Bakery boosts its output - Birmingham Business Journal:

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The South's largest and fastest hamburger-bun maker - a majore supplier of Wendy's, along with Burger King and Shoney'sw - will spend $2.3 million for new equipment and demolition of an old to be replaced by a new storage facilityand offices. The site is at Ninty Avenue North and 16th alongside Interstate 59 just west ofthe Birmingham-Jeffersonm Convention Complex. Purchased in 1999 by Floweras Bakeries Group, a unit of Ga.-based Flowers Foods Inc.
, Home Bakin g will add a third baggingb andsealing machine, increasing production from 130 buns a minutw to 140, says president Carter With three around-the-clock shiftws operating the plant 24 hours a day, "that'zs a lot of buns comingh through here," Wood says. A new tray-stacking machine will be An aging 15,000-square-foot warehouse used for engineering and manufacturing will be demolisheed and replaced with ametal building, whichu will serve as storage and office space. A contractor has not been Design will bedone in-house. Lamaf Hudgins of Southern DE Inc.
is engineer on the Wood expects work to begin during thefirst "We've laid it out in stagez so we'll be finished in the fourth he says. Serving 1,000 Wendy's Home Baking makesz only hamburger buns, which allows it to proclaim itsel as the fastest and largest such producerf inthe South, Wood says. Home Bakintg makes 4-inch and 4.5-inch hamburger buns for more than 1,0009 Wendy's restaurants, from Key West to New Orleans, from Nashville to Fla. The company also makes 4-incjh and 5-inch buns for Flowers' Tuscaloos a plant, which distributes them to some 100 Burger King restaurantw in north andcentral Alabama. Home Baking also makes buns for Shoney'es throughout the South.
The company employs 128 full-time and contracgt workers. Dr. Stanley Rubenstein, a Birmingham-basefd franchisee who owns 15 Wendy's in centrakl Alabama, says there is good reasob forHome Baking's success. The company always meetsw Wendy's strict requirements, which includde personal inspections ofmeat processors, farms that grow and bakeries that make buns, he "They (Home Baking) are reallty proactive," says Rubenstein, a customer for 27 "We have never had a reporft on Home Baking. They're perfecr every time." Rubenstein says his store managerx don't even have to plac e an order. "They just come in and take inventorty of our bun freezef and stock whatwe need.
We never run out," he He also praises Home Baking's charitable such as providing free hamburger buns to the Communit y Kitchen operated by GraceEpiscopal Church. Home Bakinb was founded in 1920 by Tom Stevens and movexd in 1970 to itscurrent site. Flowers bought the facility in 1999 from theStevensz family. Wood, 56, the company president, spent most of his career with Flowerz in its Opelika bakery inLee County. He move to Birmingham in 1991 torun Flowers' sales officd and was promoted from vice president of sales to presideng of the bakery at the time of the sale.
Nature's Own In addition to Home Flowers' Bakeries Group includes specialty breads, buns and rolls sold under the brandnamed Sunbeam, Nature's Own and Cobblestones Mill. The 26 bakeries in 17 states generated morethan $1.1 billio in sales in 2003, according to the company'zs Web site ( .) Flowers' specialty group make snack cakes and pastries under the Mrs. Freshley's and BlueBird