Sources and limits

Every number the game uses, where it comes from, and what the model can't see. Quotes link to the page they appear on. Labels: confirmed means Flowers' own filings or remarks; derived means our arithmetic on them; best estimate means a published figure from outside Flowers or our own judgement, said which.

The guidance

Feb 12, 2026: adjusted diluted EPS of $0.80 to $0.90 for fiscal 2026, adjusted EBITDA of $465 to $495 million (Q4 2025 results). Reaffirmed May 21, when Flowers reset its quarterly dividend to $0.125 (Q1 2026 results).
Aug 20, 2026: cut to $0.75 to $0.85, adjusted EBITDA $453 to $481 million. The same release gives depreciation of $165 to $170 million, net interest of $65 to $70 million, a 26% tax rate and 213.5 million diluted shares (Q2 2026 results).
The bridge: (EBITDA − depreciation − interest) × (1 − tax) ÷ shares, at the midpoints, gives 85¢ for $480 million and 80¢ for $467 million. Both match Flowers' guidance, so the game uses Flowers' own arithmetic.
The goal and the grades: 85¢, the middle of February's guidance, is the goal. Grades: A 85¢ or more; B 80–84¢; C 75–79¢; D 70–74¢; F under 70¢, judged in whole cents as shown. The best of the 24 possible years at our estimates is crowned Bread King. At our estimates that year is the price increase on the $6 bread, sales left on the $6 bread, and the store-brand contracts kept: 85¢. Flowers' own calls grade B (80¢).
The verdict rule, written down before the model was first run: a pricing blunder needs a different year that reaches 85¢ at our estimates and at every end of the ranges below and under every rival scenario. A year that reaches it only at our estimates is unclear; if none reaches it, it is not a blunder. Our verdict: unclear.

The three choices, in Flowers' words

The price increase (call 1). "In response to input costs and tariffs, we implemented price increases on most of our branded retail products late in the fourth quarter" (Q4 2025 remarks). The game's +4.0% is Flowers' fresh bread price per loaf against a year earlier, +3.9% in Q1 2026 and +4.1% in Q2 2026, derived from the Circana dollar and unit changes in Flowers' Q2 2026 deck (derived). What Flowers knew when it priced: "the price gaps between private label and some of the lower-priced branded products have narrowed significantly" (Q3 2025 Q&A), and traditional loaf "units declining 6% compared to a 3% decline for bread overall" (Q3 2025 remarks).
The sales (call 2). "Our promotional activity increased quarter over quarter, as a result of targeting more differentiated and premium-priced items" (Q2 2026 10-Q). Earlier, promotion went to "differentiated, better-for-you products with relatively low base sales" (Q3 2025 remarks). The $30 million a year is our estimate; Flowers doesn't disclose its promotion budget.
The store-brand contracts (call 3). "Store branded retail sales declined primarily due to discontinued business resulting in lower cake and traditional loaf volumes" (Q1 2026 10-Q). Flowers' plan for "Store Brand Bread (tactical)": "improve profitability through price action or tactical exit" (June 2026 deck). The $45 million a year is our estimate, from Other volume of −1.9% and −3.4% in the first two quarters "partly from discontinued business".

What happened

Branded Retail: price/mix +4.0% and volume −4.2% in Q1 2026; +3.8% and −7.6% in Q2 2026 (Q2 2026 results). "The largest volume declines were in branded traditional loaf products and branded organic products" (Q2 2026 10-Q).
Flowers' fresh bread units (Circana): −3.1%, −1.9% and −3.7% in the three quarters before the increase; −6.6% and −9.5% in the two after (Q2 2026 deck). The game reads the gap, about 5 points, as the extra loss after the increase (derived).
Where shoppers went: "you're seeing a shift to lower-priced branded offerings that are pricing at parity or slightly above private label. And in the same environment, private label is down" (Q4 2025 Q&A). Store brands held 26.2% of bread dollars in 2025 and in the 52 weeks to July 19, 2026 (Q2 2026 deck). Bimbo, the largest US baker, reported "market share gains across all U.S. categories — for the first time since 2020" (Grupo Bimbo Q2 2026 results).
The gaps Flowers names: "the bigger factor … has to do with those gaps in our portfolio, the under penetration in half loaves, sourdough, protein fiber" (Q2 2026 Q&A). Sourdough is "a $1.3 billion subcategory" (same call). For Dave's Killer Bread, "Consumption declined as we pulled back on planned marketing investment" (Q2 2026 remarks).
Shelf prices: 2025 average retail price per loaf: store brand $2.66, Nature's Own $3.76, Dave's Killer Bread $6.20 (June 2026 deck, Circana). In the game Nature's Own stands for the everyday loaves and Dave's for the premium ones; store brand moves +1% with the rest of the aisle.

