Baking & Snack - March 2005 - 28

ing this company from an old-line bread company to a
modern consumer packaged goods company.
"What this means is focusing on strong brands, on deepening our understanding of our customers and consumers
and on developing a pipeline of products to continually fill
unmet needs, to advertise to consumers through multiple
points, to communicate great product benefits and to
continue to grow while simultaneously streamlining our
cost structure," he explained. "It requires a 2-pronged approach, focusing on strong brand growth at the front end
and continual improvement at the back end. Together, this
will allow us to grow profitably over time."
In effect, SLBG has been able to balance these changes as
it shifts its base in brands, markets and manufacturing.
Most recently, that's meant baked foods intended for
dieters and consumers interested in healthy lifestyles.
"Bread is a part of everybody's routine," said Peter Reiner,
SLBG senior vice-president, marketing. "Everybody eats
it every day anyway, so if you can give them a
product that tastes good that also gives them
some health benefits, they don't have
to change anything in their lifestyle to
get those benefits."
FLAVORFUL HISTORY. The emphasis
on taste and consumer appeal is seen
throughout SLBG, from the frozen cream
cheesecake that Charlie Lubin named for
his daughter Sara Lee and unveiled in 1949
to the latest introductions in its fresh, refrigerated, frozen and international segments.
Based at Chicago, IL, Sara Lee Corp., the
bakery group's parent company, is
today a global manufacturer of highquality, brand-name consumer products. The corporation traces its roots
to a wholesale distributor founded in
1939 that became Consolidated Foods
in 1954. Two years later, it purchased
Kitchens of Sara Lee from Mr. Lubin.
After several more acquisitions in consumer foods, the company changed its
name to Sara Lee Corp. to reflect its consumer marketing orientation.
The roots of its fresh bread side reach
deep into American baking history. In 1925,
Winfield M. Campbell, former president of
Continental Baking Co., and three other CBC
employees created the Win M. Campbell Corp.,
headquartered at Kansas City, MO. Three years
later, A.L. Taggart joined as an investor, and the
company was renamed Campbell-Taggart Associated Bakeries. During the late 1920s and through
the 1930s, the company added plants in nine states.

It moved its headquarters to Dallas, TX, in 1940. By the
mid-1960s, its Merico refrigerated dough business became
the second largest producer of these products.
In 1971, Campbell-Taggart formed a joint venture
to establish Bimbo S.A. in Spain. It later bought out its
Mexican partner, and today Bimbo S.A. is the largest baking company in Spain.
In 1975, the company introduced its Earth Grains
brand, rolling out 40 different pan variety breads in its
largest new product introduction in history. CampbellTaggart was bought by Anheuser-Busch Companies in
1982 and moved headquarters operations to St. Louis. It
continued to acquire baking companies, adding markets
in the Midwest, South, West and Central Atlantic.
Campbell-Taggart adopted the name The Earthgrains
Company in February 1996, a month before being spun off
as an independent publicly held company. Five years later,
Sara Lee Corp. came calling, finalizing its acquisition on
Aug. 14, 2001. The fresh, refrigerated and frozen operations were combined to create Sara Lee Bakery Group.
BRAND STRENGTH. Shortly after taking over at
SLBG, Mr. Noll and his management team set the
company's agenda to build Sara Lee into a "bakery
products megabrand." This move allowed the
company to cut the number of small, local brands
and stock keeping units (SKUs) and to rationalize
its manufacturing base. It also created a strong
platform supporting the company's goal to shift
out of the bakery paradigm into that of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) field.
Mr. Noll voiced these targets publicly
for the first time on March 3, 2003,
when he spoke before securities
analysts at the Metropolitan Club
in New York, NY. He had just
been named successor to Barry
H. Beracha as c.e.o. of SLBG. At
that gathering, he termed the
Sara Lee brand "critical" to the
company's future. "The key element to our growth is the Sara
Lee brand, and we will continue to build on that brand
throughout the entire baked
foods category," he stated.
At that meeting, he also
identified
complexity,
in the form of myriad
brands and SKUs, as
a driver of costs.
Over the years, the
company gained many
small brands through

March 2005 / BAKING & SNACK / 31

Baking & Snack - March 2005

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