57 minute read
Seen and Heard
Seen Heard AND
Lisa Anderson | founder | LMA Consulting on supply chain disruption
“There are literally hundreds of cannabinoids in cannabis and hemp plants. The different stages of processing the plant are very important, especially when you’re going to use it in a baking application. It’s an ingredient. And like any other ingredient, it has to be measured properly and used to achieve the desired effect.”
Glenn Cybulski | Glenn Cybulski Restaurant Consulting during a “Baking with Cannabis” education session at Artisan Bakery Expo
Valerie Oswalt | president | Campbell Snacks during a Q&A session at SNAXPO21
JP Frossard | VP and consumer foods analyst | Rabobank during shopper trends presentation at ABA’s NextGen Baker Virtual Leadership Summit
SEPARATION ANXIETY? SEPARATION ANXIETY? SEPARATION ANXIETY?
Tracey Noonan | founder | Wicked Good Cupcakes PMMI’s WLN keynote during Pack Expo Las Vegas
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ONE GOOD BREAD COMPANY
From growth, expansion and acquisition to an all-new brand, Michigan Bread shows no signs of slowing.
BY JOANIE SPENCER
Things move pretty fast at Michigan Bread. The company went from three employees with no bakery training to nearly 150 on the payroll in less than a decade … and that was just the pacesetter.
While it’s true that growth skyrocketed quickly for this distributor-turned-bakery in 2010, that doesn’t mean it was easy to achieve. For Spiros Assimacopoulos, Michigan Bread’s president and CEO, success has come from a commitment to making strategic, oftentimes difficult, decisions and learning from them along the way.
“For our distribution company, the business model was all about service, relationships and then price,” Assimacopoulos recalled of the original company that was started by his father, George, and later merged with a then-competitor, Mike Sanfilippo (now Michigan Bread’s VP of sales). “At certain points — specifically in 2008 — price took precedent over relationships or service. So, the best way to create a sustainable business was to make the product the star. Our goal was to create products that were differentiated and would sell themselves.”
In just under a dozen years, Michigan Bread has expanded, evolved and survived a pandemic in one of the hardest-hit regions of the country. And it’s all been done through relentless bootstrapping, relationship building and a commitment to a craft this team might have been born for.
Assimacopoulos may insist he’s a salesman before he’s a baker, but he walks the walk of those in the whites, especially on the floor of Michigan Bread’s 72,000-square foot facility located in Taylor, MI, just outside of Detroit.
“We will never stray from prefermentation,” he said of the bakery’s artisan process that has recently taken big steps toward automation. “The types of products we’re proud to make — and that will be successful in the market — require biga, poolish or sourdough. I don’t know how to make good bread without it.”
—Right Michigan Bread recently took big steps toward automating its artisan bread, bun and roll process, including a tunnel oven and conveyors.
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
Spiros Assimacopoulos | president and CEO | Michigan Bread
Michigan Bread’s starters, including the sourdough’s 7-year-old mother dough “Christine” (named after a QA specialist from the bakery’s early days) and refreshed daily, ferment for up to 24 hours before they’re used the following day on Koenig stress-free sheeting lines and roll makeup lines. These create a variety of products that are sold as nearly 300 SKUs to customers in 18 states throughout the Midwest, Florida and Georgia, and as far west as Colorado and the Dakotas.
With about 80% of the business going to foodservice customers through broadline distribution channels, Michigan Bread has ramped up production. The bakery projected a 50% sales increase over 2019, and by mid-year had nearly reached that goal at 40%. To keep up, it installed an 80-foot remanufactured WP Bakery Systems cyclothermic tunnel oven.
After years of baking with 17 Koenig gas-fired rack ovens, seven Miwe thermal-oil wagon ovens and two thermal-oil deck ovens — a signature process for Michigan Bread — this tunnel oven will change the game for efficiency upstream and downstream and unlock potential on the makeup line, too. In many ways, it will serve as “the great equalizer,” as Assimacopoulos put it, to harmonize the flow of production.
“We had certain constraints in the process that kept us from fully utilizing the makeup line as it was intended,” he said. For example, the changeovers that came with moving racks and baking wagons in and out of the ovens significantly limited throughput for products such as sub sandwich rolls.
“The tunnel oven will double output by removing bottlenecks — allowing for longer runs of SKUs — while eliminating several steps of manual handling,” he added. “We are saving more than six hours of downtime a week by eliminating changeovers alone, just on one line.”
Before the tunnel oven, the plant had been producing about 50,000 lbs. of bread a day on one shift running five days a week. Today, although a second shift may be added to keep the bread running through the oven, throughput has increased without requiring the bakery to work on the weekend.
Despite the bounty of benefits, not every product was meant to run through the tunnel. The thermal oil technology is still a critical part of the process.
“Thermal oil bakes with radiant heat,” Assimacopoulos said. “The absence of turbulence leads to a gentler heat transmission, so we’re able to use less yeast and achieve improved oven spring, resulting in a deck-oven quality bake from a rack oven, which creates a point of difference in our products.”
Andy Assimacopoulos | VP | Michigan Bread
— Below For maximum efficiency, the bakery takes a “less is more” approach to focus on high quality with fewer SKUs.
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Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking To further improve efficiency without sacrificing that trademark bake, Michigan Bread took the plunge and purchased a second tunnel oven designed with thermal oil heat technology.
“We’ll do extensive testing to make sure we can get the same quality on the WP tunnel oven for the hearth products,” Sanfilippo said. “If we can’t get it, we’ll keep making artisan bread in the deck ovens until the second tunnel oven is commissioned.”
Waiting on the second installation, signature 3-lb. artisan loaves will remain in the deck ovens, which will also be used for specialty orders and product testing.
But adding the ovens was just the beginning. Automation is coming for oven loading on both tunnels as well as racetrack coolers to quickly send product downstream toward packaging in the 12,000 square feet the bakery added to the operation after taking over the neighboring space last year.
Even after the finished product leaves the bakery, the “more with less” model is improving life for the distribution leg of the company, as well.
“We don’t look at growth just in terms of volume; we focus on customers that match our value proposition so we can be as efficient as possible,” said Andy Assimacopoulos, Michigan Bread VP. “We’ve changed the kinds of products we deliver and focus on valueadded items. This efficiency benefits not only the bakery but the warehouse and drivers as well.”
