The lunch rush starts early at Bountiful Bread in Albany, N.Y. At 11 a.m., the line of customers already snakes through the store and stretches almost to the front door.

David White and Mark Burgasser never envisioned such long lunch lines when they opened Bountiful Bread 10 years ago in a 1,100-sq.-ft. storefront in Albany's Stuyvesant Plaza. That is mostly because they never envisioned serving lunch.

Originally, the co-founders' vision was to open a bakery to produce handcrafted, artisan breads for retail and diverse, local, full-service restaurants owned by White's management company.

“The week before we were scheduled to open, we were baking loaves and giving them away,” Burgasser recalls. “People liked our bread so much, many of them asked us if we would be offering sandwiches at lunch.”

Not that there were any shortages of lunch spots in the immediate area. In fact, numerous well-known, fast-casual (some bread-centric) chains have units within a one-mile radius of the bakery.

“Customers told us they liked the fact that our bread was made from scratch every day right on the premises,” he says. “They told us they wanted their sandwiches to be made on that bread.”

Seating at Bountiful Bread is at such a premium between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. that the WiFi service is suspended for these two hours each day to encourage table turnover. No one complains, Burgasser says.

Even more surprising is the fact that there were no complaints when the bakery recently increased the prices of its breads by 25 cents to keep up with rising ingredient costs.

“Our customers are more quality- than price-oriented,” he explains. “They understand the value of a consistently excellent product.”

Profitable expansion

In 2004, Bountiful Bread expanded from 1,100 sq. ft., half of which was used for bread and sweets production, to its current 4,800-sq.-ft. space across the plaza. About 35 percent of this space is dedicated to bakery production.

Prior to its relocation, sales were about $12,000 per week.

“We had hoped to build sales to about $25,000 in the new, bigger facility,” Burgasser says. “However, sales jumped to more than $30,000 the first week following the move.”

Of Bountiful Bread's $2.4 million in annual revenues, about 88 percent come from retail sales and catering. Retail bakery product sales account for close to 19 percent of that total (4 percent from retail breads and rolls; 8 percent from cookies, brownies and bars; 5 percent from breakfast muffins, buns, breads and cakes; and 2 percent from tarts, cupcakes and mini-cakes).

Bread-based items also are the focus of the 35-seat café's menu. All soups and salads come with sides of oven-fresh breads or rolls. Customers also can have their soup, chowder or chili served in boule bowls.

Wholesale to White Management's six full-service restaurants accounts for the remaining 12 percent of sales. At the Butcher Block, a steak and seafood restaurant, loaves for the salad bar are stored for slicing in Bountiful Bread's logo bags. As a result, Burgasser says, the breads served in the restaurant become big sellers in the bakery.

Adding more wholesale accounts is not a priority for Bountiful Bread, according to Burgasser, “because we want to keep our concept fresh and our bakery a destination.” He points out that the bakery's base of regular customers, which includes students and faculty from about a half dozen local universities, people who work at area businesses and merchants from the shopping plaza, spans a 15-mile radius.

Bringing customers into the bakery also provides ample opportunity for sampling and cross promoting. Premium jams, oils and dips, for example, come with a free loaf of bread.