Wire-cut cookie pucks adhere to trademarked FastPan Sheets during a cryogenic freeze.
 
Recruiting talent

In 2014, the building’s shell needed not only new equipment lines but also an all-new workforce. The Springdale plant currently employs 140 people, most of which were hired locally in Northwest Arkansas.

Considering that from the time South Coast took possession to the time the lines were up and running a mere nine months had passed, the company had its work cut out for it to fill that workforce quickly. As with many new bakeries, the first position General Manager Dan Kallesen filled was maintenance. “Allan Shannon, our maintenance manager, helped us build out the facility, so he knows every nook and cranny of this building,” he said.


Starting Springdale’s new workforce with maintenance was a must. “We launched a full-out search, and once you get the right person in that position, it’s amazing the talent that it draws,” Mr. Kallesen said. “We attracted people Allan had worked with in the past at other plants, and we were able to cherry-pick a foundational maintenance team.”

In the baking industry, maintenance is known to be one of the hardest and most valuable positions to fill. And while the industry continues searching for strategic ways to attract and retain positions like these, seeking talent from outside baking is often the first step. For example, South Coast was able to fish in the talent pond of Springdale and its neighboring communities that have a number of different manufacturing plants.

Mr. Shannon, a certified electrician, and Mr. Kallesen partnered with Ed Lamy, who has been South Coast’s chief engineer for 25 years and was the designer of the new plant. “After more than two decades at Irvine, he basically had a blank canvas in Springdale,” Mr. Kallesen said.

Cranking out cookies

When South Coast launched its FastPan technology, the interest was almost immediate, and the growth was exponential. “When we started with FastPan, our first order from a major customer was 2,000 cases, and we muscled through it,” Mr. Hayden recalled. “Then it went to 6,000 cases, and we muscled through that.” What happened next was nothing short of extraordinary. The order skyrocketed to 340,000 cases. “That’s when we said we went through the tornado of production. It was a game changer,” he said.

With those kinds of orders and the need to extend reach beyond the Western US, the plant in Irvine wasn’t cutting it. In Springdale, the 105,000-sq-ft facility dedicates 30,000 sq ft to processing and 15,000 sq ft to packaging. The 60,000-sq-ft warehouse includes 33,000 sq ft of freezer space … enough to fit Irvine’s entire production floor.

South Coast was designed for long runs, cranking out roughly 4 million cookies per day. The bakery doesn’t even consider customers that require less than a million cookies per year.

Sugar and flour are stored in KB Systems bulk handling silos, and liquid sugar and molasses in tanks, also from KB, all of which were installed in the plant’s third stage of Mr. Lamy’s design. “When we opened, we were hand-scaling bag flour,” Mr. Hayden said.

In a separate room off the production area, quality control personnel hand-scale minor and micro ingredients behind closed doors. “We want the minors and micros to be in their own environment, but we also do this to maintain the confidentiality of the formula,” Mr. Hayden said, adding that no one on the production floor is privy to every step of the process.

Bulk ingredients are weighed on KB scales before being dropped into two 2,400-lb Shaffer, a Bundy Baking Solution, mixers, specifically designed for cookie dough, where minors, micros and inclusions are hand-added. South Coast uses the same equipment suppliers for both the Springdale and Irvine locations to ensure consistency in the process. “We only do cookies, so all the equipment is designed specifically for cookies,” Mr. Hayden said. “This mixer is the best for cookie dough because it incorporates the inclusions without punishing the dough.”

From the mixers, the dough is transported to the hoppers of Baker Perkins cookie machines. During Baking & Snack’s visit, dough on Line No. 1 was sheeted and cut into cookie cakes, and Line No. 2 wire-cut dough for frozen pucks.

Once the cookies are cut, the magic of FastPan ­happens. On the Baker Perkins wire-cutter, cookies and cakes are dropped directly on to FastPan sheets that are split down the middle and then cut by guillotine based on the order. In this case, one cookie-cake on a sheet for Line No. 1 and twelve 1.5-oz pucks per sheet on Line No. 2.

Once the sheets are portioned, a quality control worker manually spot-checks the weight of sheets on Line 2. “Each sheet should weigh precisely 18 oz, so we constantly monitor at this stage to ensure the proper weight,” Mr. Hayden said.

Next, cookies glide on their FastPans through Linde cryogenic freezers — 80 ft on Line No. 1, 60 ft on Line 2 — for about 3 min., on average, depending on the product and its size.

Continue reading for information on South Coast's automation setup.