Yes, things happen fast at this bakery, whether it’s the product mix for distribution or the plant floor configuration, which has changed a dozen times since Michigan Bread began. After the second oven installation, the layout won’t be shifting for a while, but the evolution isn’t over. On the heels of its automation upgrades, Michigan Bread bought another bakery.
The acquisition of Minneapolis-based Franklin Street Bakery has triggered an immediate upward shot in Michigan Bread’s trajectory.
“Franklin Street has a number of innovative products,” Spiros said. “There will be a tremendous amount of value created between the two leadership teams, R&D and the combined larger geographic reach. Leveraging customer relationships will be key to realizing synergies in sales and plant operations, and I’m excited to see what the two teams can accomplish together.”
The 18,000-square-ft. facility that exclusively manufactures fully baked frozen products for foodservice opens the door for a host of collaboration in areas such as sales, marketing, finance and accounting to foster that growth.
Spiros Assimacopoulos president and CEO | Michigan Bread
Additionally, the company is streamlining operations between the two facilities to further increase those efficiencies the team now enjoys in Taylor. And after the second tunnel oven installation, the Taylor facility can shed some of the rack ovens to help with the process in Minneapolis.
The acquisition also paves the way for product development and refining the overall portfolio for the whole company, specifically through the expertise of David Beal, an R&D specialist at the Minneapolis bakery.
“I’m really impressed with some of the products David has developed,” Spiros said. “There are challenges and opportunities that come with integrating two plants, and he will play a critical role in navigating those waters.”
With an arsenal of SKUs, Michigan Bread can fill in gaps in the Minneapolis product line almost immediately while at the same time rationalizing its own SKU proliferation.
“With the growth, evolution and change comes some hard decisions,” Spiros said. “Sometimes, you just create more headaches by trying to do what feels good. Despite our best efforts, there are certain products that are just too costly or difficult to automate.”
In recent months, those hard decisions have included nixing some of the products the bakery created in those early days as it tried to get on the broadliners’ radar.
“We’ve cut SKUs that probably should have been cut a long time ago,” Spiros said. “Some of it is the residue of trying to elbow our way into the industry. We often have to be willing to bake products that other companies are not interested in. From manufacturing and business perspectives, some of those products only work if our intention was to maintain the business as a hands-on shop.”
Strategy is not simply about cutting SKUs, though. It also means having an appropriate portfolio for the customer base.
“Finding the right customer with the right volume for your products can be more challenging than developing a good product in the first place,” Spiros said.
That was one lesson that revealed itself during the state’s 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, which dealt the bakery a nearfatal blow. On March 16, 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered bars, restaurants, theatres and casinos to close, shutting down virtually all Michigan Bread’s customers.
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
In just over a decade, partners Mike Sanfilippo (left), Andy Assimacopoulos and Spiros Assimacopoulos have gone from no baking experience to operations in two states with an expected 50% sales increase over 2019.
At the height of the lockdown, the bakery’s sales had plummeted nearly 80%, and Michigan Bread made the heart-wrenching decision to lay off a good portion of its workforce.
But as one facet of the business came to a screeching halt, another area rapidly expanded.
At the same time foodservice operators closed, retail demand for bread surged, and supermarkets couldn’t keep it on the shelves. One day after that layoff, the bakery got a call from Kroger looking for an operation with the capacity to help replenish its bread supply. The following week, Michigan Bread had half a dozen branded products in Kroger stores and began pulling those workers back into the plant.
“It was a very timely and mutual need that both organizations had,” Spiros recalled. “The Kroger team was incredible to work with, and the relationship is flourishing.” Today, retail accounts for about 20% of the bakery’s business, and that’s triggered even more change.
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
Michigan Bread’s artisan products, made from biga, poolish and sourdough from the bakery’s orginal mother dough, “Christine,” are processed on a stress-free makeup line. Between the retail opportunity and the acquisition’s expanded reach, Michigan Bread had to rethink how it presents itself in a much larger marketplace. The company recently launched its new brand, The Good Bread Co., representing the Minneapolis bakery as well as all branded products. Next year, the transformation will be complete when Michigan Bread completely rebrands itself into the Good Bread Co.
“Although Michigan is our home and dear to our heart, Michigan Bread doesn’t fully represent the essence of the growing organization, which in part is bringing our version of Good Bread to dinner tables across the country,” Spiros said. Starting with the retail line and the Minneapolis bakery, the move will very quickly put the Good Bread Co. on the map.
Change may happen quickly for this bakery, but some things remain constant. First and foremost, it will always be a family business, and Sanfilippo and the Assimacopoulos brothers will never forget those roots.
DOING GOOD DURING DARK TIMES
Seventeen Michigan Bread trucks were loaded with bread and ready to roll for the day shortly before 9 a.m. on March 16, 2020.
That’s when the order came down from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, closing bars, restaurants, theaters and casinos and shutting down virtually all of Michigan Bread’s customers, and leaving the bakery with about $60,000 worth of undeliverable bread.
“That was a lot of bread we had to get rid of really fast,” recalled Mike Sanfilippo, VP of sales for Michigan Bread.
Quickly, the bakery partnered up with a foodservice customer, Pete’s Place in Taylor, MI, and rolled a bread truck in front of the restaurant with the local Fox affiliate reporting live. Michigan Bread donated that bread to churches, food banks, hospitals and more.
“Even some families who couldn’t find bread on the store shelves came,” Sanfilippo said. “We were donating bread everywhere.”
This quick-thinking stemmed from a long-established foundation of giving at Michigan Bread. The bakery donates bread to food banks every week, as well as supporting other local fundraising causes, whether it’s donated bread, monetary giving or providing products at cost.
“I don’t think there’s ever been one time that someone’s asked us for help and we’ve said no,” said Spiros Assimacopoulos, president and CEO.
Michigan Bread prides itself on bread products that never compromise on quality.
“On any given day, if we walk out on the floor and see a line or someone struggling, any one of us would jump in and help,” Sanfilippo said. “That’s the family culture. We’re here to support them.”
No matter how quickly it may happen, change — for the right reasons — is a good thing.
