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With flour flying off the shelves, Gaston's Bakery in Boise is taking on the supply challenge

With some local markets short on supply, the Boise bakery is taking on a major task.

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BOISE, Idaho — As Idaho continues to fight the coronavirus outbreak, local businesses are struggling, and so are the major chains. 

Millions of Americans are now out of work, looking for something to do.

This pandemic is not good news, but Gaston’s Bakery in Boise is now seeing a different wave of business because of it. 

“Well, the plan was to try and stay in business,” said Mathieu Choux, owner of Gaston’s Bakery.

It’s a simple, yet complicated plan. Gaston’s Bakery is not alone in that sense,

“We have flour, we have pastries, we have a lot of breads. We make everything from scratch, no additives, we really like that,” Choux said.

The truth is, times are tough.

“So, we are a wholesale bakery here in the Treasure Valley and so we distribute to a lot of restaurants, which unfortunately, they’ve had to close their dine in business,” Choux said.

Choux says their bread and pastries sales have been down since concerns about coronavirus got serious. 

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After a special request though, their flour milling operation is now working almost nonstop.

“Last week, Albertsons asked us to distribute to all of their stores with our flour, because they could not find flour anywhere else,” Choux said.

Gaston’s products were just in select Albertsons and Boise Co-op stores. Now, they will be in all local stores.

“Well, I said let’s do it! That’s an exciting opportunity,” Choux said.

So how much product did they need to supply stores? Choux explains what he was told.

“Make as much as you can until we tell you to stop. We’re still making as much as we can,” Choux said.

So, in a time where many are looking for work, Choux says they are fortunate to have no shortage of it.

“We’ve been milling around the clock for about eight or nine days now,” Choux said. “Last week we had about 25,000 pounds of wheat delivered, we’ve already milled and shipped most of that. It was quite an undertaking, but we were happy to do it.”

Choux says the flour business has definitely helped make up for lost bread and pastry sales. They are not taking it for granted though, they know these days things change fast.

“Like everybody else we don’t know what next week will be. We welcome every opportunity that we can have to work, to have our crew working, we are really happy to have most of our crew working with us,” Choux said.

Choux admits people are probably stocking up on flour way more now than they were before.

“I suspect that after a while people will have enough flour, they’ve been buying so much, they are going to bake, we won’t have to bake anymore,” Choux laughed.

Till then, Gaston’s is more than happy to put out their product to whoever needs it.

“So the volumes are down but we are excited to still be able to have work and we are really grateful for everyone’s support,” Choux said.

Gaston’s is also now offering delivery service for their wide variety of breads and pastries. Additionally, they have a no-contact pickup option at their Boise location. Check out more options and details on their website here. 

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