According to Yianny Caparos, president of The Bakery Cos., broadening production capabilities is critical to best serving its customers nationwide.
The Bakery Cos. currently produces a range of fresh and frozen baked goods for foodservice, food manufacturing and retail customers in the US and Caribbean, but is actively pushing to diversify into the breakfast carrier category.
The Georgia facility – located in Smyrna, less than 20 miles from The Bakery Cos. plant in Norcross – fulfils this brief, as it produces laminated dough its such as croissants and Danish, as well as sweet baked goods.
Prior to reaching an agreement on the acquisition, The Bakery Cos. had also embarked on a project to bolster its presence in the breakfast carrier category.
Earlier this month, the company broke ground on a 50,000-square-foot expansion to its Nashville operation to house ‘one of the nation’s largest high-speed croissant production lines’, as well as enough cold storage space to house an additional 5,000 pallets of frozen product.
“The natural product line extension to this daypart is croissants. We’re thrilled to round out our category offering with thaw-and-serve, sliced butter and margarine croissants that come in all shapes and sizes and will be manufactured at high speeds that enable us to be a low-cost provider,” said Caparos.
He noted the addition of Smyrna to the bakery’s manufacturing network will dramatically turbo-charge its re-entry into the croissant and Danish categories, enabling it to deliver these products as early as this summer.
“The capabilities across frozen dough, pre-proofed and fully baked items meet the varied needs of our customers. We have already experienced tremendous interest for these products across every channel, and we can’t wait to join forces with the outstanding team at Smyrna to address the pent-up demand.”
Expanding group of passionate bakers
In September 2019, The Bakery Companies was recapitalised by Arbor Investments, a Chicago-based private equity firm that has to-date acquired or invested in over 80 food and beverage companies in North America.
“Smyrna adds a sixth facility to our platform, brings exciting new manufacturing capabilities and is a highly attractive fit in terms of geographic location and proximity,” said Chris Tuffin, partner at Arbor.
“[This is] our second acquisition for The Bakery Cos. in just two months, we are exceptionally pleased to further grow and will continue to seek opportunities to add complementary businesses to our expanding group of passionate bakers.”
In March, The Bakery Cos. acquired Steck Wholesale Foods, which produces biscuits and English muffins for grocers and convenience store chains. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Tennessee-headquartered The Bakery Companies – founded in 1996 by Cordia and Tom Harrington – operates six manufacturing facilities in the US, baking over six million items daily, including buns, English muffins, rolls, biscuits, frozen dough, artisan breads and pastries. The bakery employs over 500 people.