For More Dough, Crustless Bread
Look ma, no crusts.
Sara Lee wants to take over a duty moms have carried out for kids for decades--slicing the crusts off white bread.
The consumer-goods giant is touting its new IronKids Crustless Bread as a fresh-from-the-oven idea.
The product, being introduced at the supermarket industry’s annual convention in Chicago starting this weekend, will be a bit of an upper-crust loaf.
Sara Lee is selling it for about 75 cents more than crusted bread, or $2.59 to $3.39 for a 16-ounce loaf, depending on the market.
In an era when convenience tops U.S. shopping lists, Sara Lee figures enough consumers will turn over the extra dough. It’s spending nearly $10 million to roll it out, making it the bakery group’s biggest product launch yet.
“Consumers told us they’d be willing to pay a premium for this product,” said Matt Hall of the St. Louis-based Sara Lee Bakery Group. “Twenty years ago, they probably wouldn’t have paid for it.”
A similar product that Sara Lee introduced in Spain in 1999 has generated stellar sales.
The fastest-growing area of the $5.6-billion bread industry is the super-premium segment, encompassing everything from French-style to roasted garlic to rosemary and olive oil bread.
Sara Lee acquired IronKids--a leading brand of white bread that advertises itself as having the fiber of whole-wheat bread--when it bought Earthgrains last year. The deal made the company the nation’s second-biggest fresh-bread maker.
Crustless Bread is made at its bakery in Paris, Texas, where crusts are removed by an automated slicer.
Baking pans are larger and cooling time is twice as long as normal in the “decrusting room.” The rejected crusts are used for croutons, bread crumbs and other products.
The product is now available in the South, Midwest and Arizona and will be stocked by July throughout Sara Lee’s fresh-bread system, which covers all U.S. regions but the Northeast and Florida.
“This isn’t rocket science--but it’s a good idea,” said analyst John McMillin of Prudential Securities.