For Rubicon Bakers, the decision to acquire Just Desserts was a no-brainer. Not only are the bakeries very close geographically, located just 35 minutes apart, but they’re also very similar in brand identity.  

“Both are premium brands with a really strong focus on clean label, providing the absolute premium consumer experience from start to finish, and making an impact in the community and making sure that everything is sustainably done,” said John Clinkscales, chief financial officer, Rubicon Bakers. 

The acquisition also significantly boosted Rubicon’s production capacity, offering ample opportunity for the company to expand its reach. The Just Desserts facility is much larger than Rubicon’s (75,000 square feet compared to 20,000 square feet), and came equipped with top-of-the line, high-throughput equipment, Clinkscales noted. For example, the Just Desserts facility has two tunnel ovens, compared to Rubicon’s eight rack ovens.

“To put things in perspective, there’s probably two and a half times the baking capacity in the Fairfield facility as there is here,” Clinkscales said. “We saw the trajectory of the Rubicon brand, we saw the trajectory of the Just Desserts brand, and thought this is a match made in heaven where we can put the capacity together with the two growing brands and help each other grow.”

The close proximity of the bakeries also allows for easy collaboration between leadership teams. 

“Everybody’s able to really share best practices across both sites,” he said. “We have more flexibility in scheduling and are able to really find the right spot for the right product. We also have a lot of great folks from an operational level and from a management level. We’ve been able to take the two organizational charts of the teams and combine them in a way that has made us a lot stronger as a combined company as well.”

Now entering its third year as a combined company, Rubicon is focused on achieving a high level of cohesion between the bakeries, ensuring the people skills and values translate across both sites.  

“We’d like to think that we should be able to take someone from a packaging line at one of our facilities and put them in the other and that they’ll understand the system that they need to operate in,” said Garrett Pounds, Rubicon’s chief operating officer. “There are no barriers between the two sites in terms of the way we manage the business. We run it as one company, one vision and just two different sites.”

The company’s ambition is to build up both the Rubicon Bakers and Just Desserts brands, said Sebastian Siethoff, chief executive officer of Rubicon Bakers, expanding its presence before retailers and consumers.

“Fresh bakery is not always a branded space, so it’s a pretty audacious move,” he acknowledged. “But we believe that our story is very powerful and righteous, candidly, and we believe in our brands.”

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