KANSAS CITY — Adapting to supply chain issues is a balancing act.

“We’re trying to allocate our products fairly across the board,” said Christine Prociv, senior vice president, marketing, innovation and R&D, for Aspire Bakeries. “We’re condensing our SKUs because it’s more efficient to run fewer products longer so that we’re not stopping and starting the line. We’re trying to maximize our throughput to adapt to labor challenges, too.”

Ms. Prociv compares the supply chain to a four-legged stool.

“You have labor, ingredients, packaging and transportation,” she explained. “In any given year, maybe you have one of those legs that is out of whack. In our current environment, all the legs are impacted. Any one of those alone is a major issue, so we are focusing on our priority SKUs in our core categories. If we need to let something go, it’s in a non-core category. With all that said, we’re doing increasingly well in terms of service levels.”

She said the Los Angeles-based company is reformulating to accommodate the supply chain shortages.

“If there is a starch issue, which there is, we’re reformulating in the lab to use a different ingredient that acts like a starch,” she said. “We don’t want to cut our customers’ orders.”

At IBIE 2022 in Las Vegas, Ms. Prociv, who along with Jonathan Davis, culinary innovation leader, Aspire Bakeries, will present an IBIEducate session on Sept. 20 on how the company adapted during the pandemic and continues to do so today. Spoiler alert: It takes much more than a balancing act to succeed in today’s market. It takes innovation and a passion for baking as well.