Nutrition: Baking trade on the withdrawal – but the bread industry is growing

The Germans buy their bread more and more from large bakeries or in the supermarket. While the classic bakery craft has been shrinking for years, the bread industry is expanding, the Food-Enjoyment-Gaststätten union said (NGG) based on an industry analysis. The NGG speaks of an “increasing dominance of large branchists and bread industry”.

The sales of the entire baked goods industry with 282,000 employees rose to 21.8 billion euros in 2023 – however, the number of companies in the classic bakery trade has dropped by 30 percent in the past ten years. 20,000 jobs were lost during the same period, the NGG analysis in cooperation with the Hans Böckler Foundation.

Bread and rolls have become more expensive in recent years. According to the Statistical Federal Office of the end of April, prices for the baked goods rose by a good third from 2019 to 2023. The baked goods industry complains – like other industries – about high energy costs, lack of personnel and a lot of bureaucracy.

55 companies do more than a third of the turnover

While many traditional bakeries disappear, others are expanding. The number of large delivery bakeries such as Harry Brot or Lieken Urkorn, which supply supermarkets with packaged bread, and large branchists such as Schäfers, Kamps or Steinecke rose by around 20 to 133 from 2014 to 2024. “So the industry structure has moved further towards the big ones, to which the majority of sales are also eliminated,” it says. 55 out of a total of 8,100 companies would have a market share of 36 percent with over 50 million euros.

There is also a shift in large companies in the number of employees. Almost 62,000 – 9,000 more work here than ten years ago. In the case of smaller and medium -sized companies, however, the number decreased by 26,000 to 139,000.

The number of employees “has increased a total of 2,000 employees in parallel with the recovery of many companies by 2024”. However, growth is due to more mini jobs alone. “This development shows a shift towards less stable and tend to be poorly secured employment relationships,” complained the NGG chairman Guido Zeitler.

Basically, according to the analysis, many employees complain about a high workload – especially salesers in the branches. Among other things, this is due to a lack of personnel and time pressure, said study director Stefan Stracke from WMP Consult.

Almost every fourth bakery apprentice breaks off the training

The shortage of personnel and skilled workers remains one of the biggest challenges in the industry. Some companies in the bakery already searched for trainees in Southeast Asia and North Africa. Almost a quarter of the trainees in the back industry have a migration background.

The union positively evaluates the recent development in the number of trainees. “More young people want to work again in bakeries,” said the NGG. In 2024 there were 11.4 percent more bakery trainees than in the previous year, and 22.5 percent more for specialist sellers. A total of 11,000 trainees and therefore around 1,000 more than in the previous year. Before that, the number of trainees had decreased for years. It remains to be seen whether this is a sustainable trend.

Release work from night to the day

Many apprentices also break off their training. According to the analysis, the bakery sellers were between 25 and 29 percent from 2018 to 2023, and the bakery apprentices were 18 to 23 percent.

In order to make the bakery craft more attractive, the work can be shifted from night to the day, it is said. So far, there are rarely steps to comprehensive relocation. However, many companies endeavor to make preparatory work as best as possible during the day. But there are limits: “At night, tasks such as the delivery of goods to the branches continue to take place at night or in the early morning.”