Small bakers are finding themselves being squeezed out
by supermarket tactics
By Clare Sambrook
BRITAIN's master bakers fear rampant price cutting by the big supermarket groups has devalued the loaf and robbed them of customers.
They are lobbying politicians to fight their cause, and make the emotive claim that if the bakers disappear from Britain's high streets, the elderly and infirm could go without bread.
This week Labour MP Frank Field tabled an early day motion calling for a full Office of Fair Trading investigation into loss-leading, the practice of selling products such as bread at below cost price. He wants a review of UK competition laws to outlaw permanent loss-leading of any product.
Leading the fight for survival is Roy Flint, a third-generation baker, whose grandfather started the business in 1941, sheltered his six children in the basement bakery during the blitz, and had built up a group of 13 shops by 1953.
Now Croydon-based Brown's the Bakers comprises 11 shops and two bakeries supplying 120 supermarket stores. Mr Flint is managing director and newly-elected president of the National Association of Master Bakers, which has lost 1,000 members - a third of
the total - since the late 1970s, and half of those in only the past five years.
Mr Flint claims the ingredients alone of the standard white sliced loaf cost 30p, yet supermarkets routinely stock it at only 29p, less than half the price before discounters Aldi and Netto pulled the big supermarket groups into a bread price war just over two years ago.
The consumer does not benefit, he claims: "Unless you buy only that one product, you are not getting that value, because they are recouping it on other goods."
The bakers claim their product is superior to supermarket fare. Many supermarket in-house bakeries only give an extra bake to bread that is already half-baked and the product goes stale faster, contends Mr Flint.
Cast as the villains in this contest, the supermarketeers stop just short of calling Mr Flint's argument half-baked. A spokesman for Tesco claims: "It's a straightforward competitive question. Our customers expect us to offer bread at a competitive price."
While the bakers complain that their sales of crusty white loaves are hit by the supermarket's white sliced price war, he claims Tesco's own sales of the crusty, priced at 74p, are outpacing sales of its 25p hite sliced loaf. Moreover, he adds "We don't sell products below cost. We make a small profit."
Tesco declines to comment on whether it is under pressure from suppliers to increase
selling prices, but Mr Flint claims: "I talk to the supermarket buyers and many of them don't want this problem. Everyone is now locked in."
Bakers' hopes that the OFT will break the deadlock look misplaced. A spokesman said this week: "We see that there is vigorous competition between supermarkets that has the effect of producing cheaper prices for the consumer. There's no law against loss-leading."
As for the bakers, he said: "Smaller businesses need to adapt if they feel under threat."
