Approximately 330 employees work at Bakery Express’ 150,000-square-foot facility in Halethorpe, Md., which runs staggered production shifts 24/7. Processing and packaging make up 100,000 square feet, while 30,000 square feet is dedicated to warehousing and 20,000 square feet is offices.
The bakery includes six processing lines and seven packaging lines that produce fresh and frozen donuts, muffins, cookies, brownies, pretzels and croissants in hundreds of varieties and dozens of pack sizes.
The bakery’s centerpiece is its two Belshaw donut lines. Installed in 2018, the lines at the time were the largest Belshaw had ever built, said Matt Reade, Bakery Express’ chief financial officer, and produce 15,000 donuts per hour per line.
Steve Borsh, chief executive officer, noted the lines provide a dramatic increase in throughput and critical labor savings for the bakery. Bakery Express went from running eight donuts across to 10 and jumped from 17 cuts a minute to 22. While this may not seem like much of a change to some, Mr. Borsh said, the difference in output is night and day.
“It allows us to be more competitive, and at the same time, we accomplish that with fewer people,” he pointed out. “Right now, anything that saves me headcount in this operation is a win. Outside of our core group of people, it’s difficult to find really dependable people.”
On these production lines, donut dough is mixed in two 1,600-lb Topos Mondial mixers before being loaded into the hopper of a Fritsch, a Multivac Group company, sheeting line, where it then passes through multiple roller reduction stations.
The donuts are then stamped with cutters made in-house, allowing for easy customization of products.
“You can change out your cutter within like two minutes, so it enables us to be super flexible,” Mr. Reade explained. “We can customize really any size or shape. We could make Yoda donuts if you wanted.”
In addition to donuts, the line produces larger items such as fritters, coffee rolls and twists. Once stamped, product is proofed in a Belshaw proofer for 45 to 55 minutes, then fried for roughly two minutes. From there, products are iced and glazed before traveling through a spiral cooler.
The bakery also runs a smaller line that makes muffins, brownies and cookies. During Baking & Snack’s visit, the line was producing blueberry muffins. Muffin mix is added by hand to two Hobart mixers, after which the mixing bowls are rolled to a Unifiller hopper topper that deposits the dough into hand-lined tray cups.
“It’s not as automated as it could be, but because of the short runs and the flexibility, we keep it this way,” Mr. Reade said.
Muffin trays are then racked before baking in one of the bakery’s 20 Revent, LBC or Hobart ovens.
Once finished, fresh daily product is placed in baskets by hand. Donuts, however, may first be panned to receive an additional layer of chocolate icing.
“The big donut here is a glazed donut with chocolate on top,” Mr. Reade explained. “All glaze is made in-house with our proprietary recipe.”
Four baskets of product are placed onto trays and taken into the order room, a 30,000-square-foot space recently added to the bakery. Here, employees hand-pick product and organize orders for each of their c-store customer’s stores. Trays go through a Texwrap shrink-wrapper and are stacked onto carriers for delivery.
Source: Tracie Hoprich“[The order room] is specifically for picking,” Mr. Reade said. “It’s temperature-controlled; it’s quieter; the ceilings are lower; it’s bright so people can see the product and make sure there are no deficiencies.”Whether a store orders a single item or 1,000, Bakery Express hand-picks that order every day. Tray stacks are labeled with the store number and put onto trucks to be sent to distribution centers.
“Every tray stack that you see goes to a different store for delivery,” he explained.
During Baking & Snack’s visit the bakery was also producing its frozen cookie dough, which it offers in 15 different varieties in 2- or 4-oz sizes. Cookie dough is mixed in a 1,400-lb Topos Mondial mixer installed this year, then the bowl is automatically lifted into a Topos Mondial hopper before going through an FME wire cutter.
“This machine saved us probably a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Mr. Reade said. “It’s not cheap, but it’s not a $400,000 piece of equipment, but it has the capability to do exactly what those major pieces of equipment do. It runs really well.”
Cookies then go through a nitrogen tunnel freezer that runs between -270˚F and -300˚F before being conveyed to a checkweigher and bulk packer.
For its growing frozen operation, the bakery is also adding a new donut line, which it plans to have running by the end of the year.
“We’ve had to expand the actual footprint of the bakery to accommodate some of the equipment that we bought,” Mr. Borsh said. “So much of the business has been shifting to the frozen side, and that just takes a lot of space.”
The line will feature a new Topos Mondial proofer, which Mr. Reade described as the “crown jewel” of the bakery’s proof boxes, as well as a spiral freezer that will significantly boost Bakery Express’ frozen capacity.
“[The freezer] is going to enable us to shuffle labor around and run product earlier in the day, because right now we have about 6 to 8 hours of pretzels that go through the spiral freezer,” he explained. “Spiral freezing capacity is the real constraint.”
The bakery additionally installed a Promach case packer last year for its bulk packaging needs.
“We used to have a hand-folding station, and now it’s all automated, which is super helpful,” Mr. Reade said. “The nice thing about this line is it gives us the flexibility to pack a variety of stuff. We do muffins and donuts; we can do pastries; we can do croissants; you name it. And we’ve got a wide range of sizes we can do.”
Bakery Express is also renovating its 2,500-square-foot wash area and adding two new Douglas Machines Corp. tunnel washers for pans and trays, as well as a rack washer. The renovated room will be air-conditioned and segregate the washers from the rest of the bakery, providing a more comfortable and quiet environment for employees, Mr. Reade said.
Going forward, Bakery Express aims to diversify its product offerings within its customer base, especially on the fresh side, Mr. Borsh said. Within the next seven years, he’d like the bakery to double its annual sales.
One way Bakery Express can accomplish this, Mr. Borsh suggested, is by beginning to produce higher end bakery products such as crusty breads.
“In the channels where we’re already well established, there’s a need for that,” he said. “If you can take a customer from buying a $1.29 donut to a $4.99 loaf of bread, that’s big in a c-store. You only have to sell two to three of those a day to really have the category look very good from a growth perspective.”
The bakery’s immediate plans, however, are to complete its equipment installations and get production humming at full force.
“In our business, if you’re not investing in your business, you’re just not going to make it,” Mr. Borsh said. “If you’re not automating these processes, what are you doing? We very consciously look for opportunities.”
Reflecting on the success of Bakery Express, Mr. Borsh said he’s proudest of the culture the team has built. It’s a culture of doing whatever it takes to get the job done — the true embodiment of corporate grit.
“Corporate grit is all of us on the line punching donuts; it’s literally all-hands-on-deck going from making 100,000 of something to 200,000 overnight,” he said. “It’s literally everybody changing their lives just to make sure that we get it done. No matter what it takes.”
With ambitious plans for growth and the unwavering attitude to back it up, Bakery Express is full steam ahead on its path to bakery dominance.
This article is an excerpt from the November 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Bakery Express, click here.
