Stone-Buhr builds local flour power

Flour is not a product that typically excites retail store managers, according to Josh Dorf, president and CEO of San Francisco, Calif.-based JOG Distribution. But Dorf recently got the attention of managers at retail stores in Oregon and Washington when his company’s flour brand, Stone-Buhr, launched a local product made with wheat grown by the Food Alliance-certified Shepherd’s Grain collective of family farms in Oregon, Washington and northern Idaho. Other local flour brands only mill their flour locally, Dorf explains.

Stone-Buhr’s Northwest-Grown All- Purpose Flour is the only flour available that sources its wheat from identity-preserved local fields. Dorf says he decided to produce a local flour when he had a chance meeting with the Shepherd’s Grain growers at a mill both parties were using in Spokane. “We were looking for a way to differentiate our brand,” he says, “and we didn’t want to just do what everyone else was doing and put out an organic version and a cake-bread version.”

So far, the idea has paid off, Dorf says. “Whether it’s salmon or wine or flour, there’s a real pride in regional goods here that we really tapped into.” The locally grown flour is being introduced in over 200 retail stores in Oregon and Washington, including Kroger (NYSE: KR), Safeway (NYSE: SWY) and Whole Foods Markets (Nasdaq: WFMI), by September 2007.