an added push can make all the difference in the world.”
This article is based on a discussion from Innovation on the Rise: Improving Sustainability Practices in Your Bakery, a webinar hosted by Corbion and Commercial Baking on May 24.
