Wonder Bread Turns 90, Competes in Whole Wheat Flour Market

It's Wonder Bread's 90th birthday, and the old-fashioned staple of America's diet is retaining its long standing popularity by competing in the whole wheat flour and bread market.

Wonder Bread's success is simple: they're flexible and they keep an eye on what the people want. In the 1930's Wonder Bread supplemented their bread line with vitamins and minerals designed to combat diseases of the era like pellagra and beriberi.

And along with its debut as one of the first sliced breads available in America, it was immensely popular...the people ate it up.

In the 1960s they sold their product as a means of building healthy, strong bodies.

And today they're focusing on the whole wheat flour market by offering a line of breads that feature a soft texture and the nutritional value of whole grains.

These lines include "Wonder Kids Bread," which is a vitamin enriched bread made of whole grain flour designed to appeal to kids, and "Wonder Smartwhite" another whole wheat bread that even looks like traditional white bread in order to please picky eaters.

This allows parents to feel good about what their child is eating, while children get to eat something they love.

Baking Management's recent article on bread flour suggests that the key to success is to know how to make formulaic adjustments to your recipe so that your bread still tastes great, but offers the nutritional value that consumers want.

Wonder Bread's ability to do just that with their whole wheat line explains why they've been going strong for 90 years, and likely to keep going for 90 more.