The bread men are the family who built an bakery empire for many years expanded North America, Europe and Australia. The company outlined by Bread Man by Charles Davies, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 1987 are the Weston family who started with bread, moved to biscuits and for a while anything added anything that was vertically integrated with the operation. Thus the move to buy mills to mill the flour, shops or supermarkets to sell the goods and al sorts of things in between. There are many stories about how it started and grew to become a global giant however one of them illustrates a point. When Garfield Weston went to England, he found a very well entrenched food distributions system and commissioned a consultant’s report to help him navigate the business. The report highly suggested not doing what he wanted to which was to build a plant to make biscuits. Garfield was not convinced – he had all the biscuit makers marked on a map – coloured coded to determine the size – small, medium and large. He then accounted for sales volume and noticed the big seven did not control more than 60% of the business. He figured that with his methods, modern equipment there was opportunity to be had. It turned out some manufacturers had not updated their machinery; some were getting old and their sons were not interested and would want a buy out; and all the other factors. Soon Garfield was making money and became one of the big seven.

Linking to the dividend paying stocks, all markets are in play but new players unless the moat is very high and barriers to entry are legislated, any other conditions means the company has to be aware of its competitors. If the company is resting on its laurels from the past, expect in today’s marketplace for market share to be eroded and the dividend to be suspended.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.