Dave Marson, co-founder of waffle manufacturer Marson Foods, Carson, Nev., has worked in food manufacturing for almost 40 years, but he’d never gotten to build his dream plant. 

“When we grew the other business, it grew so fast that we were just trying to sustain it,” he said. “You couldn’t put in automation; you didn’t have time to retool. It was just ‘get the next line in as fast as you can.’ ”

With Marson Foods’ new facility, however — a 147,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art plant in Hazelwood, Mo. — he was able to build a plant from the ground up, prioritizing technology that sets the foundation for future growth. 

“It was really trying to push us into the 21st century from food manufacturing and looking at [artificial intelligence], automation, all the things coming down the pipeline that will make us a more sustainable 24/7-type operation,” he said. 

Marson noted a high level of automation was essential to embarking on this business. 

“We had 650 employees in the last business, and it was hard,” he acknowledged. “So if it couldn’t be automated, I wouldn’t have done [waffles] at all.”

The new facility features automated raw material handling and mixing, an authentic Belgian waffle line and oven manufactured in Belgium, automated packaging and end-of-line robotics, and a fully automated freezer system.

“We’re running 500 waffles a minute with basically three people on the line,” Marson said.

Designing the perfect plant wasn’t easy, however. Marson and Tyler Wallace, chief operating officer, spent years designing potential facilities on AutoCAD: a 3D software that let them experiment with countless floor plans and equipment setups.

“There wasn’t a single inch of this place that we didn’t put thought into,” Wallace said. “Everything you see out there — the entrance, how we access the floor, maintenance, sanitation, process flow, storage racking and even the bathrooms — that was all designed by us.”

Marson and Wallace looked at a few different plant locations before landing on Hazelwood, but said the alternative locations would have required them to shoehorn their designs.

“When [Hazelwood] came, we were like, ‘This is perfect,’ ” Wallace said. “It was a blank canvas.”

Hazelwood also turned out to be a perfect location geographically. While the Marsons owned a plot of land in Nevada for a future facility, it became clear that a location further east made the most sense. 

“Eighty percent of our businesses is east of the Mississippi, so Missouri is a good location from a shipping standpoint,” Marson explained. “And it’s an up-and-coming area — there’s a lot of food manufacturing that’s coming this year just because of the position it’s at.” 

The city is also home to one of Nature’s Bakery’s manufacturing plants, so the Marsons already had strong ties to the community.

“St. Louis is what made our wealth with the first business, so we’re really committed to this area to help revitalize, train and be part of the community,” Marson said.

With an emphasis on automation as well as food safety — the plant is SQF-certified — the plant is described by company co-founder Jan Marson as Dave Marson’s field of dreams, designed with a “build it and they will come” mentality. 

“With food safety and automation and everything that we were putting in, it was going to attract any of the big brands,” he emphasized. “They’re all looking for co-man type products.”

This is due in part to the industry’s manufacturing shortage, one Marson is ready to take advantage of.

“You cannot find the capacity to get your products made by someone else; everyone and their mother is calling us to make stuff,” he said. “And part of the plan was to go after some of those shortages.”

Marson Foods additionally benefits from the industry relationships Dave and Jan built with customers and suppliers at Nature’s Bakery. While Marson Foods is still in its early stages, these businesses treat them like a large company thanks to the reputation Dave and Jan built. 

“We’re able to lean on those relationships,” Dave Marson said. “They’re happy because they look at us and say, ‘We know you did this once.’ Even though we’re small right now, they’ll act like we’re doing $100 million a year. They know if they team up with us now, they know it’s coming.”

This article is an excerpt from the August 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Marson Foods, click here.