Rubicon Bakers’ Richmond facility primarily produces the brand’s 4-inch finished cakes and four-count cupcakes and muffins, running four lines on staggered shifts 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday.

Ingredients are delivered daily and hand scaled. The bakery’s batters and icings are made in one of its four 140-quart Hobart mixers or two 400-liter Tonelli vertical mixers.

The bakery was making its 4-inch Vegan Vanilla Layer Cake on the day of Baking & Snack’s visit. A sensor-driven Hinds Bock depositor places cake batter into trays on a line that can produce 1,200 4-inch cakes a day, with 6-inch and 8-inch capability as well. Filled trays are manually loaded onto racks before baking in one of Rubicon’s eight Baxter rack ovens for 25 to 30 minutes. After baking, the cakes pass through a Fred D. Pfening Co. cooling cabinet, a recent addition to the bakery that has significantly boosted production speed. 

“It helped us reduce our cooling time by almost half,” said Melina Gormley, senior production manager at Rubicon Bakers. “Which for us is a really big deal because it’s one of the longest parts of our sequence. When we were cooling using natural, ambient air, it was taking one, two, up to four hours depending on the product, so we’ve seen a drastic reduction. It’s a real game changer.”

In the first phase of the cooling cabinet, a heat extractor draws heat from the cakes. Then, clean, natural air is blown over the cakes via HEPA air-filtered blowers. 

Cooled cakes are then manually depanned, dotted with parchment paper and prepared for decorating. 

The bakery’s operation is very manual, Gormley noted, with the workforce driving every task on the floor. 

“We have some help from automation here and there, but a lot of what we do and a lot of what we take pride in is how manual our operation is,” she said. “It’s not a machine that’s wrinkling or doodling on that cupcake, it’s us hand-applying, so it’s a big source of pride for our team.”

At the decorating stage, a layer of icing is deposited onto a vanilla cake blank (how Rubicon refers to its unfinished cake layers) and another vanilla cake blank is added on top. Then, a Unifiller Cake-o-Matic 1000i enrobes the entire cake in icing in one swift movement before operators tidy it by hand. Enrobed Vegan Vanilla Layer cakes are then hand-finished with vegan vanilla crumbs along the sides.

The hand-made finish at this stage is something the bakery leans into, said John Clinkscales, Rubicon’s chief financial officer. 

“While they’re all going to be the same quality, they’re all going to look a little unique sitting on the shelf, and that’s what I think consumers are wanting more and more now,” he explained. “Less of the, ‘This was stamped out of plastic and looks exactly like the seven cakes that it’s sitting beside on the shelf.’ ” 

 Operators place domed lids over the finished cakes before they pass through metal detection, a labeler and packaging and palletizing. 

During Baking & Snack’s visit, the bakery was also producing its chocolate cake blanks, which it leaves unfinished for retailers to decorate themselves. 

“We do the hard work for the retailer,” Gormley said. “All they have to do is add the frosting and call it their own. And we’ll never tell their secret.”

As one final human touch, each box of cakes features the signatures of the production room employees. 

“We want to make the connection with even the folks who are stocking the shelves,” Clinkscales said. “This is a tradition we’ve had for years and years, and every once in a while we refresh them. It creates a powerful sense of pride of really putting their name on the product at the end of the day.”

The bakery aims to work employees up through production to ensure their success. New hires typically start with simple tasks like depanning before moving onto roles like decoration. The bakery’s most critical jobs, such as operating ovens and scaling ingredients, Gormley said, take the longest to work up to. 

“These are areas where we’re entrusting our folks to do it right the first time,” she explained. “If we don’t get it right in mixing, we won’t find out until down the road. If we fall asleep at the ovens, we’re going to burn product. You’ve got to prove your skill on the floor that you have the ability to run in those areas. And then you can graduate to those critical areas.”

Clinkscales noted second-chance employees have been promoted to these critical roles and into office positions. Rubicon looks to promote internally whenever possible. 

“It’s very rare for us to go outside of the organization for talent on the floor,” he explained. “It’s good for the company because it means that they understand other departments and how they interact with one another. But it’s also great for the employees because it really does give opportunities for upward mobility.”

Rubicon Bakers’ four-pack Vegan Neapolitan Cupcakes were also in production during Baking & Snack’s visit. After baking and cooling, unfinished chocolate cupcakes are hand-placed in four-count containers and conveyed to the finishing area. Here, a Unifiller depositor operated by foot-pedal injects the cupcake with vegan vanilla icing. The cupcake is then topped with vegan strawberry icing by another Unifiller depositor. Finally, the cupcakes are hand-sprinkled with chocolate chips before being conveyed to metal detection and packaging. 

One of the most visually appealing items the bakery makes, the Vegan Neapolitan variety, was created because very few cupcakes on the market feature vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, Clinkscales said.

“We knew that we had the capability because we’ve already got the injection and the topping, so it was really just a matter of getting the operation dialed in correctly to run all three at the same time,” he explained.

Production is managed using Redzone, which tracks line efficiency, downtime, delivery times, quality checks and more. Managers, supervisors and line leads all have access to the software, allowing for quick collaboration if a problem arises. 

“We have a direct line of communication from our front line to management,” said Garrett Pounds, chief operating officer. “[Employees] see something out on the floor, and Melina and I can follow up in real time.”  

This article is an excerpt from the March 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Rubicon Bakers, click here.