Milling & Baking News - March 22, 2011 - 42

Baker of the Year 

For the love of baking

rom the beginning, Turano Baking’s products ﬁlled a marketplace void. In the late 1950s, Italian bread in Chicago was just about anything but common. “In 1958, true Italian bread was difﬁcult to ﬁnd,” said Giancarlo Turano, who is a principal of the Berwyn, IIl., company with his brothers Renato and Umberto (Tony). “When people bought Italian bread, it meant Italian French bread, 4-inch club rolls, and 1-lb Vienna bread. “Those products were the only products you would ﬁnd in the grocery store,” he continued. “We offered traditional product to the clientele, who were Europeans, people who enjoyed Italian food. Crusty and chewy bread.” “We gave them a touch of home, a little nostalgia,” Tony said. “And we were able to deliver to homes. People bought a lot. There were households that purchased more bread than grocery stores did. That was how much was consumed per person.” Also helping pave the way for Turano into supermarkets was the growing variety of products the company was offering. In addition to the Pane Turano round, the company offered a twisted loaf, an Italian split and an Italian round. “The grocery stores were reluctant to bring in another Italian bread,” Renato said. “There wasn’t that much demand at the time. Why do they need another? We brought variety.” Many of the supermarkets that began buying Turano’s products were small independents, operating one to three stores. During the 1970s and 1980s, some of these grocers expanded rapidly to major supermarket chains, and Turano grew with them, Tony said. By the mid 1970s, Turano bread was being sold to food service customers as well. “Italian restaurants at the time basically were selling French bread and cut it into

pieces,” Giancarlo said. “Smaller and newer restaurants gravitated toward our products once we began hitting the grocery stores.” While the expansion of supermarket customers and restaurant sales helped the company grow, Tony identiﬁed another key to growth. “Innovation in equipment, in the ability to mass-produce baked foods automatically while still following the same process we did by hand, was key,” he said. “The hand is the best tool we know. Before that time, equipment was geared almost exclusively toward the sliced bread market. With the help of equipment makers, we were able to massproduce the Pane Turano, our round bread.” “Before the variety bread bakers in the 1970s, there weren’t many tools available, and bakeries like ours required a lot of hand operations,” Renato said. “I used to stand next to my father, (Mariano Turano), hand-rounding the bread,” Giancarlo recalled. “Dad would say, ‘Be gentle.’ He’d say, ‘Use your whole hand, the heel of your hand!’ ‘That’s too tight. Slow down!’ The equipment must simulate the process of the human hand. It must be as gentle.” Renato shared a different memory related to quality, namely his father’s reluctance to make changes that would risk the company’s product. “When someone came in and said, ‘I have a new mixer,’ Dad would reply, ‘No, no. I’m not changing it. I’m happy with the product,’” Renato said. “One day a guy came in to sell an entire line. Dad was worried. The salesman ﬁnally said, “Mariano, do you want to make good bread or do you want to make money? “My father said, ‘Get out of here,’” he added. “From that day, whenever the salesman came back, he was afraid to face any of us. We all were resistant to change that might affect quality.” MBN

terms of major capital expansion,” he said. “We want to be geographically balanced. Where we have opportunity is in the Northeast and the West coast.” Change at Turano has not been limited to the company’s baking plants and product line. The three brothers, all in their late 50s or 60s, are in the midst of a transition to the next generation of family ownership and management. Renato said that their children grew up in the business in a way not too different from that of their generation. He expressed conﬁdence that the next generation will uphold the basic principles that have ruled at the company over the course of the last generation. “For all practical purposes, we don’t know anything different,” he said. “The three of us have been working together for the last 49 years. Our children grew up in this environment. For many years, we lived by one another, and our children grew up as brothers and sisters. They have those values. They still see one another that way. “They have proved they can work together and work through issues,” he continued. “They have not only interest in the business but concern for one another. We feel very good about the future.” In contrast to the older generation, though, a greater emphasis was placed on schooling and outside work experience with the younger Turanos. No one was running a truck route as a 12 year old. “We wanted to be sure each one had an education and a chance to ﬁnd their own vocation,” he said. “They needed to do work away from the business for three years. We set these parameters to be sure they were prepared and they followed what they wanted. We wanted them working with other people, working for other people.” The brothers modeled a good working relationship over the years, Renato said. “When it comes to making decisions over the years, for the most part, we pretty much think alike,” he said. “We all have our own opinions. God knows, we’ve expressed them. But we came to the realization that if we made a decision and would get behind an idea, we would get there together.” “Support for each other always has been unanimous,” Tony said. “At the end, it’s a consensus.” MBN
— L. Joshua Sosland and Dan Malovany

42 / March 22, 2011 Milling & Baking News

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