Baking&Snack - July 2012 - 36

SUGAR BOWL BAKERY

“Quality will always keep doors open for us. ”
Andrew Ly, Sugar Bowl Bakery

Foregoing variety

A high-speed planetary mixer prepares batters for Petite Brownie Bites, Madeleines and Duets.
Blane Sutton

In addition to being a wholesale bakery producing high volumes of bite-size brownies and receiving increasing orders for its Petite Palmier and Madeleine cookies, Sugar Bowl Bakery, Hayward, CA, also ran a low-volume business manufacturing more than 350 kinds of sweet goods. The company baked and delivered a wide variety of orders every day for food service and institutional accounts. However, Sugar Bowl sold off this division of its business when it relocated from San Francisco to the East Bay. “Running two different business models is extremely complicated, said Michael Ly, Sugar Bowl Bakery’s vice” president and general manager. “It was very hard to focus on being great at either one, so we decided that we would rather put all our eggs in the high-volume manufacturing business model. ” Sugar Bowl Bakery sold its food service division to an operator who focuses in that arena; therefore, the sale benefitted both companies, he added, as they now each focus on what it does best. Andrew Ly, president and CEO of Sugar Bowl, said that the downturn in the economy also factored into the company’s decision to sell off this business and the seven retail locations because hospitality sales had slipped with less tourism and fewer conventions.

company such as production and distribution are not working together, but “within this company, you don’t have that situation,” Mr. Almond said. To help Sugar Bowl become even more efficient, Mr. Alman initiated lean manufacturing concepts designed to remove waste. “It eliminates the frustration that people take home with them from work,” he said. “You can work with less downtime, and you also are saving energy because you can produce more products on a cost per basis.”

Updating with automation
When relocating, Sugar Bowl moved much of the equipment from its previous plants in San Francisco — some it continues to use and others sit idle. However, the company purchased millions of dollars in new equipment, including a new automated line for the production of Petite Brownie Bites, Madeleines and Duets at the 58,000-sq-ft Corsair

facility, which dedicates nearly 38,000 sq ft to processing and packaging. “We knew [purchasing this new line] was a risk, but we knew it was even a bigger risk to not try and become more efficient and have the lowest cost to produce these items,” Michael said. Processing on the Line No. 1 starts in a Tonelli high-speed planetary mixer, producing 900 lb of batter per batch, which in turn, makes more than 14,000 brownie bites. A Savage Bros. butter melter prepares this ingredient and pumps it automatically to the mixer. After mixing, the removable mixing bowl is rolled adjacent to the line, and a pump pulls the batter into a hopper located above a Hinds-Bock high-speed multipiston depositor. Batter is portioned into silicone-glazed pans that then travel along Capway Systems conveyors. At the Capway oven loader, pans are aligned and fed into a C.H. Babb air

impingement tunnel oven, which features 12-ft-wide by 55-ft-long useable hearth. The bakery chose this oven after completing baking trials at the manufacturer’s technical center. The oven’s variable-speed circulation fans deliver heated air through adjustable top and bottom distribution ducts, reducing bake time and enabling greater control over the products’ finished appearance, color and moisture, according to its manufacturer. After baking, a Capway depanner uses a vacuum to remove the brownies and place them on adjacent modular plastic conveyor belt to an IJ White spiral cooling conveyor. Kevin Ly, R&D/equipment manager, said the spiral system extended the shelf life of brownie bites by nearly 20 days because it cools the products faster and more uniformly than when done on racks. “You don’t have to just add a bunch of preservatives to make baked foods

/ Baking & Snack / July 2012

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Baking&Snack - July 2012

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