Baking & Snack - July 2022 - 25

OPERATIONS
Bread Man Baking Co.
Bread Man Baking strategically invests in automation to meet the surging
demand for its specialty breads and rolls without compromising at all.
by Dan Malovany
T
Tasos Katsaounis is a businessman by trade and a baker
by heart, and he's running down a dream. As a young
boy, the first-generation Greek-American grew up baking
his grandmother's Old World olive and oregano
bread with his mother until he went to college. Then after
22 years of stressful consulting for C-suite clients at
global companies, he sought solace in baking as a hobby
again, chucked a job he didn't enjoy and started Bread
Man Baking in 2018.
" I was always a person who wanted to be passionate
and enjoy what I did, " said Mr. Katsaounis, president
and chief executive officer of the Houston-based
artisan bakery. " Call me a dreamer if you will. I found
myself happier baking, and the demand grew out of my
own kitchen. "
After less than four years of producing naturally longfermented
breads and rolls for many of the top restaurants
throughout south Texas, the bustling 4,800-squarefoot
bakery needed a bigger home. That prompted Mr.
Katsaounis to develop a comprehensive plan with 25
Excel charts for growing the business.
But as the saying goes, no battle plan survives contact
with the enemy, and the enemy was time. After five
months of delays because of equipment and other supply
chain issues, the new 40,000-square-foot operation with
three semiautomatic lines began production right after
Christmas last year.
" We expected to have two months of training at the
old facility as we got this one up to speed and tested everything,
and we had two days before we began delivering
product, " Mr. Katsaounis recalled. " When it came to
expanding in the middle of COVID, most people would
look at it as insane, but in reality, we had done a good
job developing a pipeline for a bunch of businesses that
we couldn't do in our old facility. "
Bread Man Baking has come a long way in a short
time. The new $3.5 million facility, replete with $2 million
in new equipment, can turn out up to 30,000 units
a day compared to 5,000 pieces daily at its previous operation.
The bakery offers 37 varieties of its top-selling
sourdough breads, artisan batards and brioche buns
along with ciabatta, focaccia, Parker House dinner rolls
and Pullman-style sandwich breads. All these clean label
baked goods are made with natural starters.
" It's always been about time and fermentation, " noted
Drew Gimma, director of operations. " We don't skimp
on fermentation ever because then we're not producing
the bread that we're known for. We also do not use any
chemical additives. That's a hard-and-fast rule that we
will not change. If someone says they want a one-month
shelf life with this bread, we tell them we'll work with
clean additives only up to 10 days, but we can't do one
month with this particular bread. "
Bread Man Baking currently distributes fresh products
to 170 high-end restaurants along with a rising
number of retailers throughout Texas, and it recently
expanded to Denver and Atlanta through a foodservice
partnership. Moreover,
hired a sales representative to broaden distribution
nationally.
Although most of Bread Man Baking's production is
fresh, Mr. Katsaounis pointed out the leased facility fortunately
came with a 6,000-square-foot freezer with a
500-pallet storage capacity that allows it to broaden its
www.bakingbusiness.com / July 2022 Baking & Snack 25
Freshly baked
loaves cool on
racks before
they're packaged
at Bread Man
Baking's new
facility.
Photos by Jenn Duncan,
Duncan Artistry
the company recently
http://www.bakingbusiness.com
Baking & Snack - July 2022

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