Thousands of home-bakers have been using nabim’s new online map to track down commercial-sized bags of flour. And such has been the popularity of the Where Can I Buy Flour? map, it even “broke the internet” not long after going live.
While supplies of commercial flour have been largely unaffected by the coronavirus lock-down, an unprecedented surge in demand has led to shortage of smaller 1.5kg-3kg bags on supermarket shelves.
According to Director General Alex Waugh: “The problem, with regard to home-baking flour, is that ordinarily the market share is tiny – just 4 per cent of overall production. In response to the sudden spike in demand businesses have been running their packing lines 24/7 to produce twice as much retail flour as usual - the equivalent of 4 million 1.5kg bags each week, up from 2 million. Yet we are still struggling to meet demand.”
In response, and working with wholesalers and bakers around the country, nabim created a UK-wide network of local bakeries, wholesalers and supermarkets able to provide the public with larger bags over 3kg.
Since its launch last month, the resulting map has achieved over 3,000 visitors every day on the back of nationwide media coverage, with a peak of almost 20,000 visits on 29th April.
At one stage the numbers of hits even exceeded Google Maps’ capacity. Communications Manager Priya Nicholas said: “Apparently it’s almost unheard of, but we exceeded the first tier API usage and caused a temporary blip on the page. Safe to say we're now a full paid-up member of tier two and the map is back up and running!”
It is our aim that anyone who wants flour has easy and affordable access to it. We update the map daily as we become aware of new retailers offering flour to home consumers. If you would like to be included in our map, please email us: info@nabim.org.uk
