Coinciding with Crown Bakeries rolling out its new name, each of its six bakeries will be crowned with its own title. One goal of the rebranding of The Bakery Cos. to the new Crown Bakeries name is to create a unified business along with a culture of competition among individual operations.

“It’s a healthy excitement of ‘my plant is better than yours’ while all of us are working together,” said Cordia Harrington, chief executive officer of the Nashville, Tenn.-based specialty baked goods producer.

Here’s how the company operates today.

In Tennessee, Crown Bakeries Nashville (formerly Nashville Bun Co.) is a 74,000-square-foot facility with a high-speed English muffin line and another that produces biscuits and rolls. Across town, its new 53,000-square-foot plant makes thaw-and-serve croissants and laminated products.

Additionally, Crown Bakeries Dickson (the former Tennessee Bun Co.) operates a single high-speed bun line with versatile bulk and retail packaging capabilities in a 60,000-square-foot plant.

In Georgia, Crown Bakeries Smyrna (acquired in May 2020 from Specialty Bakeries) houses two lines that produce laminated items like croissants, cinnamon rolls and sweet goods, including tea cakes, mini muffins and brownie bites. The 136,000-square-foot operation also has six packaging lines.

Moreover, Crown Bakeries Norcross (formerly Masada Bakery) is a highly versatile 140,000-square-foot plant with six lines that cranks out bread, buns, baguettes, bagels, muffins, Danish and cinnamon/orange rolls. Five lines provide a variety of packaging for foodservice accounts.

And in South Dakota, its Crown Bakeries North Sioux City (previously Steck Wholesale Foods acquired in March 2020) is a 35,000-square-foot bakery with two lines that also turn out biscuits for restaurants and English muffins for foodservice and retail accounts.

Yianny Caparos, president, suggested that the company hopes to have several “bolt-on” additions to the business in the near future.

Crown Bakeries’ rebranding initiative is going live on March 1 at www.crownbakeries.com

This article is an excerpt from the February 2021 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Crown Bakeries, click here.