Bimbo Bakehouse is expanding its innovation pipeline to meet the needs of younger consumers and drive growth in the in-store bakery. The Griffin Report recently caught up with Mollie Crudden, senior director of marketing for Bimbo Bakehouse, and Dana Strain, senior marketing manager at Bimbo Bakeries USA, about additions to the company’s lineup.
“We have a large portfolio of innovations … and what has guided our overall innovation direction is how the in-store bakery has changed over the last four or five years,” Crudden said. “[It has evolved] from being a place in store that was primarily celebratory, special occasion, hosting, to being this space that is frequented more often and for individual usage occasions.”
Crudden noted that younger Millennial shoppers in particular are driving that shift.
“It’s becoming much more part of someone’s everyday purchase behavior,” she said. “So our innovation is really designed around trying to attract that everyday usage and that younger Millennial shopper.”
Among the company’s top priorities is sourdough, which Crudden called “a crown jewel” of the portfolio. “Sourdough just continues to grow like crazy. It’s up 15 percent this year, and this is on top of double-digit growth from prior years,” she said.
Goldminer sourdough remains the No. 1 sourdough brand in the in-store bakery, Crudden said. Bimbo is extending the brand beyond its core square loaf with new launches, including a freeze-to-thaw boule and a buttery square loaf.
“It’s that beautiful, round, unsliced loaf. It really cues premium artisan and using these celebratory, more dinner occasion moments,” Crudden said. “Plus, butter and sourdough are very complementary flavoring.”
Strain added that Goldminer balances premium taste with health-forward cues.
“I feel like Goldminer is that hybrid brand … where you have really nice quality products but also hits on a lot of those clean markers with the no artificial colors, non-GMO,” Strain said. 
Another hero brand for Bimbo is The Cheesecake Factory At Home line, known for its brown bread. In addition to baguettes, dinner rolls and sandwich loaves, the company recently added a full-size burger bun, which also appears on Cheesecake Factory menus.
“We’ll be launching soon a Cheesecake Factory slider bun as well,” Crudden said.
Bimbo also is reinvigorating its Lenders bagel brand with a new sub-brand, Lenders Extra.
“It’s extra in every sense,” Crudden said. “It’s extra big – a large-size bagel and extra flavorful – big, bold flavors.”
Flavors include maple and brown sugar, Southwest jalapeño and Sourdough Everything.
The company also is innovating around indulgence and health-forward offerings.
Crudden pointed to gourmet petite brownies made with real butter and no high fructose corn syrup. In addition, Emmy’s Organics is expanding from the grocery aisle to the in-store bakery with oatmeal no-bake cookies in chocolate chip and peanut butter chip flavors.
“It’s all natural. It’s organic, it’s non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free,” she said.
Bimbo continues to see opportunity in both branded and unbranded in-store bakery products.
“One trend we’re seeing is an increased openness to branded products in the in-store bakery,” Crudden said. “It has to be a balanced portfolio, but we carry out some custom research on how likely consumers are of different age generations to purchase branded items from the in-store bakery, and it increases significantly with younger generations.”
At the same time, the company is innovating unbranded formats such as “fun buns,” small batards and artisan breadsticks in flavors like hatch chile and olive.
Strain said connecting with consumers across platforms remains a critical part of Bimbo’s strategy. “We’ve tried to use our retail partners’ retail media platforms to find our consumers and have them find us, and we’ve had a lot of success in doing that.”
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