Commercial bakery production, as anyone in the business can tell you, is not for the faint of heart. Day-to-day challenges like producing delicious products, maintaining equipment, keeping costs as low as possible, managing a workforce, and other items on a long-must-do list is more than a little tough. Then, throw in obstacles like the COVID-19 pandemic’s arrival five years ago and plugging along as a bakery pro seems nearly impossible.

The team behind Janey Lou’s, though, has managed to beat the odds grow its operation, rather than just surviving. After first checking in with the Salt Lake City-based company more than a decade ago, the leadership team welcomed Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery to its facility for an update on how things are going, and to hear some secrets of its success.

In the beginning

Janey Lou’s got its start about in 1996 in the first retail bakery run by the Fillmore family. It quickly earned a reputation for its fresh-baked bread and pastries, and for rice crispy bars and peanut butter bars sold via the family’s deli and gift shop in Spanish Fork, Utah. They started selling some of those famous pastries to convenience stores, then toted the wares in an old Subaru converted into a delivery vehicle puttering along from customer to customer. 

Word kept spreading, demand kept growing, and soon they opened their first wholesale operation. According to Benjamin Hayes, marketing manager for Janey Lou’s, c-stores remain a key target, along with grocery retailers and foodservice chains. He states its discerning customers share desire: treats that offer better-for-you benefits.

“We hit a lot of more upper end grocery stores that want whole food ingredients without a lot of preservatives or additives,” Hayes shares, “we have a cleaner-labeled products and most of our things that we bake are built with a quality conscious consumer in mind .”

Quality counts

While offering BFY bona fides and premium might add to the price tag, Ryan Fillmore, vice president of business development, shares that Janey Lou’s insists on maintaining high quality, a standard shared by one particular segment of its consumers.

“We've usually focused on having quality ingredients over the cheapest food,” he says. “Over the past few years we've seen a trend: we think millennials are focusing more on what they eat. Rather than focusing on buying a house early, we think they're spending more of their money on what they eat and looking at what the ingredients are.”

Benjamin says there may be a bit of a tradeoff between quality and clean-label characteristics. However, he notes, Janey Lou’s finds the balance not only manageable, but also worth it. 

“Our shelf life is comparable to other places, especially because they're frozen, but once they're baked off, obviously they need to be sold within a certain timeframe,” he observes. “But it usually is a happy medium because we think that you get the closest to scratch bakery quality with bake in store, with taking some of the leg work out when we're providing the product.”

Solid strengths

While no longer delivered from the back of a vintage Subaru, Janey Lou’s remains popular with consumers and customers. After outgrowing its capacities several times, the bakery firm now calls a 50,000-square-foot production facility home. Nowadays, the plant turns out a slew of tempting, tasty treats, such as cinnamon rolls, various breads and rolls, premium cookies, and the rice crispy treats that helped get the ball rolling.

“We're really strong in the gourmet cookie category, in the pizza category, and dough and roll products,” boasts Fillmore. “We're a USDA-inspected facility. Protein-enrobed products, like pocket sandwiches, and kolaches are a large segment of our business.”

The Janey Lou’s pizza portfolio includes both crusts with no sauce or topping, and ready-to-bake, fully topped pies. According to Ryan, demand has been strong enough that the company is in the process doubling the size of its current facility in an expansion with a price tag estimated at more than $22 million and slated to be completed in July of 2026. In addition to a bigger footprint, Ryan reports, the upgraded plant will include some tech upgrades.

“We'll increase automation in our new facility for high-volume SKUs.” he says. “We currently have a really nice platform where we have a significant amount of automation, but we're still nimble enough that we can make like 6,000 pound runs of product custom for supply chains; in our new facility it'll be fully automated, so we'll transition all of our high-volume SKUs to that half of the facility while maintaining our nimbleness in our current set.

Fillmore anticipates the expanded facility will help Janey Lou’s meet growing demand and expand its current reach.

Success story

Fillmore says the company’s sustained growth can be chalked up to a number of reasons, including the changing makeup of the part of America Janey Lou’s calls home.

“The population in the Western US where we're primarily based is increasing and there's a lot of people moving here, a lot of eaters and consumers, but we just expanded our reach through our broker network and our distribution points and our customer base,” he states.

Also, the company’s insistence on clean-label, premium products attracts the attention of discerning consumers.

“We have a really strong product portfolio for frozen dough,” Fillmore says. “Our products are very high quality and I think a lot of the consumer base being GenX and Millennials are kind of looking for products that are cleaner-label, higher quality.”

Finally, Fillmore says, the company’s time-saving, high-end frozen doughs appeal to foodservice operators looking to serve high quality unique products with a fraction of the labor. 

“There's a lot of supply chains that are looking for ways to make their products less thaw-and-serve, but still eliminate a great portion of labor through the use of frozen doughs that are still finished off in store and give a made-in-store quality and feel,” he notes. “We just nicely fit that space.”

To continue meeting its client’s high standards, as well as its own, Fillmore says, investing in the right equipment for the job is a key part of the strategy. 

“Our new line is pretty cool—it’s got some really neat engineering features, ”he shares. “We have definitely a unique product that's going to be made on our new line.”

Fillmore says with the new double-size facility, Janey Lou’s will have maxed out available space on its current site. However, the company is looking ahead and forging strategies for future growth.

“We have some holdings in the Midwest, so as we continue to grow we plan to build another plant to service the needs east and us handle the west in our current facility,” he states, adding that he anticipates increased reach of its pizza and dough-wrapped sausages: “There's a lot of positivity around it, so we think it'll grow substantially, maybe to the point where it'll merit us building a plant in the Midwest to service the east.”

Customer Capabilities

In addition to changing its footprint and tech to accommodate growth, Janey Lou’s works hard to accommodate change and customization requests from customers, with a focus on strong product development capabilities.

“We have an incredible product development kitchen, a highly skilled team of artisan bakers that handle product development for supply chains—that’s where our facility's unique,
 Fillmore says. “We're going to have incredible automation on one side and still the nimbleness of being able to produce 6,000 to 12,000 lbs, whereas (as a minimum with other competitors) probably a full truckload is at a baseline for minimum order quantities.”

The Janey Lou’s team, in addition to its competitive customer service and quality, endeavors to maintain an edge as an appealing employer. With many production-centric companies struggling to recruit and retain workers, Fillmore says, the company is better poised to face such challenges.

“Janey Lou's is a super competitively paying employer—we have a great benefits package and we're probably one of the highest compensating payers in our industry,” Fillmore says. “We have really good retention of our employees, so we haven't found it difficult to retain and keep staff. We think that the population for workforce in Salt Lake City is healthy; we don't feel a squeeze there.”

Fillmore reports while the expansion bodes well for Janey Lou’s future, the process has not been without its obstacles.

“It takes a while to get permitting done and all the materials pre-ordered; there's certain pieces of equipment that are a year out in advance once you order them, you can expect delays on that as well, so the timeline of construction is probably our biggest constraint,” he confides.

As the company continues to expand its reach and grow its market share, Fillmore says, it remains a family affair.

“We’re big enough to handle national supply chains, but small and nimble enough to turn product development quickly and have a quick commercialization process.” he says.” 

And the Janey Lou’s baking family, Fillmore says, is positioned to keep growing and going strong, with both current core competencies and new potential categories and niches.