“Growing a business relates back to those ‘meaning of life’ questions and what your definition of success is,” Spiros pondered. “Of course, we strive to make great bread and become a world-class company, but there are so many other aspects of the business that need to be right for us to consider our efforts a success. Maintaining our family culture and continuing to produce better-for-you baked products are vital to our definition of long-term success.”
In seeing all that Michigan Bread has accomplished, Spiros holds the ones he calls “true bakers” in reverence.
“I walk back here and see all our bread stacked so nicely in baskets, and I think about everything it took to get here. It’s a minor miracle, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is really great.’ It takes a lot of blood and guts every day from everyone on the team to get the job done.”
Even in the most painful points of this rapid growth, it’s been worth the ride. “At the end of the day, we’re enjoying the process and the journey,” Sanfilippo said. “We still love coming to work every day.”
That’s one good bread company. CB
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
INNOVATIONS FROM THE PLANT FLOOR
By investing in automation, Michigan Bread was able to increase throughput at its Taylor, MI, facility while maintaining an artisan process and running fewer SKUs. With this efficiency, the operation has been able to maintain its five-day work week and avoid over-burdening its workforce. Below are the innovations that can be found on the plant floor.
Adamatic overhead proofer B&B Impianti silos and scaling Cinelli proofers and retarder Daub Hanseat tunnel oven Hartmann bread slicer Koenig mixers, makeup lines and gas-fired rack ovens Miwe thermal oil rack and deck ovens Rexfab conveyors UBE baggers and slicers WP Bakery Systems cyclothermic tunnel oven
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
Steward of the Supply Chain
Flowers Foods’ Brad Cashaw is facilitating transformation in the face of disruption.
BY JOANIE SPENCER
Not every engineer is a leader — nor is every leader an engineer — but the two are not mutually exclusive. Many bakery executives successfully balance this dichotomy and, perhaps, few more masterfully than Brad Cashaw, executive VP and chief supply chain officer for Thomasville, GA-based Flowers Foods.
Engineers are tactical, technical, analytical and efficient. With these skills, Cashaw is leading the company’s digital transformation and supply chain optimization for its numerous brands produced in 46 facilities throughout the US.
A 35-year veteran of CPG manufacturing in food and beverage, Cashaw has covered a lot of ground overseeing complex, matrix-style operations, including Frito-Lay, Kellogg’s, Kraft and Dean Foods. With expertise that ranges from operations, project management and supply chain to quality, sustainability and R&D, Cashaw’s resume reads like a training manual for his role at Flowers.
“I see myself as the steward of our supply chain,” he said. “My breadth of experience across similar, yet unique, industries has prepared me to lead Flowers through the next chapter of our growth.”
Cashaw joined Flowers in 2020 during pandemic-driven industry upheaval that also happened to be a pivotal point for this company known for exponential growth through acquisition. His focus on data as part of Flowers’ digital transformation is not only creating supply chain resiliency, but it’s also leveling the playing field when it comes to the volatility of consumer demand.
Intense and rapid changes are currently hitting the industry, but commercial bakeries are no strangers to keeping up with immediate changes. Long before COVID-19 and the subsequent supply chain disruption, bakers often scrambled to keep up with people’s instant access to information, opinions and even pseudo-science that could change shopping behavior on a dime. Today, tapping into Cashaw’s data expertise allows Flowers to keep pace with consumers.
“We need to be consumer-centric and always thinking about what the endusers want,” Cashaw said. “And we can use data to anticipate their needs. That comes with a strong emphasis on e-commerce, the availability of data and the input of more information and accurate forecasting. Our digital transformation will be key for agility and adaptability in this changing environment, and it’s something everyone should have on their radar.”
Cashaw equally weights data collection and analysis to achieve quantifiable end-to-end results, not only for product development and operational and supply chain efficiency but also for adaptability during mergers and acquisitions.
“I apply my engineering background for analytical purposes,” he said. “It fuels my approach to the execution of plans. It’s about defining what we will achieve and setting a ‘North star’ in the processes that will get us there. You have to use the data and let it tell you where to go. But you also need an objective to achieve. I like to work backward, so to speak, in that regard.”
Beyond tactical traits, leaders must also possess those soft skills — commonly known as emotional intelligence (EQ) — including empathy, adaptability and intuition.
For Cashaw, leadership requires servitude above all.
Brad Cashaw | executive VP and chief supply chain officer | Flowers Foods
“I take a servant leadership approach to understanding people and building culture,” he said. “I like to build a learning environment so that teams can grow while learning how to be successful. For me, it’s not only an approach to style but also a principle. My goal is to help make the organization better and help those around me rise. My role is to serve and equip people for success, and that allows me to deliver results.”
He learned that early on in his career when, as an entry-level project manager, he quickly became a candidate for management training programs at PepsiCo. In that environment, Cashaw modeled his behavior after those mentors leading the programs, and he applies it in his role today.
“It was a parallel process of learning the technical side and also focusing on people development and being prepared to lead,” he recalled. “There have been many mentors on my journey, and what I remember most is what made those leaders successful. It was about keeping the people top of mind and recognizing how important they are to the ultimate success of the company. We can have the best plans and most detailed engineering diagrams, but it won’t matter if we can’t execute on them. In the end, if we can’t lead, we limit our chances for success.”
Cashaw’s collaborative leadership style is a key factor in his standards for operational excellence, and it brings a specific value to Flowers as the company continues to flourish in its acquisition activity. For him, that’s how the current operation can effectively support incoming teams and further streamline acquisitions down the road.
“If we execute on that operational excellence and digital transformation, we can support effective transitions and better assimilate future M&A,” he said. “It’s really around leveraging our best practices and adding to our toolkit.”
In the present tense, this team mentality creates efficiencies that are critical to smooth operations in a time of deep disruption from the pandemic, labor shortages and overall supply chain troubles.
“Certainly, today’s environment has affected how we look at that, and some of the past principles remain the same,” Cashaw said. “Technical competence is still key; there’s a lot more automation, and the digital transformation will create a need for us to be better stewards in how we think about, interpret and leverage data to advance our efficiency and improve our operations every day, every week and every year.”
And that’s not only how Cashaw operates; it’s also how he identifies and develops potential leaders within the organization.
By focusing on characteristics such as people skills, project ownership and the ability to prioritize, he can harness that potential to help people and teams deliver quantifiable results.
