For Bread Los Angeles, a wholesale artisan bread bakery in
the competetive Los Angeles market, business is good. The bakery
manages to keep quality up and costs down.
Counting major hotels, restaurants and even the Staples Center among its 250 accounts, Bread Los Angeles is committed to 140 deliveries per day on seven different routes. Last month, the bakery moved into a 20,000-sq.-ft. facility, double the size of its previous production center.
“We didn't double our size to keep the revenue the same,” says Philippe Noel, general manager. “We need to grow into this place. To stay competitive and add accounts, we need to efficiently produce the highest quality bread, and look to exploit advantages.”
Noel sees a particular advantage in the fermented baguette, the bakery's signature product. The baguette is large, 27 ins. long, and Bread Los Angeles produces a lot of them. To efficiently do this, Noel uses baguette trays from Demarle with non-stick rubber silicone mesh fluted inserts. The trays he uses are not the standard U.S. size of 18 ins. by 26 ins., but are instead 29.5 ins. by 31.5 ins., a standard European size.
“This bigger size lets us put more baguettes in less space and allows for our longer baguettes. Also, we can go nine baguettes wide on a rack,” Noel says. “That means on a rack of 12 screens, we can produce 108 baguettes.”
Noel also likes that when the baguette trays need to be re-coated, he just has to replace the mesh inserts. The durable stainless steel frames don't need to replaced. And, Demarle stocks the replacement inserts in the United States, so changing them is easy.
“Durability is another key in a bakery setting, and I find that with Demarle,” Noel says. “Bakers are bakers. If you have only one or two bakers, you can supervise how your tools are being treated. We have 21 currently here, so it's hard to keep an eye on how employees are handling the trays.”
Noel attributes the durability of Demarle's baguette trays to their flexibility, allowing them to avoid some of the dings of constant use. Rigid products are more fragile, and more likely to dent. Even with his previous facility's tight washing space, he was impressed by how infrequently he had to replace Demarle non-stick mesh inserts. He's excited to have to do so even less now that he has the space and machinery for a more efficient pan washing system.
The non-stick baguette trays aren't the only Demarle products in the bakery. Every product that isn't baked in the deck oven is proofed and baked on a Demarle screen. Considering the amount of restaurant and hotels in the bakery's client registry, many ordering dinner rolls and other rack oven-friendly products, quite a bit of the bakery's production relies on Demarle products.
After expanding and attempting to increase revenue in an already competitive area, Noel knows he has to stay on his toes. He believes that Demarle's non-stick trays and screens help produce bread at the quality that will make the bakery competitive and efficient.
“You get your money's worth with Demarle,” Noel says. “If we didn't, we wouldn't be buying from them.”
For more information about Demarle USA products, call 888/FLEXPAN or visit www.demarleusa.com
