Only a few years ago, an in-store bakery operator could develop and maintain a bakery program successfully with only minor changes. The operator understood customers' product preferences and could anticipate their buying patterns. Though successful in-store programs never have been candidates for automatic pilot control, they rarely required frequent course corrections.

Those days have passed, thanks to the explosion of instant communications — email, text messages, Facebook and, most recently, Twitter — which have taxed consumers' attention spans and hastened decision-making. One manifestation: Consumers are changing their minds more frequently.

This environment and the deepest recession since World War II have created the greatest challenges ever for the nearly 40-year-old in-store baking industry. Just ask officials of Whole Foods Market's South Region, based in Atlanta, who believe they have the controls in hand to keep the region's bakery program on course and to meet the challenges ahead.

Upper-most is a requirement to ensure that the bakeries stand out from competitors' operations. “We always ask ourselves, ‘What will differentiate us? What will set our bakeries apart from other operators?’” says Scott Allshouse, South Region president.

He notes that asking these questions has become more frequent. “Customers have become very immediate in changing their wants. It's what's important to them right now. They drive our programs; we cannot force feed what we want to offer.”

The South Region, which spans Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina, operaes 18 Whole Foods Markets, all with in-store bakeries. The company has 12 regions, each of which functions autonomously, selecting the strategy and tactics to best address the needs of its customers. In bakery, the structures of the 12 regions are similar in that the in-stores receive semi-finished and/or fully baked products from central bakeries, called bakehouses, and purchase baked items from local vendors. All bakehouses and in-stores adhere to Whole Foods' strict quality standards to use only all-natural ingredients: unbleached, nonbromated flour; non-hydrogenated fats; all-natural food colors; cage-free eggs and hormone-free dairy products.

Steve Schulte (left), bakery coordinator, South Region; and Brett Smith, bakery team leader, Atlanta’s Buckhead store.

While it differs by region, each chooses its combination of in-store production procedures. In the South Region, three bakehouses supply in-stores with ingredients, frozen raw and par-baked product, comprising about 85 percent of in-store sales; vendors supply the remaining 15 percent. Further, while all in-stores in the South Region offer many of the same products, each location fine-tunes its product mix to appeal to local tastes.

“This makes each store and its bakery unique,” says Steve Schulte, region bakery coordinator. “We have seven stores in metropolitan Atlanta. Each bakery has refined its product mix and merchandising set for its customers. That's what gives each bakery its flair.”

Whole Foods' regional programs with local stores' touches serve better than would a national program, Allshouse adds. “The coordinators are in much better positions to know what their region's customers want, compared to how a national coordinator would function.”

To keep current with its dynamic demographics and economies, each region's bakery team leaders (bakery managers) regularly test product categories and production procedures. “For example, one year it might make sense to make a product from scratch in store,” Allshouse says. “A couple of years later, having a bakehouse prepare it makes sense. Or, a new large store might have capacity to make it, while an older, smaller store would receive the product from its bakehouse,” he notes.

Whole Foods’ cupcakes, 4-in. tortes and “bitelet” one-bite desserts draw sales from customers seeking dessert treats in smaller serving sizes.

Regional autonomy also challenges each coordinator and the bakery team leaders to be more creative, Allshouse says, adding, “Twelve creative coordinators who share ideas bring a lot more to the table than a single person would.” Creativity, Schulte continues, extends throughout the in-store organization. “Our team members take food seriously, as do team members in the other departments,” he says. “When we hire, we look for outgoing ‘foodies,’ people who show a passion for food and eagerly express it. This goes a long way to getting team members who look forward to tasting products, helping customers and explaining the bakery's products.

“Just as important, most of the new ideas come from our team members because they are deeply interested in bakery and its products.”

Gluten-free bakehouse

In-stores receive shipments daily of different items from the region's bakehouses: two in Morrisville, N.C. and one in Atlanta. One North Carolina bakehouse produces only kosher organic products, while the Atlanta bakehouse supplies non-organic, all-natural items, such as soft dinner rolls and hamburger buns.