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Model of
2006
anagement
Team of the Year
Consistency
At Fresh Start’s
Stockton, Calif., facility,
the goal is not to strive
for perfection, but to
attain it time after time.
By Dan Malovany
Photos by Vito Palmisano
Y
Scott Parker, general manager,
and Brent Minardi, plant
manager, oversee operations at
Fresh Start’s plant in Stockton,
Calif., where it can produce
hamburger buns, honey wheat
rolls and English muffins.
ear after year, Mike Ward’s
job involved setting the standard for producing hamburger buns across the world for
the nation’s largest restaurant chain. Over
time, the lead baker at Fresh Start
Bakeries has gotten pretty good at it. He
should be, since he’s been perfecting the
production of hamburger buns for nearly
a half a century.
Ward’s workday routine took a dramatic change last year when McDonald’s
Corp. rolled out its new premium chicken
sandwiches served on a honey wheat roll.
Producing the hard roll involves new
equipment, different processes, a more
complex formulation and an entirely separate set of specifications as to what
makes up the perfect product.
“That was probably the biggest change
at McDonald’s during my lifetime,” says
Ward, Fresh Start’s senior vice president
and chief manufacturing officer.
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After mixing the dough
on the honey wheat roll
line, an eight-pocket
divider cranks out 1,700
dozen pieces an hour.
Plant at a Glance
Company: Fresh Start Bakeries
Plant location: Stockton, Calif.
Size: 71,000 sq. ft.
Products: Hamburger buns, honey wheat rolls,
English muffins.
Market: Northern California for buns. All of
California, Hawaii and Pacific Rim for honey
wheat rolls.
No. of lines: Two. Combination hamburger bun
and hard roll line. English muffin line.
No. of Employees: 67
Key Personnel:
General Mgr.: Scott Parker
Plant Mgr.: Brent Minardi
Chief Engineer: John Slater
QA/Customer Service Manager: Virginia Taylor
For a little more than six months before
the roll’s debut last June, McDonald’s and
its bakery suppliers met to define the product’s baking characteristics, physical attributes and process. About a month before
the rollout, the company installed new
makeup equipment, and began making
adjustments to the bun line in its Stockton,
Calif., plant to accommodate production of
the new product, notes Scott Parker, general manager for the facility.
Today, the 71,000-sq.-ft. bakery produces premium chicken rolls for 1,500
stores throughout California as well as
units in Hawaii and the Pacific Rim.
Additionally, Fresh Start provides hamburger buns for more than 500 restaurants in its northern California market,
which includes parts of western Nevada.
Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - FEBRUARY 2006
Maximizing Space
Built in 1987, the Stockton plant operates
three shifts, six days a week. The main
line is actually a combination bun and
hard roll operation, with separate makeup
systems alternately feeding into a common
proofer and oven. The plant also has the
capacity to produce English muffins on a
second line. Space throughout the plant,
however, is pretty tight, so Fresh Start
makes the most out of its footprint by
using vertical hoppers, ceiling-mounted
conveyors and other systems.
“We try to maximize the use of cubic
footage in the facility as best as possible,”
Parker says.
Each week, the bakery uses about
400,000 lb. of flour, which are stored in
two 110,000-lb. silos. Bulk shortening and
high-fructose corn syrup are stored in
60,000-lb. tanks, while 25,000-lb. batches
of cream yeast are stored in a separate system. Fresh Start plans to install a bag dump
handling system that will vacuum transfer
minor and micro ingredients directly into
the mixer. Currently, for some products,
those ingredients are scaled by hand.
For bun production, Fresh Start uses a
liquid sponge system. Flour, water, yeast
and shortening are added to a sponge set
tank, then pumped into a fermentation
tank for a fixed period of time before
passing through a heat exchanger that
cools down the batch before it’s pumped
into a holding tank. Honey wheat rolls
use a different process.
“We have to be a little more careful
with producing the premium chicken
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An automatic system perfectly
scores dough pieces on the
honey wheat roll line.
rolls,” Parker notes. “That process is a little trickier to handle and has less tolerance than the process for our buns.”
