Exposure of the Profitable Inside Story of Imported Flour Agency

At six in the morning, when the city was still asleep, the first wisp of wheat fragrance had already wafted out from Ms. Li's bakery. She insists on using French imported T65 flour, even though the cost is 30% higher, but customers always say "this bread has the taste of memory". Nowadays, there are more and more practitioners like Ms. Li, and imported flour agency is becoming a new blue ocean in the baking industry.

Compared with domestic flour, imported products form differential competitiveness in three dimensions:

• Quality Stability: European centennial wheat fields adopt the crop rotation system, and the fluctuation of protein content is controlled within 0.5%
• Process Inheritance: Italian stone-ground flour retains the aromatic substances of the germ, and the flour extraction temperature is strictly lower than 40℃
• Special Categories: The Yume-no-Chikara wheat in Hokkaido, Japan, has a gluten content suitable for the taste of Asian people

The market research of Zhongshitong shows that the import volume of high-end flour increased by 67% year-on-year in 2023. Mr. Zhang's agency of Canadian Red Spring Wheat Flour achieved a monthly sales volume of 200 tons through the following strategies:

• Establish a small experience workshop to allow customers to test the gluten extensibility on-site
• Provide customized packaging services, with a variety of specifications available from 500g to 25kg
• Cooperate with baking schools to carry out special courses on "Flour Characteristics"

There are also risk points that need to be vigilant in this industry:

• Changes in temperature and humidity during sea transportation may cause the acidity of flour to increase by 0.2-0.3
• Differences in food safety standards among different countries (such as the European Union does not allow the use of benzoyl peroxide)
• Small niche categories are prone to inventory backlogs. It is recommended to control the first order within 20 tons

When consumers start to pay attention to wheat varieties just like they pay attention to the origin of coffee beans, simple channel merchants will lose their competitiveness. Successful agents will transform into "solution providers", such as:

• Customize exclusive formula flour for boutique hotels
• Develop a flour traceability system, and scan the code to see the coordinates of the wheat field and the milling date
• Establish a customer laboratory to conduct free tests on flour water absorption rate and falling number