Bob’s Red Mill is closing their online store!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just received an email that Bob's is closing their online store on 08/12. They cite the wide availability of their products as the reason for shutting it down.

They are probably also competing with Amazon and Walmart delivery services but those two have become so unreliable I almost never use them.

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[BakerAunt]

The "wide accessibility" of which they speak is not available in the area in which I live. Even such basics as bags of whole wheat flour are not always available in the larger town where we do our big grocery run, as I noted a couple of weeks ago. I have never seen the milk powder, and I recently had to order it through a place that is on Walmart.com.

BRM must have realized that they could cut costs by getting out of the shipping expenses and not dealing individually with customers. It is yet another sign that employee-run companies seek to maximize profits at the expense of relationships with even longtime customers.

[Mike Nolan]

New York Bakers discontinued their retail store because shipping was getting too difficult for them.

I suspect finding help was part of their problem and is part of the problem at BRM, too.

I've not ordered much directly from BRM, but as to 'wide availability' there are quite a few products that they still make that I can't find locally. And they've discontinued a LOT of products.

I think the last time I ordered semolina it was a 25 pound bag from BRM, but I got it through somewhere like webstaurant.com, because their cost with shipping was less than from BRM by about $10.

One advantage of ordering from Amazon is that they have their own distribution network and some of their third party shippers have written that Amazon gets a better deal from UPS, USPS and FEDEX than they could get independently. But I will agree that problems with ordering from Amazon seem to be on the upswing. But it is also getting harder to find things locally, as stores are cutting products a lot, even WalMart. I was looking for some brackets to hang some curtains, nobody locally carried the type of bracket I wanted and their estimate on when they could get them was 2 weeks or longer.

But I do cringe these days when an Amazon order says it is being handled by USPS.

I've only ordered from walmart.com a few times, the last time it was a total disaster. The product never arrived, apparently it got damaged in transit and they sent me a notice about that but it took two months to get a refund. I did get a big tub of wheat berries from them once, but I went looking for it again the other day and it wasn't there.

[Mike Nolan]

I just looked at the BRM site and there's nothing on it about the online store closing--yet.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I did not see anything online when I checked. I just received an email that was from the standard BRM address.

We have a good amount of their products here but I am not certain if we have everything you all use. And there isn't a cost effective way for me to buy and ship it otherwise I would.

After having tried their wholewheat and bread flours I am not a fan of those. I was ordering from Central Milling and Small Valley Milling. But now with shipping they are $2/pound. KAB is still under $1/pound at Walmart. Central and Small Valley are both organic and KAB is not so that is at least part of the price difference. I really like Small Valley and I want to support them but not at double the price.

[Mike Nolan]

I bought a 5 pound bag of the BRM white pastry flour locally, it seems to perform similar to the pastry flour I was getting from King Arthur and was quite a bit cheaper.

[Mike Nolan]

Our Costco has King Arthur AP flour in 12 pound bags, I think the last one I bought was either $6.99 or $7.99.

[Mike Nolan]

Even though I live on the fringe of the wheat belt (Nebraska is 11th in wheat production, Kansas is #1) and there are several mills in Nebraska (Ardent Mills has 2 of them), if I buy flour it usually makes a multi-state journey of 500 miles or more from the mill to the wholesaler, possibly to a retailer and then to me. It seems silly for me to have to buy semolina flour, most of which is grown and milled in North Dakota, and have it shipped from Ohio.

[BakerAunt]

I received the same email that Aaron did.

I exclusively use BRM whole wheat flour, which I think has a sweeter taste than King Arthur's due to being stoneground. I'm also a fan of their Artisan Bread flour. Both of those will be hard to source locally. When I was at Kroger, ten days ago, there was no BRM whole wheat flour, and they have never carried the artisan bread flour. I've also not seen their pastry flour, so I ordered it from them. I have not seen their whole wheat pastry flour for some time. I've never seen their milk powder, which is essential for my yogurt and also in my baking. No place here carries their beans. I did, to my surprise see a package of their barley on my last trip to Kroger, which surprised me because I had to order it after searching in vain a couple of years ago. I have never seen oat bran locally.