Both bun and hard roll doughs are
mixed in a 2,000-lb. horizontal mixer. For
the premium chicken roll makeup, the
dough is dumped into a trough that’s automatically elevated to the divider’s hopper.
The eight-pocket, European-style divider
cuts, rounds and moulds the dough pieces,
which are allowed a short rest before being
placed on an extra-large pan. Generally,
the hard roll makeup line produces up to
1,700 dozen rolls per hour.
The separate bun makeup system,
however, can produce 3,000 to 3,300
dozen pieces an hour, depending on the
size of the product. After mixing, the
bun dough flows through a dough
pump, which also degasses and further
develops it. The dough enters a sixpocket extrusion divider and passes
along a bar moulder before being flour
dusted and receiving a 45-second intermediate proof.
Once relaxed, the dough pieces pass
through a series of sheeter rollers that flatten them into round patties for making
hamburger buns. A flour reclamation sys-
tem vacuums up excess flour from the
pans prior to proofing.
In general, all products receive a consistent proof time at about 110°F and
about 70-75% relative humidity. Once
proofed, buns may be topped with sesame
seeds by a new system that uses programmable controls and photo sensors to accurately place the seeds on each bun, minimize waste and eliminate unnecessary
cleanup, Parker explains. At this point,
hard rolls are automatically scored prior
to baking.
Protecting Product Integrity
After going under a blow-off station that
loosens the buns from the pans for automatic depanning,
product travels
along a ceilingmounted cooler
for 20 minutes,
through metal
detection and into
a six-lane feeder to
one of two
slicer/bulk packers.
If there’s a jam in
packaging, product can be diverted
to an accumulator,
which can hold
The red strip of plastic tells distributors that the package contains honey wheat
about
four minrolls. Here, the air is vacuumed out of the package prior to heat sealing. A center
utes worth of proheat seal allows restaurants to open 12 buns at a time, ensuring greater freshness.
duction from its high-speed line.
Following slicing, product is bulkpacked including a 6-in wide, colored plastic strip that helps the distributor know
what type of buns are in the package. For
example, a red strip indicates that the
package contains rolls, while a lack of a
strip signifies regular hamburger buns.
Just prior to the heat-sealing process, air
is vacuumed out to help extend shelf life
and protect product integrity. A center heat
seal down the center of the 24-pack allows
foodservice operators to use only 12 buns
at a time, thus extending freshness to the
last possible moment, Parker explains.
Stacks of buns are rolled to the facility’s ammonia-chilled freezer, which can
hold about 1,200 stacks or 120,000 pieces
of product. Freezing the product allows
the bakery to have longer runs on some
products, thus eliminating the number of
changeovers and improving plant efficiency. Fresh Start then shuttles products via
tractor trailer to a McDonald’s distributor
located about five miles from the bakery
for further distribution.
To ensure product quality and food
safety, Fresh Start has had a hazardous
analysis critical control point (HACCP)
program in place for about a decade,
notes Brent Minardi, plant manager.
Every hour, for instance, the foreman
takes products as they’re leaving the oven
and logs their internal temperature, seed-
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Dough Doctor on Call
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If the bun has lost its golden glow or the English muffin isn’t toasting right, Fresh Start calls on the
Dough Doctor to nurse everything back to health. That was the nickname given to Mike Ward back in
1997, when he visited Hong Kong working to standardize the production of buns at a new plant, and it
stuck with him ever since.
As senior vice president and chief manufacturing officer, Ward serves as the manufacturing expert in
Fresh Start’s three-member Office of the President. In 1958, he began baking buns and other products at
a wholesale bakery. Nine years later, Harold Freund in California hired him to bake hamburger buns for
McDonald’s.
“I took the challenge
and never regretted it,”
Ward says. “I have 47
To ensure quality
and consistency at
years of baking experithe Stockton plant,
ence, mostly bun bakthe product evaluaing.”
tion system snaps
images of random
Over the years, Ward
products and comhas
traveled the world
pares their color,
with his wife, setting up
size and shape to
parameters already
Fresh Start bakeries
programmed into
throughout Europe and
the computer.
working with its partners
in Central America,
South America and
Australia to ensure that the products produced in Malmo, Sweden, and Duisburg, Germany, taste the
same as those baked in Juiz de Fora, Brazil and Melbourne, Australia.