“The leader or associate who best understands how to collaborate will build alliances and harness that creativity in others,” he said. “And that is critical to our overall success. You have to put a value on that, and in my mind, it’s a premium.”
Throughout the changing bakery environment, and as Flowers leads the industry toward the future, Cashaw is a champion of the strategy to doubledown on supply chain resilience with the initiatives the company has in place. That requires bravery on all sides. Yes, Cashaw took a leap of faith to join a new team at a time when onboarding is still remote. But it also speaks volumes to Flowers’ vision for the future, not only for growth but also in taking a modern approach in a traditional industry.
“Flowers Foods is more than 100 years old, and we’ve survived all the past challenges and successfully grown the business,” Cashaw said. “We have welcomed new brands that delight consumers, and we’re adopting new ways to bring our products to market. That’s how we will last another 100 years.”
With Cashaw’s supply chain leadership, Flowers is certainly up to the test.
Photo courtesy of Flowers Foods
Bakery tours look different when onboarding during a pandemic. Here, Cashaw meets with a local team discussing their role in Flowers’ digital transformation.
CB
COMING FULL CIRCLE
From artisan to commercial, Farm to Market’s growth brings the bakery back to its roots.
BY JOANIE SPENCER
The year was 1993, and Mark Friend and Fred Spompinato were working for a bakery in a warehouse district of Kansas City, KS, when they realized they had a better way to make bread.
“The bakery was actually down the street from where we currently operate,” said John Friend, Mark’s son and current president of Kansas City, KS-based Farm to Market Bread Co. “They were making frozen sourdough that was shipped out on train cars. But it was the beginning of the artisan movement in the US, so Mark and Fred wanted to make fresh bread their own way, with a commitment to quality and without compromise.”
That’s how Farm to Market started, and three decades later, this family-owned company holds true to Mark and Fred’s original vision. As the bakery stands on the cusp of commercialization, it’s scaling up right down the street from where that dream began.
Like many commercial bakery origin stories, Farm to Market began with a mixer and a rack oven in the back of a restaurant kitchen, where the partners traded bread for rent and delivered loaves from their cars. The first big break came from a local grocer where the bakers delivered fresh bread each day, and it grew from there.
“We had always been focused on daily fresh delivery to grocery stores,” John said. That was the business’ main avenue for growth, especially after an investment from Fred Ball, then-CEO of Ball’s Foods, which owned several supermarkets in the area. That initial investment allowed Farm to Market to acquire the equipment needed for hearth bread production and a raw dough program.
Although sliced sourdough was the company’s bread and butter, it became somewhat limiting in terms of growth … until a foodservice opportunity knocked.
“When we were approached by a local hamburger restaurant to do buns, it really ballooned our foodservice side,” John said. “We got more into buns and rolls and custom products when chefs would come to us looking for something special. Moving into fresh delivery for foodservice was the next step in our growth.”
In its new facility, Farm to Market now has the capacity to keep up with demand for artisan products like its popular seasonal Chile Cheese sourdough loaves.
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
As those opportunities came, so did plenty of lessons.
Although he’d delivered bread and worked odd jobs around the bakery as a teenager, John took on a more serious role in the early 2000s, learning every facet of the operation when the business really took off. Gaining experience in areas such as dough makeup, packaging and sales prepared him for the bakery’s next big step: moving into a small commercial production facility near downtown Kansas City, MO, in 2012.
“We moved from a 4,000 square-foot space to 10,000 square feet,” John recalled. “I gained a lot of experience and knowledge in that process.”
The key was figuring out how to grow the business inside a finite space.
Taking on more foodservice accounts — and the custom orders that came with them — brought rapid changes that would not only expand Farm to Market’s product mix but also evolve the business model. The bakery’s portfolio had grown to include artisan breads, buns and rolls, and laminated pastries for daily fresh delivery to restaurants and grocery stores, and the orders weren’t slowing down. The bakery was at capacity; without freezer space or room to add equipment, new business opportunities were lost.
“We were kind of stuck and unable to grow much more,” John said. “That was the biggest lesson I learned: being able to prepare not only for five years down the road but also the next 10 years. We didn’t anticipate how quickly that space was going to run out. We had to make sure we had ample space to grow while also figuring out where the growth was going to come from.”
The next chapter was like a boomerang.
In 2020, the bakery’s lease was about to expire, just as a commercial pie producer was vacating its 30,000 sq-ft. facility back in Kansas City, KS. Farm to Market was set to move into this new space already equipped with enough freezer capabilities to allow the bakery to expand regionally through broadline distribution and grow along with its foodservice customers.
Then COVID-19 hit.
Practically overnight, the bakery lost most of its local foodservice business while the retail side exploded. Although Farm to Market products were typically sold in the in-store bakery, supermarkets needed help stocking the center shelves as well.
“Our foodservice orders, they basically dropped off a cliff,” John said.
“Meanwhile, we had ‘toilet paper Armageddon’ in the grocery stores. We kept bumping up the numbers we delivered to stores, and we just kept selling out. Losing the foodservice gave us the capacity to take on more retail production.”
The business picked up about a dozen more retail accounts; to meet the demand, the team ordered more pans from Bundy Baking Solutions and tweaked its packaging with a new label for the center store.
“In the first two weeks of the pandemic, we made up all our losses in foodservice with those grocery sales,” John said.
It also serendipitously created a slow period that allowed the company to move into its new space without losing much production. That setback inadvertently propelled Farm to Market forward.
Today, the bakery is developing a new frozen-fresh program for foodservice customers, many of which are local chains breaking out as national brands. It has also expanded its pastry production to offer frozen laminated dough triangles and squares as well as frozen laminated books that customers can sheet onsite.
And the new plant has plenty of room for the bakery to create yeast-raised and naturally leavened bread products that range from top-selling Grains Galore and San Francisco Style Sourdough, to custom buns and rolls, to soft pretzels of every shape and size. The 16,000 sq-ft production space is home to a semi-automated process flexible enough to produce custom items with equipment that streamlines this operation, which runs three staggered shifts every day but Christmas, to complete bread deliveries 363 days a year.
For example, batches mixed in six spiral mixers — four 300-lb capacity and two 600-lb capacity — can create small custom products all the way to large batch items like 1-lb sliced loaves for retail or 2-lb crusty artisan breads for restaurant table service or menu items.