I like the BRM oats, but I think that I can get similar nutritional advantage from Quaker Oats, for maybe a little less money. I already know to avoid the Aldi's oats.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I'll look and see what I can find today, BA. I actually found their whole wheat to be more bitter or maybe it's just stronger. My favorite whole wheat is King Arthur's white whole wheat. These days I seem to only be able to find the organic version in Whole Foods which is now over $10 for a five pound bag. At that point it's cheaper to order from Central or Small Valley.

Like Mike I do like their pastry flour and whole wheat pastry flour.

BRM is going through a lot. They switched to employee-owned but then were hit by COVID and now the current problems. Add to this, at least three local bakers here are switching to wheat berries and building out their own milling operations because, they say, wheat berries keep longer, they can make five pounds of flour from one pound of berries, and things like that. These are folks who go through a couple pallets of 50 lb bags a month.

I haven't seen any numbers but adding what amounts to a whole new line to your business cannot be cheap and I don't know if it will pay off and if it does how long it will take. It will require some big, up front capital investment as well as training and new staffing, at a time when people are already short staffed.

Three is not a big number but if this is a trend across the country it will put pressure on mills.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I also like the King Arthur white whole wheat, which I use when I do not want the upfront whole wheat taste. I use it in most of my cookies and also with oatmeal muffins when I want the oat flavor at the front. King Arthur does sell the white whole wheat flour online. I'm in their Baker's Advantage Program, so I order several bags at a time and stick them in the extra refrigerator. I can usually combine that order with other essentials, such as the KABC cheese powder or the special dry milk. No store in my area carries the white whole wheat flour.

That's interesting about some bakers building out their own mills. I wonder if part of that trend resulted from the pandemic shortages. It would also perhaps cut down on transportation costs, and it gives bakers more control over grind.

[Mike Nolan]

IMHO, the biggest challenge with grinding your own flour is coming up with a good, affordable and consistent source of wheat berries. In addition to a good mill, a commercial bakery going that route might need to purchase some other equipment to clean the wheat and lab equipment to determine the quality of their flour.

For home bakers, milling your own flour is not a way to save money!

[BakerAunt]

Stores in my area are more likely to carry the Bob's Red Mill gluten-free products, which is fine for people who need them, but add to the cost for those of us who do not need the gluten-free products. They are also more likely to carry the organic, since that is a niche market for them. I sometimes buy organic and sometimes not.

I will be doing orders on Walmart.com. Usually, it is not Walmart but smaller companies that use their distribution system. That is how I found the Scottish oatmeal and the milk powder.

[Mike Nolan]

I just checked for the BRM white pastry flour online, and the best price I saw was about $7.50 per 5 pound bag if you ordered 4 of them. Most prices were well above that.

This is another type of inflation that IMHO BRM is responsible for. Bob Moore must be crying in his oatmeal over what BRM has become since he sold it to his employees.

I also noticed that you can't trust the per-ounce price on Amazon, one of them was WAY off, as in about a quarter of the true per-ounce price.

[BakerAunt]

Ouch--on the pastry flour, Mike. I like to use part whole wheat pastry flour and part white pastry flour in my pie crusts, but there is no way that I would go through four bags of white pastry flour.

I wonder if employee-run companies tend to get greedy. They certainly get on the "we must be more modern" bandwagon. BRM has moved into mixes and prepared products, such as crackers and snack bars. I found their crackers far too salty, and the snack bars are high in saturated fat.

When I complained, politely, about their no longer selling barley flour, I was told that they need the production facilities for exciting new products. The responder did send me a list of places to try--not a one was of any use. I finally bought a five-pound bag of "Food to Live" brand through Walmart.com. A lot of smaller grain and bean providers sell through Walmart.com. That was where I had to go for my rye flakes.

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