A pricing game · Flowers Foods, 2026
Run Flowers' bread aisle for a year. Can you hit 85¢?
Flowers makes Nature's Own and Dave's Killer Bread. In February it told investors to expect 80 to 90 cents a share for 2026. In August it cut that to 75 to 85. Make its three big calls and see what grade you get.
2025 average prices per loaf, from Flowers' June 2026 investor deck (Circana).
Call 1 of 3 · December 2025
Prices go up about 4%. Which bread pays?
Packaging and tariffs cost more. Everyday loaves like your $4 bread are the hardest-hit part of the aisle: down 6% last quarter while bread overall fell 3%, as cheap brands took shoppers from mid-priced loaves (Flowers, November).
January 2026
Will your rivals match your prices?
If Bimbo, America's biggest baker, and the cheap brands raise prices too, your shoppers have nowhere cheaper to go. If they don't, the gap grows.
On Flowers' August call an analyst said it priced "with the expectation that you might see competitors follow, and it doesn't sound like that's happened". Bimbo reported share gains "across all U.S. categories — for the first time since 2020".
Call 2 of 3 · Spring 2026
You have about $30 million for sales. Where do they go?
Your loaves are down 6.6% on last year. Rivals are running deals, and shoppers are moving to cheap brands that cost about the same as store brand. Nature's Own sells about two loaves for every Dave's, so a sale on it marks down twice as many loaves.
The $30 million is our estimate. Flowers doesn't say what it spends on sales, or how many loaves it sells.
July 2026
Meanwhile, in the bread aisle
- −9.5%. Flowers' loaves sold this spring, against a year earlier (Circana).
- Bimbo's new half loaves and protein bagels "continue to outperform our expectations", its US president says (call transcript).
- Sourdough is now "a $1.3 billion subcategory". Dave's sells it only on the West Coast (Flowers).
- Flowers relaunches Nature's Own with John Cena as its "Breaducator" (Flowers).
Call 3 of 3 · Summer 2026
Your bakeries are emptier. Keep the cheap store-brand contracts?
Flowers also bakes store-brand bread for supermarkets. Some of those contracts make little money. Flowers' plan for them: "improve profitability through price action or tactical exit".
The $45 million and the contracts' profit are our estimates. Flowers says only that it lost "discontinued business".
August 2026 · You report to investors
a share
What moved your year
Grades: A 85¢ or more, the middle of February's forecast. B 80–84¢, inside it. C 75–79¢, inside only August's lower forecast. D 70–74¢. F under 70¢. The best year the three calls allow is crowned Bread King.
Where Flowers' loaves went
Our verdict
Flowers reports its real 2026 in February 2027. Its own forecast is 75 to 85 cents.
How it works
The game starts from Flowers' own forecast for its real calls, 80 cents, and works out what your calls change: loaves sold, price per loaf and profit. Four things nobody can measure exactly decide the answer. These are our estimates. Move them and the game rescores.
Our estimate: three quarters. That makes Flowers' bread lose about 1.3% of its loaves for each 1% its price rises above rivals', the figure measured for national bread brands by Cotterill, Putsis and Dhar (2000), from 1991–92 store data. The rest is sourdough, protein and half loaves Flowers doesn't sell, which it calls "the bigger factor".
Our estimate: the $4 shopper, about 1.3 times as much. Flowers in 2022: "we've seen less elasticity in the most-premium products in our portfolio". Bread-market data agree; studies across many groceries find little difference.
Our estimate: about the same. Across 30 kinds of groceries and about 676 million store sales records, cheaper brands' shoppers jump only 3% more (Keller and Sethuraman, 2026).
Our estimate: 20 cents on the dollar before bakery costs, which Flowers pays either way. Flowers chose to let some go, which suggests the margin was thin.
The math
The code is public: github.com/owencosans/Brandenburg
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