Baking&Snack - August 2013 - 12

EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor
Executive Editor

Buying into a Vision

About a year ago when Reed Jacobs was driving to Papa Pita for a job interview, he began to have second thoughts about the long commute from his
home to the bakery’s office on the other side of Salt Lake City. In fact, about
halfway to the company’s headquarters, Mr. Jacobs called his wife and told her
he was turning around.
Fortunately, he said, she convinced him to keep on driving. Because after
interviewing with Farzad Mohebbi, Papa Pita’s president and CEO, Mr. Jacobs
took the job as the bakery’s comptroller. “I was so impressed with his genuineness and straightforwardness,” he recalled.
Mr. Jacobs is one of many managers I met at Papa Pita who joined the business after meeting Mr. Mohebbi and buying into his entrepreneurial mission
to build the best specialty bakery in the nation. Take Bryan Malkin, who had
another job lined up and, in fact, planned to start his new position three days
before he interviewed at Papa Pita. “I was sold the second I walked through
the door,” Mr. Malkin noted. “Farzad’s enthusiasm and vision sold me.”
Mr. Mohebbi, who owns Papa Pita with his wife, Yolanda, believes in striving for the best and taking nothing less, especially when building his spankin’
new 200,000-sq-ft facility. “The vision was creating the most incredible bakery, producing the best product at the best price every day and changing the
market dynamics from price escalation and fewer choices by offering a different product,” he said.
He relishes being “the odd man out” who has a better product at a price
that’s affordable to everyone. “No smoke and mirrors,” he told me during my
visit to his bakery. We don’t use gimmicks. We believe what we produce will
sell on its own merits.”
He calls himself “unorthodox” and negotiates his own deals with suppliers,
relying on his engineering background and his experience as “the chief janitor, chief baker and chief distributor” since the company was founded 30 years
ago. And he is admittedly a haggler at heart. And forget teams of consultants.
“I was told by several of our key vendors that it was a little more than crazy
that this one guy — me — thinks he can do it all,” he said.
At his new bakery, he’s invested in sanitary design with washdown
capabilities from mixing through packaging. He made sure he
purchased a flexible proofer that’s easy to clean and simple to
maintain. That’s because any type of downtime — sanitation or
maintenance — on the bakery’s new flatbread line that produces 100,000 pieces an hour will cost many times the initial
investment in the long run.
But all too often, investing in people and getting them to
buy into a vision eventually pay the biggest dividends.
“When I was interviewed, I knew this was a good fit immediately,” said Nelly Mbogo, office manager. “Papa Pita is a company
that cares about its people.”
— Dan Malovany, editor
dmalovany@sosland.com
12

/ Baking & Snack / August 2013

Managing Editor
Senior Editor

Dan Malovany
dmalovany@sosland.com
Laurie Gorton
lgorton@sosland.com
Joanie Spencer
jspencer@sosland.com
Shane Whitaker
swhitaker@sosland.com

Charlotte Atchley
catchley@sosland.com
Contributing Editors:
Donna Berry
donnaberry@dairy-food.com
Theresa Cogswell
bakercogs@sbcglobal.net
Jim Kline
jkline@theensolgroup.com
Joe Stout
joestout@cf-san.com
Associate Editor

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