The most recent mixer addition is a Sottariva 600-lb spiral that’s equipped with a bowl lift that drops dough directly onto the makeup table for hand-chunking.
John Friend | president | Farm to Market Bread Co.
With this broad product lineup, mixing is the key to efficiency, especially for dough types that range from brioche to pretzel to potato and more.
INVESTING IN FOOD SAFETY
One lesson Farm to Market took from its former address was the importance of food safety and compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Like many small- to mid-size bakeries, Farm to Market wasn’t quite ready for FSMA regulations signed into law by President Obama in 2011.
“We weren’t fully prepared for some of those rules that had come into effect,” said John Friend, Farm to Market president. “That really held us back.”
When the company moved into its new location last fall, FSMA compliance was much easier thanks to the previous tenant, a commercial pie producer.
“They were already operating under those standards and had the facility set up for that,” Friend said. “And learning from our previous mistakes really helped.”
A first order of business was investing in an LVO 36-pan washer.
“We work with a lot of allergens, and we have to clean things a lot more frequently,” Friend said. “This was a big investment to upgrade the sanitation room and the pan washer, but it’s greatly increased capacity and made our lives easier.”
Farm to Market also purchased Loma IQ4 metal detectors to inspect finished products before they are bagged.
“An integral part of food safety is having the final check before products go out,” Friend said.
John Friend is the second generation of family-owned Farm to Market Bread Co. His experience at the bakery has touched every aspect of the business, from makeup to packagaing to sales and more.
“We do more than 200 different items when you break it down by size, shape and custom attributes like topping,” John said. “When we can take 200 different products out of one mix, that’s efficient for us, but when we need 20 mixes to do 200 products, it gets more labor-intensive.”
While there is ample space for artisan production stations, the new facility also provides plenty of room for growth. In the current setup, the bakery produces up to 25,000 pieces per day, and once it invests in more planned automation, including an intermediate proofer to replace the one the bakery acquired from La Brea Bakery nearly 20 years ago, that throughput will increase to 35,000. After products bake in one of six rack ovens or on the hearth of the deck oven, Farm to Market enjoys — and has already planned for more — packaging equipment upgrades as well as new freezer space that came with the facility.
In the packaging area, the company thought outside of the box by using a FoodTools horizontal slicer for its hamburger buns. “They do a lot of cake slicing, but this equipment is also great for slicing buns,” John said.
For slicing artisan loaves, the bakery has relied on its UBE slicer for years and is now ready for an upgrade to a flighted machine that will feed into an automated bagger.
EQUIPPED FOR
ARTISAN
As a producer of artisan breads, Farm to Market has historically relied on other commercial artisan bakers, especially when it comes to equipment designed for craft at scale.
For example, the bakery acquired an intermediate proofer from La Brea Bakery and a spiral mixer from a nearby Panera Bread facility.
In other areas of the operation, Farm to Market seeks out equipment suppliers with specific expertise in artisan production, including a Bloemhof (now Oliver) moulder for baguette forming and a tunnel proof box designed by TMB Baking, which was launched by Michel Suas, who founded the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI).
“We actually worked with [SFBI] to help us design our last move,” said John Friend, Farm to Market president.
The sliced loaves are currently placed into wicketed bags before they run through a new Burford takeaway twist tyer, a pure necessity from the pandemic’s skyrocketed bread sales. The Burford machine is the second for the bakery; it will create redundancy and increase throughput in this area.
Beyond the larger space and additional equipment and upgrades, the biggest factor in Farm to Market’s growth is its freezing technology: a 1,200-sq-ft storage freezer as well as an Airco CO2 spiral blast freezer.
While the blast freezer provides potential for individually wrapped frozen finished
Farm to Market’s semi-automated process includes a sprial batch mixer with a bowl lift that dumps dough onto a makeup table for hand chunking.
pastries, the walk-in, which runs at -10°F, has opened up a world of opportunity for broadline distribution to foodservice.
“Before, all we had was a three-door freezer for pastry dough,” John said. “Now, we’re shipping frozen bread out on pallets.”
Despite all the new growth opportunities, the bakery stands firmly on its foundational roots.
“After only doing fresh daily deliveries for so long, this is a big change,” John said. “As we add onto the frozen side of our business, we’re making sure it doesn’t change who we are but enhancing it and giving us a bigger reach. It’s been great to grow again.”
Limited space and the pandemic’s shutdowns caused a step backward that ultimately thrust the company forward. And now, Farm to Market is prepared to break out beyond its hometown borders … with its original San Francisco Style Sourdough as its top seller.
It’s all about remembering where you started.
“Recipes aren’t a hard place to come from,” John said. “Baguettes have been made for hundreds of years; it’s all flour, water and salt. But paying attention to the product and the process, that’s what makes us stand out … giving it the right floor time and doing all the little steps along the way to get the superior quality.”
Then again, it’s also about knowing where you’re headed.
“Ten years from now, we hope to have our sliced sourdough on grocery store shelves in San Francisco,” John said. “Can you imagine? Kansas City sourdough … in San Francisco.” CB
INNOVATIONS FROM THE PLANT FLOOR
Farm to Market has taken the next step in becoming a mid-size producer of commercially baked artisan breads by bringing automation into its new home in Kansas City, KS. Here is a list of equipment innovation you’ll find in the bakery.
Airco Kwik-Freeze blast freezer AM rounder Bertrand Puma Divitrad V4 hydraulic dividers Bloemhof/Oliver Express 1060 artisan moulder Bongard spiral mixer Burford Corp. EL554C entry level twist tyer Diosna spiral mixer Erika Record divider/rounder FoodTools bun slicer Hobart mixer LVO pan washer Loma IQ4 metal detectors Reed rack ovens Revent rack ovens Sancassiano spiral mixer Sottariva spiral mixer TMB Baking tunnel proof box UBE Model 10 bread slicer
Photo by Liz Goodwin | Commercial Baking
A New Ad Age
User-generated content and influencer marketing campaigns shape the baking industry’s future of advertising.
BY MAGGIE GLISAN
Advertising in 2021 looks pretty different from the kinds of storyboards Don Draper would have pitched in a Manhattan boardroom in the ’60s. It also looks different from the early ’90s when the first banner ads appeared via dial-up internet services like AOL.
