Spike in family flour demand raises eyebrows

For longer than two generations, no trend in grain-based foods has been more consistent than the steady fall in demand for family flour. Like clockwork week after week, month after month and year after year, marketers of family flour have related the continuing movement away from home baking and the resultant negative effects on sales of this principal ingredient. Except for rare seasonal aberrations, monthly sales data have shown declines of 1% to 5% from a year earlier with incredible consistency.
Once the main product of the U.S. flour milling industry, family flour is believed to account now for much less than 5% of U.S. production. Such is the consistency of the decline that eyebrows were raised in May, when overall demand recorded an 11% increase in sales volume over May 2007.

A month does not a trend make, but interest heightened further when June sales rose 4%.

It is still too early to say exactly what is going on in family flour and what it may mean for grain-based foods. For instance, the "trading down" suggested by the surge in what could be dubbed the industry’s least value-added product has not yet been mirrored by a decline in branded bread sales versus private label. At the same time, there have been indications amid rising food prices and a soft economy that eating at home is on the rise.

Whether or not its strength is sustained, the highly unusual family flour surge certainly suggests the possibility of significant underlying consumption shifts that merit a close watch by the industry.