Toilet paper and paper towels weren’t the only things flying off of the shelves during the thick of the COVID-19 quarantine.
Over the past few months, everyone from professional bakers to complete newbies have decided to hone in on their baking skills, and it’s sparked a boom in flour sales. One of the beneficiaries has been King Arthur Baking Company, which saw a 271% increase in flour sold by the pound this past June compared to the comparable year-ago period.
With this unexpected uptick in demand, however, came some business changes. To keep up with this newfound hobby, King Arthur Baking Company had pivoted to meet all of the different types of needs for consumers with varied tastes.
“We launched a baking sugar alternative, and also an organic rye flour,” King Arthur Baking Company Co-CEO Karen Colberg told Yahoo Finance in an interview.
Although offering these alternatives were on the company’s agenda for a while, the coronavirus pandemic forced it to come into fruition much quicker than anticipated. “From a diet-trend standpoint, having a baking sugar alternative that bakes well was something we were working on for a long time,” Colberg added.
The launch of these alternative baking products became even more crucial, as the classic all-purpose flour became nearly impossible to come across in supermarket aisles. The COVID-19 outbreak that locked people in their homes made them more reliant than ever on grocery shopping.
“We had to make a lot of products unavailable,” said Colberg. “There was a lot of frustration with not being able to find what you needed. We added some new skews of our all-purpose flour so people could get the most important product needed for baking.”
In the end, baking has become a quarantine staple, and the fad may not fade for a while — especially with coronavirus infections on the rise again.
“Baking has become a hobby for so many people. People bake in so many different ways,” says Colberg.
Jennifer Shanker is a producer for Yahoo Finance.
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