Bay State Milling Co. hosted the Baking Industry Roundtable, held recently at the 606 Congress restaurant in Boston. Bay State’s Dan Portley (left) and Dave Kovacic offered their industry perspective on ingredient prices and other challenges facing bakery businesses.

Repa: Something I've done along similar lines is scale back the extra stuff that we add to our products. They're still high quality products, the portion sizes are the same, but we're not adding so many foo-foo things to it.

I'm talking more about our pastries, so the desserts are specialized and cakes are custom made. But, in our retail store, we have individual size and miniature size pastries with not as much labor in regards to garnish. We've scaled back just enough to not have to hike our prices too much. We're streamlining on the simple elegance.

MB: What about opportunities with natural and organic products?

Frankie Whitman: In fact, more and more people now are asking for it. Even our customers who haven't been asking are now asking. Other suppliers who are in our division are not using all-natural. So, we have opportunity for expansion because natural ingredients are something we've always done.

MB: It sounds like for all of you, concentrating on what you do best is where the most opportunity lies?

Gumpel: In this change in the economy, I think the next big thing for us is just trying to hold onto your brand and not to do something stupid right now. Make moves within your brand, within who you are.

If we took the bread wall out of Panera Bread because retail bread sales were declining, what would happen? If we didn't sell bread, we'd be just another sandwich shop competing with everyone else who makes sandwiches and soup. We would be taking the bread out of Panera Bread.

It is not so much, “What's the next big thing?” The majority of our work is probably 5 percent innovation, and the rest is fixing things, maintaining things and staying true to our brand.

MB: Any other trends you see that might bring in more business? How about gluten-free?

Gumpel: They're a small group of people with a serious health issue. It's not a gluten allergy. It's celiac disease, and they're a small group of people who are very vocal. We're hearing more from celiacs. It's a totally serious situation, so I called the celiac association president to get her take on the this. She told me, “Tom, two words: Panera Bread. Anybody who has celiac disease isn't coming to Panera Bread.” That's why we don't have gluten-free items.

Piantedosi: What about other allergens? Lino and I are on the same page on this, but we have a compliance department now because we are a national company that requires the word allergen-free. I mean, what is allergen-free? Everything under the sun has allergens in it.

So, we had to cut back on nuts in our products. And like you said, that's a small percentage of the population. We find it challenging in our bakery; we don't have time to create new and exciting items because we have to worry so much about compliance issues.

MB: What about the trans-fat issue? How have you dealt with that?

Repa: Our products didn't have too many ingredients with trans fats, so I didn't have to play around too much. But, I saw the trend, and just said, I'm going to do it now. I'm going to be the first in the area to be able to say our products have zero trans fats.

Stevenson: That is exactly the way I looked at it. I heard about it in New York and said, this is going to come to Massachusetts, and it did. And, we're a state university. We have to make this change now before it becomes legislation. It was tough in the beginning, but we found companies that were producing trans fat-free oils and other ingredients. We tested a lot of them with varying degrees of success. But, we're all set now. We're trans fat free, and it's great.

Gumpel: You're not off the hook because you use butter. There are added trans fats and natural trans fats, and governments around the country, whether it is a county or city, are having trouble defining that. It's a pain in the neck.

Frankie Whitman: We use a software for our nutrition labels, and even if you use butter, it doesn't come up. It still says zero trans fat.

Lino Dischino: We have to purchase trans fat-free oil to put on the pans for customers that request it. But that's for production that day. It adds cleaning and sanitation time. You are looking at four hours for the crew to clean the line for the next product, and that's very costly.

MB: What are the rest of your customers asking for these days? Is there anything new that you're researching and developing based on customer requests?

Repa: I look at research and development at the very basic level. What are some of my alternative ingredients, and could I work with something new without getting into strange substitutes, something that's not natural?

Stevenson: My guests are notoriously fickle because their age group is 18 to 21. Anything out of the ordinary kind of blows their minds. When you start adding whole wheat to muffins or cookies, they get worried that it's a health food now. Once you get them to actually try it, you get positive response, and they're interested in it.