Every input

Input	Value	Status	Source
February guidance, EPS	0.80-0.90	confirmed	Flowers Q4 2025 results, 8-K Ex. 99.1 Range or note: reaffirmed 2026-05-21.
February guidance, EBITDA ($M)	465-495	confirmed	Flowers Q4 2025 results, 8-K Ex. 99.1
August guidance, EPS	0.75-0.85	confirmed	Flowers Q2 2026 results, 8-K Ex. 99.1
Flowers' real choices, EBITDA ($M)	467	confirmed	Flowers Q2 2026 results: guidance $453-481M, midpoint Range or note: the anchor: the company's own forecast under its real choices.
Depreciation ($M)	167.5	confirmed	Q2 2026 results, outlook assumptions: $165-170M, midpoint
Net interest ($M)	67.5	confirmed	Q2 2026 results, outlook assumptions: $65-70M, midpoint
Tax rate	0.26	confirmed	Q2 2026 results, outlook assumptions
Diluted shares (M)	213.5	confirmed	Q2 2026 results, outlook assumptions Range or note: the bridge reproduces both guidance midpoints (tests).
Branded Retail sales, 2026 ($M)	3350	best estimate	H1 2026 Branded Retail $1,839.9M (28 weeks) x 52/28, trimmed toward the August guide Range or note: range 3250-3450.
Everyday loaves, share of branded	0.38	confirmed	CEO, Q1 2026 Q&A: 'traditional loaf is approximately 38% of our branded retail'
Premium loaves, share of branded	0.28	best estimate	FY2025 10-K retail sales: Dave's Killer Bread $1.2B, Canyon $174M, out of about $4.9B branded at retail Range or note: range 0.24-0.32.
Flowers' loaf price move	0.04	derived	Circana dollars and units in Flowers' Q2 2026 deck: +3.9% (Q1 2026) and +4.1% (Q2 2026) Range or note: retail price per unit; includes promotion and mix.
The rest of the aisle's price move	0.01	best estimate	Flowers Q4 2025 remarks: category average price per unit +1.1%; sandwich bread $/unit +1.9% over 52 weeks to Aug 9 2026 (reported) Range or note: range 0-0.02; the category figure includes Flowers.
Flowers' loaf units before the increase	-0.029	derived	Circana units in Flowers' Q2 2026 deck: -3.1% (Q2 2025), -1.9% (Q3 2025), -3.7% (Q4 2025), mean
Extra loaf-unit decline after it	-0.05	derived	Circana units: -6.6% (Q1 2026) and -9.5% (Q2 2026) against the pre-trend; about -5 points Range or note: category units did not worsen over the same period (sandwich bread units -3.3% over 52 weeks to Aug 9 2026; reported).
Store brand, 2025 price	2.66	confirmed	Flowers, Jefferies conference deck slide 7 (Circana)
Nature's Own, 2025 price	3.76	confirmed	Flowers, Jefferies conference deck slide 7 (Circana) Range or note: Nature's Own stands for the everyday loaves.
Dave's Killer Bread, 2025 price	6.20	confirmed	Flowers, Jefferies conference deck slide 7 (Circana) Range or note: Dave's stands for the premium loaves.
Share of the extra loss caused by price	0.75	best estimate	Set so Flowers' loaves lose about 1.3% of their volume per 1% of price above rivals', the national-brand bread elasticity in Cotterill, Putsis and Dhar (2000, Journal of Business), IRI data 1991-92 (-1.31). Flowers itself said both: price gaps 'somewhat affected our volume' (May 2026); price not 'the overall driving force' (Aug 2026) Range or note: range 0.25-1.0; the rest is product gaps (sourdough, protein, half loaves), which Flowers calls 'the bigger factor'.
$4 vs $6 loaf: reaction to its own price change	1.3	best estimate, ours	Three estimates: Flowers' own history, central 1.3 (CEO, May 2022: 'we've seen less elasticity in the most-premium products in our portfolio'; Nature's Own lost volume in 2023 while Dave's grew); brand price gaps in the bread market, about 1.5; published studies about 1.0 (Fok et al. 2006: no significant price-segment effect on regular-price elasticity) Range or note: range 1.0-2.0; low confidence; tier-wide moves (all brands in a tier at once) point the other way, about 0.5, but Flowers moved its own prices while rivals held.
$4 vs $6 loaf: reaction to a sale	1.0	best estimate	Keller and Sethuraman (2026), Journal of Retailing 102: NielsenIQ data, 30 categories, about 676 million observations: lower-priced national brands are 3% more promotion-elastic than higher-priced ones, and price level 'plays less of a role in product's promotion elasticity than previously assumed'; Fok et al. (2006): a higher price segment is slightly more promotion-elastic (0.93) Range or note: range 0.9-1.2; no bread in either study.
Sales change per 1% off on a deal	-3.2	best estimate	Sethuraman (1995), Marketing Letters 6(4): mean promotional own-price elasticity 3.23 across 16 product-chains Range or note: not bread-specific; range -2 to -4.5.
Whole bread aisle, sales change per 1% price rise	-0.5	best estimate	USDA ERS elasticity database: bread own-price -0.31 to -0.40 (Huang and Lin 2000) and -0.77 to -0.82 (Bergtold et al. 2004) Range or note: range -0.3 to -0.8; used where rivals copy a move.
Branded loaf contribution margin	0.45	best estimate	FY2025 10-K cost lines: ingredients and packaging 28.0% of sales; distributor fees 11.8% of all sales (about 16% of branded DSD sales); workforce 27.6% treated as mostly fixed Range or note: range 0.35-0.55.
Store-brand contract margin	0.20	best estimate, ours	No distributor fee but a lower net price; bid business Flowers chose to exit ('improve profitability through price action or tactical exit', Jefferies deck slide 11) Range or note: range 0.05-0.35.
Store-brand contracts exited ($M a year)	45	best estimate	Other volume -1.9% (Q1 2026) and -3.4% (Q2 2026), 'partly from discontinued business' Range or note: range 25-70.
Targeted loaf promotion ($M a year)	30	best estimate	Branded price/mix moved by promotion: -1.9% (Q4 2024), -0.5% (FY2025); 'consistent promotional intensity' in Q2 2026 Range or note: range 15-60.

