Since Sliced Bread

In this premier episode of season five of Since Sliced Bread , Jack Bobo, food futurist and chief executive officer of Futurity, a food foresight company, gives a tour of how consumers and food companies’ sustainability priorities sometimes misalign. Listen to this episode to hear what the baking industry is doing right and where companies can grow to not only better serve the consumer but also st...

Baking & Snack ’s podcast Since Sliced Bread is taking a closer look at why companies are putting sustainability front and center and what it takes to create an effective program. Be on the lookout for season five, premiering February 3.

In the final episode of Since Sliced Bread ’s fourth season, Marjorie Hellmer, president of Cypress Research Associates, returns to dive into some best practices bakeries can implement to recruit and retain employees.

This October, the American Bakers Association (ABA) and NDP Analytics released the findings of the Baking Industry Frontline Workforce Landscape study. On this episode of Since Sliced Bread , Mary Donovan, principal and economist, NDP Analytics, will explain what the data means for the baking industry. As a participant in the study, Pat Richards, vice president of organizational development and re...

As one of the sponsors of the Workforce Gap Study discussed in the first episode of Since Sliced Bread ’s fourth season, the American Society of Baking (ASB) has been hard at work addressing the issue since the studies 2016 release. In this episode, Brittny Stephenson Ohr, director of product management at Sugar Foods Corp. and third vice chair at ASB, details what the society has been addressing...

For more than forty years, Alvarado Street Bakery has operated as a 100% employee-owned bakery. Due to its co-op structure, the company has experienced low turnover and high employee engagement. In this episode, Dae Lee, director of marketing at Alvarado Street Bakery, discusses how a worker-owned co-op operates and how it’s principles could apply to any commercial bakery.

By partnering with the International Institute of Akron, Main Street Gourmet has found a loyal workforce in refugees that have resettled in the United States.  Hear what hiring from this population entails and how it can benefit bakeries and their employees in our discussion with Kelly Loebick-Frashella, director of human resources, Main Street Gourmet.

Kansas State University’s Department of Grain Science and Industry has been supplying the next generation of bakers to the commercial baking industry for years. The department itself though, struggles with the same recruitment issues the industry does. In this episode, KSU Grain Sciences Department Head Gordon Smith, PhD, and Aaron Clanton, Baker’s National Education Foundation instructor, share h...

For Greyston Bakery, Yonkers, NY, an unorthodox hiring model has opened the doors to overlooked labor pools to fill open positions at the bakery, and in the process the company is rewriting the rules on employment. Joe Kenner, president and chief executive officer, and Rich Jamesley, vice president and general manager, explain the company’s open hiring policy, how it works and how it has benefited...

Kicking off the  fourth season of Since Sliced Bread  is a conversation with Marjorie Hellmer, president, Cypress Research Associates, a firm that has conducted research on the baking industry’s behalf for 18 years. Ms. Hellmer will discuss how the industry has evolved since Cypress conducted the 2016 Workforce Gap Study commissioned by the American Bakers Association and the American So...

After examining the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on commercial bakeries, Baking & Snack ’s podcast Since Sliced Bread will return Oct. 14 to take on the workforce crisis. In the new season, Charlotte Atchley, senior editor, Baking & Snack , speaks with guests about how companies can solve the industry’s inescapable problem of hiring and retaining talent of all skill levels.

In 2005, Leidenheimer Baking Co. endured Hurricane Katrina as it flooded 80% of New Orleans and displaced more than one million people. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the bakery and the entire food industry very differently than Hurricane Katrina, but as companies try to survive, the heart of each of these crises is much the same. For season three’s final episode, we speak to Sandy Whann, pres...

When the pandemic arrived in the United States and government orders shut down the economy, the American Bakers Association and SNAC International jumped into action. Both associations saw themselves as connection points between the industries they serve and the state and federal governments. They also served as resources of information from government agencies as it changed so quickly in those ea...

The very nature of a pandemic means that COVID-19 has disrupted business and lives around the world. As the world’s largest baking company, Grupo Bimbo has had a front row seat to the entire crisis. In this episode, Jonathan Berger, vice president of human relations, Bimbo Bakeries USA, shares how the company’s global footprint prepared it for the pandemic as it unfolded.

In this episode of Since Sliced Bread , Yianny Caparos, president of The Bakery Cos., explains why the business didn’t shy away from growth despite the pandemic’s uncertainty. Hear the unique challenges that came with expanding in the midst of COVID-19 and how the company overcame those obstacles.

To keep the production line running, baking and snack companies are finding new ways to support and incentivize their workers throughout the pandemic. Baking & Snack spoke with Rob Sarlls, president and chief executive officer, Wyandot Snacks, about why the company decided to give its employees snacks, extra pay and quarantine aid during the crisis and how it has impacted morale.

As bakeries develop their COVID-19 contingency plans, shutting down operations for an outbreak should be a part of their strategy. In this episode, Jaime Correa, chief executive officer of AbiMar Foods, Abilene, Texas, shared the company’s experience closing its facilities when an outbreak was detected.

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has upended consumer buying habits and the way business is done, the supermarket has been where all of these changes have converged. In this episode of Since Sliced Bread , David Ball, president and chief executive officer of Ball Foods, shares how his 26 grocery stores managed employee safety, avoided supply chain disruptions and kept customers’ carts full d...

Running a bakery during a pandemic comes with a lot of extra challenges from rearranging production to keeping employees safe. In this episode, Jeff Dearduff, president and CEO of Gold Standard Baking, shared how increased demand at the supermarket and evaporating foodservice business changed Gold Standard’s operations. He also discusses how the company helped workers adapt by forming a COVID-19 e...

The COVID-19 pandemic upended life around the world in ways no one could have predicted. Since mid-March, the US has seen panic buying at the supermarket, stay-at-home orders, school closings and more measures all aimed at hindering the spread of COVID-19. And those measures had implications for food purchases and the commercial baking industry. In this episode, Jonna Parker, principal, fresh cent...

The new normal is here, but what does that mean for the baking industry? In season three of Baking & Snack ’s podcast Since Sliced Bread , Senior Editor Charlotte Atchley will look at how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the sector and how commercial bakers are responding to the demands brought on by the virus.

It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the way consumers buy food and how food companies do business. In light of these significant changes, Since Sliced Bread closes its second season by checking in on some of the featured companies.

Sadie Scheffer started baking gluten-free bread to impress a crush who would become her husband. It worked, and it impressed a lot more people, too. With her gluten-free sourdough, Ms. Scheffer was able to start a small wholesale bakery, Bread SRSLY, Berkeley, Calif. In the past eight years, the bakery has managed its own production, outsourced to a co-manufacturer and brought production back in-h...

After developing a proprietary technology for turning spent brewing grains into a food-safe flour called SuperGrain+, Daniel Kurzrock and Jordan Schwartz founded ReGrained. The company uses the flour in its line of branded snacks that includes nutrition bars and puffs. In this episode of Since Sliced Bread , Mr. Kurzrock shares the challenges they’ve faced not just creating ReGrained but also deve...

Founder and Owner Greg Acerra’s culinary background has informed how he has built Fireking Baking Co. over the years. Many of the bakery’s customers are restaurants like his own. In this episode of Since Sliced Bread , Mr. Acerra details how premium ingredients can pay off and how he worked around his own knowledge gaps to overcome the challenges of a growing bakery.