St Pierre Groupe predicts record festive sales for part-baked bread

International bakery business, St Pierre Groupe, suggests December will be a bumper month for part-baked bread, after record sales of its Paul Hollywood range and a surge in the part-baked category as a whole.

Worth £48m annually, data reviewed by analysts at St Pierre Groupe shows category growth of more than 42 per cent year on year. However, the impact of COVID-19 on consumer shopping habits has fuelled further uplift in the sector, with consumers looking to longer-life products to help reduce the frequency of their shopping trips.

Insight from previous years demonstrates that Christmas is a key sales period for part-baked bread, with rate of sale increasing more than threefold from October to December each year.

Paul Baker, founder of St Pierre Groupe explains; “Part-baked bread has come into its own throughout the pandemic, which bodes well for Christmas, when the category always experiences growth. It’s a great store-cupboard staple, with extended shelf-life, and even better than that, it gives that ‘just baked’ feeling at home – so even those who didn’t pick up new culinary skills during lockdown can have fresh-baked bread at home.

“Our Paul Hollywood Ready-to-Bake range experienced increased sales this year, up 64 per cent. Looking at the data though, we’d forecast an additional 25 per cent uplift this Christmas.

“As the biggest brand in the part-baked category in the UK, sales of the range during the first lockdown exceeded the previous Christmas period. With restrictions now back in place across the country, shoppers will be looking to stock up on their favourite bakery goods even earlier this year, and spending more time at home has put a greater emphasis on meal times. There’s nothing better on a winter's day than tucking into home-baked bread, and part of the appeal of part-baked is that it allows for that, with minimal effort.”

The Paul Hollywood Ready-to-Bake range, which is worth £7.2m and has a 15 per cent share of the market includes Rustic Rolls, Crusty Rolls and Multi-Seed Rolls. The rolls are available in grocery, wholesale and convenience channels in packs of four.