And it even looks different since the dawn of social media advertising in 2008 with Facebook ads.
The face of digital marketing has evolved drastically, namely in that people are no longer passive onlookers. Today, they are active participants. And it’s based on a shift by companies to engage with consumers and market through usergenerated content (UGC).
UGC is any digital material — including videos, social media, blog posts, comments and reviews of a brand, etc. — that is produced and shared online by customers or potential customers. It spans the social media sphere from Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok, to newer platforms like Clubhouse. It’s a massive space to play in with virtually unlimited reach potential. In fact, a July 2021 report from Grand View Research suggested the market size of the global UGC platform will reach $18.65 billion by 2028 and expand at CAGR of 26.6% from 2021 to 2028. Consumers turn to social media to share their opinions and seek the opinions of others. They are increasingly distrusting of traditional marketing tactics that advertisers have used in the past; they want to hear from “people like them,” not just from the brand itself. A recent Nielsen study into global trust in advertising found that an overwhelming 92% of those surveyed trusted UGC more than traditional advertising. And in a report from Influencer Marketing Hub, 91% of millennials said they trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
Now more than ever, consumers are demanding authenticity, relatability and trust from brands, and they’re basing their purchasing decisions on those that deliver. Who is more authentic, relatable and trustworthy than the people in their social communities? The bigger the community that companies can build around their brands, the more they can increase their credibility. And they’ll be more effective in communicating with customers and consumers.
“Brands need to understand that there has been a significant shift in how information is consumed and shared,” said Laurie Buckle, CEO and founder of Cookit Media, a Los Angeles-based agency that specializes in brand strategy,
influencer marketing and content creation. The agency has worked with grain-based food and bakery brands such as Bob’s Red Mill, Little Northern Bakehouse, Angelic Bakehouse and Dave’s Killer Bread.
“We need to be nimble, adapt to change and get ahead of the curve,” she said. “This is the new advertising.”
This growing marketing strategy comes with a solid roster of benefits. First, UGC campaigns are a certain way to boost a brand’s social media reach. That’s especially true because UGC allows brands to react in real time to national and global events as well as emerging trends.
Take a recent campaign from Oreo, for example. At the height of the pandemic, the Mondelez brand launched #AtHomeWithOreo, which encouraged families to play and find cheerful moments by making Oreo creations and sharing them on social platforms including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. It also creatively tapped into the momentum of the in-home snacking trend and leveraged consumer interest in creative culinary adventures during lockdown. The effort resulted in more than 249 million impressions and 29 million video views, and the follow-up campaign #MakeWayForPlay intensified the initiative.
In addition to expanding social reach, there are some major search engine optimization (SEO) benefits. According to Kissmetrics, 25% of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. And there are also considerable consumer insights to be gained through UGC, and that data is an invaluable resource for improvement and innovation.
There are, of course, a few downsides to marketing through UGC. Since brands have less control over what’s floated out for social consumption, negative content is inevitable and, therefore, requires close supervision. Some consumers are also skeptical and reluctant to trust content that comes from an unauthoritative source, so building credibility at the outset is of the utmost importance. It’s a model based on truthfulness and reality. If consumers get the slightest whiff of inauthenticity or an altering of that reality, they will call it out.
Influencer marketing is another growing industry that isn’t going anywhere. Spending on influencer marketing is up, according to January 2021 research by Influencer Marketing Hub, with 62% of
FLOWPACK & CARTONING
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marketers globally stating they intend to increase their influencer marketing budgets this year. Market analysts predict that the industry will be worth north of $15 billion by 2022, nearly double what it was in 2019. And per Insider Intelligence’s latest forecast, 67.9% of US companies with 100 or more employees will use influencer marketing in 2021, and that number is expected to rise to 72.5% in 2022.
Laura Konopack, senior VP of influencer marketing at Ketchum PR & Marketing Communications Consulting, said that brands see the value of partnering with influencers to reach audiences directly with a real human message. “People follow influencers because they like their content or their personality, and they can engage with them in a real way. Marketers understand the importance of that,” she said. “There’s a level of trust that consumers have with the influencers they follow, which gives the brand credibility.”
There are several ways brands can approach influencer marketing, starting with the reach of the influencers themselves. Macro-influencers have a following of 100,000 to 1 million and have usually gained “fame” through the internet itself. Brands looking to build awareness or reach a broad audience might want to engage with these highprofile individuals to build credibility. But the price tag for such partnerships is often on the steeper side.
Micro-influencers (1,000 to 100,000) tend to have a niche (which could be as broad as baking or as narrow as vegan baking for kids), and their audience is usually more like-minded and singularly focused than those of macro-influencers. These mid-level influencers don’t boast celebrity status, but they have strong relationships with their followers and can be a beneficial partner, especially when a brand is trying to gather feedback or launch a new product.
Then there is the newly coined segment called nano-influencers, who have a smaller number of followers (fewer than 1,000) but tend to have a strong impact in their local neighborhood or community. It’s a reminder that bigger isn’t always better; according to Planoly, nano-influencers earn a 7% average engagement rate, which is higher than any other group.
One company that’s found success by working with nano- and microinfluencers is Tate’s Bake Shop. Kelsey Formost, director of content strategy at Tagger Media, noted that these smaller influencers’ partnerships have driven engagement rates of up to 5%, more than double the overall industry average.
“Each influencer tier serves a different role and different purpose,” Konopack said. “It’s important for each — the brand and the influencer — to know what is going to resonate. Goals need to be clear at the outset for both parties at the start of a campaign, and that can vary significantly from brand to brand and influencer to influencer.”
Kate Ramos has been partnering with brands on influencer campaigns for the past 8 years. Ramos’ blog, ¡Hola! Jalapeño, specializes in Mexican cooking, and with just over 30,000 Instagram followers, she falls squarely in the micro-influencer camp. She’s worked with companies from Kellogg’s Special K to La Tortilla Factory to Alfaro’s Artesano Breads on gifted partnerships (in which the companies send product samples in exchange for posts, some with monetary rewards for high-performing posts) and paid partnerships.
For her, it’s most important that she speak to followers in a genuine way about the brands she’s working with. “I’d never partner with a brand I wouldn’t use myself,” she said.
