Is Bielefeld Really Germany’s Runner-Up for Bakeries? The Local Guild Master Is Surprised Too

Bielefeld bakery count Listflix ranking, Digi Mart USA News (Bielefeld, Germany): Second place in Germany? In soccer or air quality, Bielefeld would surely like that, but according to the agency Listflix, which supplies media with statistical data, it is bakeries that earn the city on the Teutoburg Forest the silver medal among large cities.

The agency reports 48 bakeries, and it stresses these are independent businesses rather than individual branches.

According to Listflix, Bielefeld has 14.5 bakeries per 100,000 residents, just behind Dresden with 14.7 and well ahead of Bremen with 13.5. Asked about the claim, guild chairman Karsten Lamm was at first at a loss: “I wouldn’t know how one would arrive at that number.”

Lamm says the guild has seven or eight members, plus three or four producers who work in Bielefeld but are no longer in the guild, and another three or four that sell in the city but often produce just outside its borders. In total, he estimates about 15 bakeries rather than 48.

In conversation, however, his view shifted. He noted that the count would also include back-shop and back-factory outlets and franchise operations, as well as many Turkish and Arab bakeries.

He recalled that 40 or 50 years ago his father was guild chairman and Bielefeld had about 80 traditional bakery businesses, and he concluded that 48 might fit the count in the end, though for different reasons than first assumed.

For self-service branches, estimates ranged from 66 to 94 when artificial intelligence was asked, while Lamm estimated between 70 and just over 90, including supermarket branches. He considers that a reasonable number: “We are well supplied in Bielefeld.”

Lamm said Bielefeld appears to be fully average, “neither too many nor too few” bakeries, and he did not expect a top national ranking. He acknowledged the guild now represents only a small share of the trade and that Turkish- and Arab-origin bakers are not strongly joining it.

He pointed to positive developments, including the recent entry of the bakery Ährensache owned by Sinan Bozkurt and a pop-up bakery at Klosterplatz.

Whether Bielefeld truly deserves the silver medal, Lamm concluded: “Bielefeld is a great bakery city.”