Dutchland Foods in Lester, Iowa, which makes a variety of laminated pastries and other goodies, branched out into producing and selling bulk dough in 2010 and then found new customers through food shows, which opened doors into private label.

“They started asking us to make products for them under their brand,” said Pete Van Wyhe, president and chief executive officer. “We’d get a product perfected, then they’d say, ‘Now can you do this one?’ And that just continued on until this day. We have new customers all the time asking us, ‘Can you make this?’ ”

Private label is now more than three-quarters of the business. The company has the capacity to make new products because it has an in-house mill that can produce unique cutters for its equipment.

“When we started out on our own, the fundraising is all we had,” Pete Van Wyhe explained. “It was 100% of our business. But already by 2010 or 2012, that was really starting to shift because the wholesale business grew as we were making these parts and making more and more new products.”

The clean label movement also helped boost sales as many of the company’s offerings fit that bill for those looking for premium products. It’s still a big selling point today, said Monty Van Wyhe, vice president of sales and operations, driving growth in the business.

“We also feel that when the pandemic hit and importing pastries from Europe became so expensive, that we benefitted from that as companies looked to find domestic production of their laminated pastry products,” he added.

Business was cut in half at the beginning of the pandemic, although government assistance programs at the time helped to avoid layoffs. And a bit of new business arrived when they needed it most.

“By mid-summer some new business came on board that helped carry us into the fall when sales started to slowly pick back up,” Pete Van Wyhe said.

The supply chain issues that followed were challenging, but their strong supplier relationships carried them through.

“If you have a good supplier, you want to make sure you stay with them because it’s almost like if you switched to someone else and tried to come back to them, they’ll say, ‘Sorry we can’t take your business anymore because we’re maxed out,’ ” Monty Van Wyhe said. “It’s all about relationships.”

This article is an excerpt from the August 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Dutchland Foods, click here.