Baking & Snack - October 2008 - 35

38
the future it could mean for his intermediate-sized
wholesale plant.
DYNAMIC LEADER. The story of Crawford's Bakery is
hard to tell without focusing on the company's vibrant
leader. Mr. Crawford has a dynamic personality and passion for the industry. In 2001, he became a Certified Master
Baker (CMB) through the Retail Bakers of America (RBA).
It was an 8-year process, and he said that achieving this
certification "was like falling in love with baking again."
Becoming a CMB forced him to relearn and to revisit things that he'd forgotten. For example, Mr. Crawford said it helped him to brush up on his formulation
skills and the ability to switch formulas to percentage
of flour-weight basis (bakers percent) vs. standard (formula percent) or sugar-weight basis.
He takes pride in the bakery's ability to work with
formulas and to adapt older formulas to meet today's
bakery marketplace. If a customer brings in a 60-yearold formula and wants to make it fat free, Crawford's
Bakery has the expertise to assist with those efforts. "We
can take something from a formula to a product in a
couple of days, and our customers rely on the fact that
we can do that," he added.
Mr. Crawford, who served as RBA treasurer for eight
years, displays great enthusiasm for the industry, and
he claims that he cannot remember the last time he
was bored at work because he always has something
interesting to work on. "My job is still as much fun at
58 years of age as it was at 30," he said. "I still get the
same rush. I get up in the morning and think it is really
a privilege and a blessing to get to work every day. I get
to spend time doing what I want to do."
Also, Mr. Crawford is extremely goal-oriented, a trait
that he brings to his business. "If Type A is good, we
want to be A-pluses," he quipped.
As far as meeting goals established for the bakery this
year, Mr. Crawford suggested that the company is on
track. "We scored higher than 900 on our AIB International inspection," he noted. "We are going to get our
manual to AIB for checking our Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) program, and then an AIB
inspector will come out to do the actual HACCP audit,
and we will go through accreditation."
Crawford's Bakery received a Superior rating on its
most recent AIB International audit, moving up from
an Excellent rating the previous year.
The bakery's HAACP program is being overseen by
Jeff Hoots, controller/administrator at Crawford's Bakery. Mr. Hoots, who is Mr. Crawford's son-in-law, also
manages the Retail Business Improvement Alliance (see
"RPIA/RBIA" on Page 40).
PROCESSING SOLUTIONS. When asked how business
was going this year, Mr. Crawford said it was "down," yet
BAKING & SNACK / October 2008

ᮣ An employee prepares to
remove coffee cakes from a conveyor after they have been iced.

Out of Retailing
Crawford's Bakery & Deli's flagship retail
location in downtown Indianapolis closed
because the lease expired for this location
that had been in operation since Columbus
Day 1987. "It is where the business started, and
together, Karen and I have grown into other
businesses that need our focus."
Ms. Crawford noted that it is always sad to
see a family-owned-and-operated bakery close.
"We consider the store one of our children,
who for the past 21 years we watched grow
up," she said. "Now it is time for that child to
move out of the house."
They are leaving the retail operation with smiles,
according to Mr. Crawford. The Crawfords publicly
announced the store's closing two months prior to
its last day. Mr. Crawford informed its employees
about the decision nearly two weeks before that
and gave them the opportunity to transfer to the
wholesale plant after the store closed. Twelve of
the 14 staff members from downtown decided to
stay with the company and have been blended
into the 30-plus member staff that works at the
northwest Indianapolis facility.
he did not mean sales had actually slipped behind the
previous year's figures. "We are actually up 10% this year,
which is like not being up because we were used to 70 to
80% growth in the past 3-plus years," he explained.
The 25,680-sq-ft bakery features 10,000 sq ft for
warehousing and 10,680 sq ft of production space as
well as a variety of work stations where employees produce the wide array of baked foods. Mr. Crawford was
extremely complimentary of his workers, adding that

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