When she first got into influencer-brand relationships, the ask often involved a recipe and a blog post. Now, the most common is an Instagram post, story or reel, but recipes still play a key role.
“I think offering recipe ideas for how to use a product is still really important, and I try to do so through my own lens because that feels much more personal, and my followers are more receptive to those types of posts,” Ramos said. “And I always want to put out the highest quality content that I can, whether it’s in partnership with a brand or not.”
Buckle shared the sentiment, noting that content creation is the golden ticket to successful influencer marketing.
“Influencers are incredibly powerful and really shifting the conversation about what smart, strategic marketing looks like,” Buckle said. “But at the end of the day, content is king. It’s the thing that works. Social media is saturated with pretty pictures and a lot of empty posts. If the content he or she is creating isn’t telling a compelling story or offering a meaningful takeaway, the results simply won’t follow. As an influencer, to be successful in this space, you must be on your A-game and ensure high-quality, high-caliber content.”
Konopak said that during the pandemic, lifestyle influencers — especially those in the food and baking space — have only gotten more popular. “There continues to be a renewed interest in at-home baking and cooking, and brands would be smart to take advantage of that. Influencers
Product advertising has come a long way from storyboards all the way to influencer marketing.
can help give products broader context by sharing innovative ideas and making brands stand out in a more holistic way.”
King Arthur Baking Co.’s recent rebrand is an excellent case study for how a CPG brand can find success with a combination of UGC and influencer marketing.
The launch, which was slated for June 2020, was derailed by the pandemic, so the company pivoted its efforts, leaning into influencer partnerships and social media for consumer engagement. Kits were sent to influencers with swag, products and recipe ideas. “Surprise and delight” kits were sent to consumers at home and included a small origami crown of the new logo for snapping pics and sharing on social channels. And a specially designed Instagram filter allowed fans to wear the logo crown digitally and share on social as well.
According to Hummingbird Creative Group, the week of the launch, social engagement increased 9 times, news stories about the rebrand generated 500 million impressions and social posts generated more than 36,000 (mostly positive) comments.
“At the end of the day, it’s about knowing your audience and what’s going to resonate,” Konopack said. “It’s about pairing brands with influencers who have a strong audience overlap to ensure both are hitting their target consumer. And it’s also important to remember that this is a very personal, human relationship, and one that requires a nuanced approach to ensure overall success.” CB
Plant-Based Profits
How bakers can capitalize on the ‘new normal’ of alternative ingredients.
BY HARRISON HELMICK
The term “plant-based diet” has been circulating in the US since the 1980s without any formal definition, but now it is one of the trendiest topics in the food industry. While it was originally used to describe a niche population following vegan diets, today “plant-based” has evolved to mean anyone who is actively trying to reduce the number of products they eat that come from animals. Plantbased eating is often grouped with buzzwords like “flexitarian,” “alternative” and “better-for-you (BFY).” A quick walk through the grocery aisles reveals ever-expanding product selections of alternative meats, dairy-free alfredo sauces and even egg- and dairyfree baked goods, all trying to capture a piece of the plant-based food market that is expected to reap a 19.4% CAGR over the next six years, according to Grand View Research.
Underlying this rapid growth are trends that are gaining momentum, and plantbased products should be considered as part of the new normal for doing business in a crowded bakery marketplace.
In a 2020 survey from Archer-Daniels Midland, 44% of respondents said they were actively pursuing a flexitarian diet — which limits the consumption of animal products — going hand-in-hand with the BFY market. Increases in plantbased eating are driven by a mixture of changing diets for three main reasons: health factors, dietary preferences and sustainability.
Consumers are concerned with high levels of saturated fats and cholesterol often found in animal products, and they are drawn to the fiber and diseasefighting polyphenols in plant-based products. People following a plant-based diet are also more likely to be concerned with their total protein intake, so product lines that feature plant-based protein are particularly important on the health front.
For bakeries, an important segment of consumers who care about health factors include the 8.7 million Americans with allergies to egg and dairy, two of the hardest ingredients to remove from baked goods. However, taking out eggs and dairy is not enough to gain the halo of being plant-based. Even though many baked goods are already part of a plant-based diet, these products also need to be clean-label and ideally include a unique plant ingredient, such as cauliflower for pizza crust or spinach in wraps, to have the positive associations consumers are looking for.
Dietary preferences as the result of religious beliefs, as well as shifts toward vegetarianism, are also driving the plantbased market, with 61% of females and 60% of males ages 18-34 reporting that that they sometimes or always eat a vegetarian diet, according to a 2019 Harris Poll conducted on behalf of the Vegetarian Resource Group.
The enormous increase in sustainability that comes from eating a plantbased diet is also driving this trend. A 2019 assessment from the University of Wageningen found that eggs and dairy require 4.5 lbs. of protein in feed for every pound of protein produced. The production of animal proteins also requires huge amounts of water and generates significantly more greenhouse gases when compared to currently available plant-based alternatives. These factors are an area of public concern, as topics like climate change and water scarcity become increasingly top of mind, particularly with younger audiences.
Capturing a piece of the growing plant-based market means reformulating indulgent snack cakes and fillings without the use of eggs or dairy. However, with the recent improvements in technology around producing meat and dairy alternatives, consumers have come to expect plant-based products that are as good or better than the original, oftentimes without the use of ingredients that would break their idea of clean label.
This means that products need to maintain the chewy, creamy and fatty textures that milk and eggs provide without compromising on flavor or a clean label.
It may be challenging, but if replacements are chosen carefully, the substitution of animal products for plant-based options not only allows bakeries to capitalize on a new market, but it also gives them a chance to make new health claims in other trending categories including high fiber and high protein. This is because many of the best available egg and dairy replacers come from companies that have developed novel ways to process pulses, seaweed and even mushrooms to engineer new ingredients that provide sources of functional fiber and protein.
Pulses are legumes — including peas, lentils, chickpeas and other beans — which are not primarily used for oil. These plants conform to all the market drivers for plant-based diets including sustainability, health and wellness, and other dietary preferences. They are naturally sustainable, requiring less water than many other crops. They also fix nitrogen in the soil, reducing the need for fertilizers.
