I am finally back home from two long trips and so had to buy a new loaf of bread. Of course, Home Pride Bread is still not back on the shelf so I had to decide what bread to buy. After the result of my decision, I will share a little bit of information that I have found out about Flowers Foods expansion plans that may affect the distribution of Home Pride Bread.

Would I buy one of the breads that I had tried before in my quest for a replacement for Home Pride, or would I try something new? Last night I went shopping to pick up perishables and decided to take a good look at the available breads at Safeway. I spotted a bread that I hadn’t tried yet.

I decided to give Open Nature 100% Whole Wheat Bread a try. It is 100% Natural, so should be good for me :-). It will be run through the same tests as the previous candidates.

After my last serious test in Home Pride Update X the front runners were  Oven Joy from Safeway, Roman Meal Sungrain 100% Whole Wheat and Roman Meal Thin Sliced Sandwich Bread.

The breads that had not passed the test were Sara Lee 100% Whole Wheat , Safeway’s Butter Top Wheat, Oroweat Soft Family 100% Whole Wheat, Sara Lee Honey Wheat, Bimbo Soft Wheat Family, Cascade Pride Split Top Wheat and Oroweat simply 100% Whole Wheat.

You can click on the bread names above to visit the posts where I reviewed them.

Now for the latest from Flowers Foods. I went to Flowers Foods website and looked in the Investors section to see if I could find some updated news about their plans for starting the distribution of the former Hostess bread brands.

I found an Investor Presentation from March 20 that was shown at an NYSE analyst event. There was not much in the presentation about their plans for the Hostess bread brands, as the sale was only approved by the bankruptcy court the day before on March 19. See Home Pride Update XIV – Sale Approved for more details.  They did have one slide that showed that they had acquired 5 Hostess brands, 20 closed bakeries and 38 depots. The bakeries and depots will help expand their distribution network.

They also had a slide that detailed the progress of one of their latest acquisitions. The Sara Lee brands in California were acquired from Grupo Bimbo last year and Flowers Foods is expanding their distribution network to include all of California. Currently they are only in Southern California. In the deal with Grupo Bimbo they also acquired a bakery in Stockton. By April 22 the south section of the Central Valley will be in the distribution area and the north section is scheduled for May 20. Nature’s Own bread should also soon be available as Flowers Foods has introduced their flagship bread brand into all the areas that they have acquired through acquisition.

This is good news since I will then be in the Flowers Foods distribution area when they start to re-introduce Home Pride Bread. In the meantime, maybe I can try Nature’s Own since it has been mentioned as a good alternative to Home Pride bread.

Hopefully more details about Home Pride Bread will soon be released.

Steven

To see my other posts, click on Home Pride Bread.