Moreover, McDonald’s has sent the Dough Doctor as a consultant to standardize operations in
Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Moscow and Singapore, just to name a few.
“Going into new countries is tough work, but we always met the challenge no matter what our customers asked us to do,” Ward says. “We have to work with language barriers, understanding culture differences and different standards for food safety, sanitation and so on. Ingredient differences always make
it tough. Equipment differences are a challenge, but we’ve worked really hard and made sacrifices to get
things done for them.”
In addition to standardizing bun production, Ward had to work on a variety of different products. In
South America, for instance, Fresh Start and its partners are leading suppliers of ice cream cones, specialty cakes and other local products for both its core restaurant customers and others as well. In most
cases, Fresh Start sends new managers from its international plants to its U.S. operations to familiarize
them with its operational practices and expose them to the company’s values and culture.
As it diversifies its business, Fresh Start is hiring regional food scientists to spearhead new product
development. For example, it recently hired Jeanny Zimeri, a former food scientist at Kraft’s Nabisco operation, to head up product development at Fresh Start’s venture in Guatemala.
In the United States, the Dough Doctor has helped improved the shelf life and softness of hamburger
buns, and reformulated the English muffin to enhance its flavor, refine its shape and eliminate excess
cornmeal that can make a mess on a drive-thru diner’s lap.
“Over the years, we helped established the target for the world’s production of McDonald’s bun products. We kind of helped write the book on these products,” Ward says.
Working with McDonald’s has made Fresh Start a better baking company, he adds.
“McDonald’s has been a good partner. They’ve helped us set and strive for higher standards,” he
notes. “It’s been a two-way street all the way on that. We’re both looking for excellence.”
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ing, shape, height, color and other parameters as a part of its statistical process
control (SPC) system. The plant’s quality
assurance manager also monitors products, swabs the bakery for microbial
analysis, and sends out incoming ingredients to an outside lab for monthly testing.
Moreover, prior to entering the cooler,
random buns and rolls pass under a product evaluation system that snaps an image
of the product and compares the product
color, shape and size to parameters already
programmed into the computer. Fresh Start
is looking to install an upgraded monitoring system with an automatic product
rejector as well, Parker says.
A second monitoring system is located
in the packaging area where operators take
sliced products and run them under the
system on an hourly basis. Here, operators
measure not only the product’s shape and
color, but also the dimensions of the heel
and the crown to make sure they’re within
predetermined specifications.
“These systems have been a big addition to the facility, even though they’ve
been here for more than five years,”
Parker notes. “They allow us to monitor
all physical attributes of the bun.”
To monitor plant efficiency, the
Stockton plant is linked to a central database that tracks all ingredients and finished goods. It also has a complete
accounting system that monitors payables,
receivables and other financial and administrative functions. Reports are sent to the
Brea, Calif., headquarters on a weekly
basis. Fresh Start also has a computerized
preventive maintenance system that tracks
parts and automatically generates work
orders for equipment.
Future Improvements
To improve production, the bakery also is
replacing the heat exchangers in its ferment system with higher capacity ones
that will transfer the sponge more quickly
and with lower pounds-per-square-inch.
That will cause a lot less stress and will
improve the quality of the final product.
The bakery may also start looking to
automate the stacking and un-stacking of
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its new honey wheat roll pans, which are
too large for its existing system. Currently,
pans have to be manually loaded and
unloaded onto conveyors.
Many ongoing improvements, Parker
says, will come from the bakery’s
“opportunity for improvement” (OFI)
system. Specifically, that’s a terminal in
the break room where employees can
suggest ways to improve the plant’s operations. The OFI team then reviews ideas
on a monthly basis. If it elects to implement them, employees are awarded
prizes or gift certificates.
It’s just another way in which the
Stockton plant improves on its model of
consistency. SF&WB
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Honey wheat rolls pass through metal detection at the Stockton plant.
Reprinted with permission from Snack Food and Wholesale Bakery February 2006