© Deryn Macey on Unsplash
Additionally, pulses do not have any known allergens. They have exploded in use in the past five years, spurring companies like Ingredion, Cargill’s PURIS and Roquette to dramatically increase their product lines of pea protein for use in meat and dairy imitation products. Today, pulses now make up one of the biggest shares of the $1.4 billion egg replacement market, quantified by Market Data Forecast. This has helped reduce the price of pea protein and spawned secondary markets for flavor maskers specific to hiding the earthy and beany flavor that pea and other pulse proteins can have.
Pea protein and other pulses including lentils have shown their potential in bakery applications. Due to their unique amino acid composition, pulses form complete proteins when partnered with wheat, which opens the door for “excellent source of protein” claims when using these functional ingredients in reformulating baked goods. Pulse proteins have also been found to help replace the emulsions and gels that eggs form in cookies and cakes, maintaining the texture that consumers are looking for.
Pound for pound, pulses are the cheapest source of protein on the planet, and as production continues to ramp up for these products, they can reduce the final cost of baked goods in an environment where the price of animal-based products is often volatile or increasing.
Aside from their protein, pulses also have unique fibers which can be good replacers for eggs and dairy. Aquafaba, the wastewater from chickpeas, creates the best alternative currently available for the foaming seen in egg whites in applications such as vegan meringue and meringue powder.
On top of pulse fibers’ ability to make plant-based baked goods, they also add fiber, capitalizing on the trending gut health market.
Companies like PeaTos are using blends of pulse flour and protein isolate to make high-protein and high-fiber chips, while Barilla, the world’s largest pasta maker, has launched pulse-based pasta with various shapes and textures made from red lentil flour and chickpea flour, as well as high-protein pasta with pea protein.
Because consumers are already comfortable with ingredients like pea protein, fava bean fiber and other functional ingredients on product labels, the pulse market in baked goods will surely increase. This high level of consumer acceptance, low cost of ingredients and high levels of sustainability make pulses an important cornerstone in any plantbased product lineup.
There are options other than pulses for replacing eggs and dairy in the bakery aisle though, and seeds including quinoa, flax and chia can all be part of a plantbased strategy.
Ardent Mills launched its Great Plains Quinoa program in 2017 and since then has expanded its quinoa lineup to include
ingredients intended for extruded products, bars, biscuits and more. Like pulses, quinoa benefits from strong consumer acceptability, and it is a complete protein, which can help achieve “excellent source of protein” claims for new product lines.
Quinoa also contains functional fiber, which can be included to replace certain textures in baked goods, as well as reel in health-conscious customers. Chia and flax seeds are both growing markets in the US and globally and, due to unique carbohydrates, have shown benefits in increasing shelf life in baked goods while also giving a boost in fiber.
They can also be part of egg and dairy replacement strategies, as they have been shown to improve texture in cakes and cookies made without eggs and dairy. Flax is also high in omega-3 fatty acids, opening up the potential for market claims on what is expected to be one of the top trends in 2021 and 2022: foods that promote neurological health. Chia and flax also enjoy high levels of consumer acceptability, and many people group them in the “superfoods” category, which includes ingredients that are particularly nutrient dense. Some other superfoods such as seaweed have been used for years in the baking industry. They’re often applied in the form of their extracted components carrageenan and agar, but some food manufacturers are now looking at the many other benefits imparted by seaweed.
With as many as 1 million species to choose from, the applications of algae-derived ingredients include antioxidants, antibacterial ingredients, mold inhibitors and texturizers that can aid in replacing eggs and dairy or adding extra nutrition to products. Their bright green or sometimes red colors can also be used as natural sources of color. Additionally, some species contain up to 47% protein.
Seaweed is also considered even more environmentally friendly than pulses. That’s due to its incredibly fast growth, removal of carbon dioxide from ocean water and the air, and the fact that it does not require fresh water and fertilizer inputs to grow. These are factors driving the expected 9.7% CAGR for seaweed over the next six years, based on a report from Mordor Intelligence. Companies like Dupont and Cargill are the largest producers of seaweed powder and blends. And aside from carrageenan and agar, baking companies are adding seaweed to crackers and other snack goods for an extra kick of umami flavor and to provide unique colors.
While the egg and dairy replacement markets are the most obvious opportunities to capitalize on plant-based additives, adding vegetables to traditional baked goods is another strategy to gain entry to this thriving market. Sweet potatoes, cauliflower, kale, bell peppers and more are all starting to work their way into the baked goods aisle in the form of a partial replacement for flour or even as part of a gluten-free product.
Consumers are increasingly drawn to low-carb and BFY options, and using a vegetable flour to add flavor and color can help catch the shopper’s eye. These color changes are often sought out by those looking for plant-based options. “Going green” can help signal to consumers that a bakery is also making commitments to sustainability, and these positive associations with natural colors are becoming more popular.
© Silas Baisch on Unsplash
The seaweed market is expected to experience a 9.7%
CAGR over the next six years.
Source: Mordor Intelligence
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If done strategically, bakers can capitalize on plant-based eating and trends including foods for neurological and gut health. Veggie products have been particularly present in the frozen aisle, where companies like Conagra and Green Giant now offer pot pies and pizza crusts made with cauliflower. Developing strategies around these sorts of ingredients can be another strong entry point for companies trying to figure out how to get into the plantbased market.
Reformulating for the plant-based consumer can be challenging, but the time and effort involved is well worth the potential gain. Providing a diversified lineup of these types of offerings can help baking companies move toward sustainable and clean-label products that taste just as good as the original.
Ingredients like pulse protein, functional fiber from seaweed and whole flour from pulses can be part of replacing the eggs and dairy in baked goods, and they are already accepted by consumers. Adding these ingredients can also help capitalize on other trending categories. Consumers are increasingly recognizing the role of food for neurological health, gut health and benefits from high protein.
Going plant-based can help commercial bakeries capitalize on the new normal, making healthy and sustainable products that consumers feel good about eating. CB
— Harrison Helmick is a PhD candidate in food science at Purdue University. His research includes uncovering new structure-function relationships of plantbased protein. Prior to his Purdue studies, he worked as a production supervisor and continuous improvement supervisor at Bimbo Bakeries USA.
His research was conducted with the support of Dr. Jozef Kokini, Dr. Andrea Liceaga and Dr. Arun Bhunia.
