Grateful Bread — a Golden bakery that has been supplying many of Denver’s best-known eateries with their loaves, rolls and custom muffins for 16 years — is pivoting its business model to focus on retail sales after a year that’s upended the local restaurant industry.
For now, the company will continue to sell only online for pickup orders and through its popular Saturday retail event where hundreds of people come and take numbers to wait for a chance to scoop up everything from oat bread to focaccia to pastries. But owners Jeff Cleary and Kathy Mullen said in an interview Monday that they are looking at possible deals to get their products into retail stores, as well as examining options such as mail-order bread and home delivery.
While Grateful Bread will continue working with restaurants, the change in focus is a significant one for a company that received 95% of its revenue from wholesale restaurant orders as recently as nine years ago. But after 52% of its 2020 sales came via the direct-to-consumer route, its owners now have the confidence that the customer loyalty they have built up can carry them forward in what is likely to be an uncertain near future for eateries of all types.
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