The rivals card

The game asks whether rivals matched Flowers' price increase. They didn't: an analyst said on the August call that Flowers priced "with the expectation that you might see competitors follow, and it doesn't sound like that's happened", Flowers did not dispute it, and in May it said "the pricing gaps have remained a bit wider than we would like". The aisle's average price per loaf rose about 1% while Flowers' rose about 4%. "If they had matched" is a scenario: rivals move with Flowers, so only the whole aisle's response to price (−0.5% per 1%, the middle of the published bread figures) is left. At our estimates that is worth about 8¢ a share on Flowers' own calls, more than any call Flowers made.

What the model can't see

Who reacts more, the $4 shopper or the $6 shopper. Three sources, each imperfect. For a loaf's own price rise: Flowers' history points to the $4 shopper, about 1.3 times as much (in 2022 it said "we've seen less elasticity in the most-premium products in our portfolio"), bread-market data agree, and studies across many groceries find little difference. We use 1.3, range 1.0–2.0. For a sale: about the same. Across 30 kinds of groceries, lower-priced brands' shoppers jump only 3% more (Keller and Sethuraman 2026); an older study finds the reverse by a little. We use 1.0, range 0.9–1.2. Neither study includes bread.
What the crown leans on. The Bread King year reaches 85¢ only if the store-brand contracts earned at least 16 cents on the dollar, $4 shoppers mind a price rise at least 1.2 times as much as $6 shoppers, and at least half of Flowers' extra lost loaves were about price. Moving the sales to the $4 bread reaches 85¢ only if $4 shoppers jump at a sale 1.34 times as much, far above the published 1.02.
Price or gaps. How much of Flowers' extra loss was price is our estimate, three quarters, set from the bread elasticity in Cotterill, Putsis and Dhar (2000), which uses 1991–92 data. Flowers said both: price gaps "somewhat affected our volume performance" in May; in August, price was not "the overall driving force".
Undisclosed: how many loaves Flowers sells, the increase by brand, the sales budget, the store-brand contracts it exited, and margins by bread. Those inputs are estimates, labelled in the table. "Nature's Own sells about two loaves for every Dave's" is our arithmetic: 2025 retail sales from the 10-K ($1.5 billion and $1.2 billion) divided by the average prices above.
Raising prices more looks better in this model, but the model can't see price lines such as $3.99, and Nature's Own would cross $4. The game doesn't offer it.
Anchored, so not proof. The game starts from Flowers' August forecast for its real calls, so Flowers' year matches by construction. That shows nothing about whether the model is right.
What stays fixed: buns, cake, Simple Mills and foodservice follow Flowers' real path in every year, and bakery costs don't change: network changes "take much longer to execute".
Where it stops working: price moves are capped at ±10% and sales at 10% of a bread's sales. The model has no price point where shoppers walk away.
The call: Flowers reports fiscal 2026 in February 2027. Its forecast is 75 to 85 cents. We'll compare then.
Corrections: an earlier draft of this game (not published) said a different split of price and sales hit 89¢. That rested on a guess that could only lean one way. The estimates above replaced it on 8 October 2026.

The code

The reference model in Python, its data and the tests that hold this page to it: github.com/owencosans/Brandenburg.