White pan bread took it on the chin during the Atkins Diet craze and in many markets still is reeling from the body blows. Yet, that hasn’t blocked Sara Lee North American Fresh Bakery from challenging established notions of marketing white bread.

Having entered the fiercely competitive fight for sales and market share only nine years ago, the Sara Lee Corp. business unit has trained and conditioned its Sara Lee® Soft & Smooth® Made with Whole Grain White bread to become the number one traditional white bread in dollar sales for the 52 weeks ending Jan. 29, 2010, according to Information Resources Inc. data.

“Sara Lee took a bold move to introduce Soft & Smooth. And this was into a stagnant marketplace,” recalls Jim Nolan, executive vice president, Sara Lee North American Bakery, Downers Grove, IL.

“People recognized that balance in diet, not one extreme nor the other, is important, especially when it comes to the importance of whole grains in a well balanced diet.” Whole grains have driven the broader bread industry for several years, he observes, and “we need to increase the education level for the consumer. The Soft & Smooth line introduction helped do that.”

Sara Lee North American Fresh Bakery grew to a near-national bread producer seemingly overnight in 2001, when it acquired The EarthGrains® Baking Co., the second-largest bakery operation in the U.S., known for its premium line of all-natural bread products. An independent publicly held firm at the time, EarthGrains had been spun off by brewing giant Anheuser-Busch in 1996. EarthGrains brand products were introduced to consumers in 1975.

Dubuque, Iowa, plant management includes, from left, Tim Fetzer, distribution manager; Alan Walters, plant manager; John Shultz, production supervisor, and Tracey Hager, quality and food safety manager.

Tim Zimmer, vice president-marketing, Sara Lee North American Fresh Bakery, joined Sara Lee in 2003 and was on the marketing team charged with building the business. “We had three objectives,” he says. “One, to take Sara Lee branded fresh bakery products national. Sara Lee enjoys great equity in frozen product, and we believe it had relevance in fresh bakery. Two, to bring innovation to the category. And three, to build a marketing team to support a consumer-driven model to achieve these objectives.”

In 2003, Sara Lee Fresh Bakery had 118 brands and about 5,000 SKUs spread across nearly 70 percent of the country. While building the Sara Lee brand, including EarthGrains, the company has eliminated others. Market research revealed where duplication exists, enabling the company to reduce the number of brands to about 40 and to eliminate SKUs to less than half the original count, he says.

Initially, removing brands that had become less relevant was easy, Zimmer says. As the team looked at more difficult choices, “we had to set up opportunities to transition consumers into the Sara Lee brand.”

For example, Sara Lee uses co-branding, placing the Sara Lee brand on regional brand packaging. “This makes it easier for consumers to better understand the move,” he explains. “The alternative is to remove a brand, throw consumers into the air and allow them to fall. We want to make sure that we keep those consumers and bring them into the Sara Lee brand.” Some duplication remains, so the process continues, he adds.

After incorporating 1,100- to 1,200-lb. sponge doughs, a 2,500-lb. mixer mixes final doughs seven to 10 minutes at the Dubuque, Iowa, plant.

Sara Lee bread products are geared to the needs of three sets of consumers, Zimmer says. Sara Lee addresses mom and households with children. Earthgrains tends to appeal to 45-plus-year-olds and households without children. And, strong, or “power,” regional brands have hometown equity and cross both demographics, which nice blend well with the Sara Lee and EarthGrains brands, he adds.

Sara Lee assesses each market individually, viewing each from a national and local perspective. Drilling down, it determines the appropriate number of SKUs based on geography, a market’s capacity to deal with SKUs and the velocity of those SKUs, Zimmer says.