by Keith Seiz, managing editor
Somewhere in the middle of America, a truck is transporting frozen bread, roll and pizza dough across the country. And, in an office in DeSoto Kan., someone is monitoring the temperature inside that truck's freezer.
This quality checkpoint represents one of hundreds of measures that Custom Foods Inc. has instituted to guarantee that its products meet its customers’ expectations. This dedication to quality has enabled Custom Foods to continue a 20% annual growth rate since the company’s inception in 1997.
From ingredients and equipment to production and distribution, all things at Custom Foods revolve around quality. Nothing is done without that in mind, and no future decision is made without keeping a focused eye on quality.
Custom Foods, DeSoto, manufactures frozen pizza and bread dough for foodservice customers throughout the country. The company’s business is split evenly between frozen dough for sandwich rolls and frozen pizza ball dough.
Rudy Tepsic, Custom Foods’ president, founded the bakery after realizing the potential growth of the sandwich and pizza shop chain business. With a firm grasp on his future customer, Tepsic decided to test his entrepreneurial skills on building and managing a wholesale bakery.
“When starting a business like this, you have to have the money, the guts and the opportunity all at the same time,” Tepsic says. “I felt confident that if I picked the right location, laid out the building properly, got the right equipment suppliers and the right employees, I could make this thing work.”
Working on a blank slate, Tepsic began molding his ideal business. “The first smart decision I made was to buy new equipment from proven manufacturers," Tepsic says. Other than buying two remanufactured mixers, Tepsic stocked his 20,000-sq.-ft. bakery with new equipment. Although the cost was initially higher, Tepsic's strict adherence to quality forced him to look at things beyond the price tag.
"When I started the company, my objective wasn't to start a company based on a shoe string of dollars, and spend the least amount possible," Tepsic says. And, even though I spent a lot more money to start, my costs are now much lower.”
Besides buying new equipment, Tepsic wisely chose the location and structure of the bakery. The plant resides on four acres of land that is owned by Custom Foods.
Simply put, Tepsic built the bakery to accommodate growth beyond its initial production line. Already, Custom Foods has installed a second line, and plans are being made for the installation of a third line.
By planning and building the facility to accommodate future growth, Tepsic has given Custom Foods the necessary room to keep up with the booming sandwich shop chain business. "This year, one of our customers may have 210 restaurants, and next year they could have 340. We need to be able to keep up with their growth, and we knew that from the beginning," Tepsic says.
The nature of the chain foodservice business requires that Custom Foods customers are always happy. If one delivery of bread or pizza dough fails to meet customer standards, that chain loses repeat business and Custom Foods loses a client. For Tepsic and his staff, this is not an option.
“The whole level of standards in the industry segment that we support is much higher than the traditional retail segment,”|Tepsic says.
Because the standard is higher, Custom Foods must work harder to ensure the quality of its product. The company's most far-reaching quality measure involves a system of baking and documenting samples from each batch of product manufactured.
The company's quality lab is responsible for collecting four product examples from every batch of dough that is run through its lines. Gary Donaldson, Custom Foods R&D and Q/A manager, thaws two of the samples overnight and bakes them the next morning. If they pass muster, he releases the products to the shipping manager.
The other two samples are kept in storage for the freezer life of the product. In the unlikely event of a complaint from a customer, Custom Foods can easily retrieve the two samples from the batch in question, and bake them off to see if they experience the same problems as the customer.
However, before the products reach the quality lab, several quality checkpoints ensure an ideal product at all times. Although its quality initiatives mainly focus on production, they extend well before the ingredients arrive at the plant, and long after the frozen products leave the plant.
The first step in the company's overall quality assurance plan is monitoring incoming ingredients. With every shipment of flour, Custom Foods receives a sheet that tells them the analysis of the flour. Once file shipment is approved, a Shick Tube-Veyor ingredient handling system conveys the flour through metal detectors and into two indoor silos that each hold 110,000 lbs. of flour.
For minor ingredients, the company employs an operator that measures each minor ingredient for one batch, and places them in a container to be dumped into the mixer.
The company's two remanufactured horizontal mixers represent the only equipment in the plant that was not bought when the bakery was built.
According to John Khoury, Custom Foods president, the company bought the remanufactured mixers because they each weigh more than 17,000 lbs.
This significant weight allows the mixers to handle the company's stiff, frozen dough.
Custom Foods only runs 800-1b. batches, which allows it to better control the yeast activity of the dough. “We could run larger batches, but we try to minimize dough floor time, thus minimizing yeast activity before the product is dozen," Khoury says.
Because its products move directly into the freezer after makeup, the importance of a proper balance of yeast is an essential part of the bakery's process. Custom Foods uses 5- lb. blocks of yeast from Fleischmann's Yeast. "In our product, yeast activity decreases over time," Khoury says. “So we want to make sure there is a sufficient amount of yeast activity six months after manufacturing, and we've found that 5-lb. blocks of yeast last longer."
After mixing, Custom Foods dough is conveyed to either a sandwich dough line or a pizza dough line. Because the facility is completely automated, typical production employees are not needed. "The employees on the production lines are not line employees, they are quality control people at various checkpoints," Tepsic says.
The company's Adamatic sandwich dough line processes 6,000 lbs. of dough an hour. The line's divider can run two, four or six pockets, depending on the product After the divider, the dough travels through an intermediate proofer, where it rests for three to four minutes. The dough then leaves the intermediate proofer and passes through a series of curling chains and press boards before entering the freezer.
Custom Foods recently installed a second line to accommodate growing demand for pizza dough balls. The second line's Peerless 8-pocket divider can accommodate product sizes ranging from 5 ozs. to 32 ozs., and yields 17,500 lbs. per hour .
After the dough is divided into squares, it is conveyed to the first of two Belier conical rounders. After an initial rounding, the dough is given some rest time on a conveyor, and is rounded again. After this rounding, the dough balls enter the blast freezer.
Both the pizza balls and the sandwich rolls feed the same 1,100-f t. spiral blast freezer from I. J. White.
“The key to the frozen dough industry is to keep things frozen," Tepsic says. Although this statement seems obvious, Custom Foods has gone to great lengths to ensure that its products remain frozen until its customers thaw them.
After travailing through the blast freezer, frozen products are quickly packaged in a climate-controlled area, then conveyed into a holding freezer kept at - 10F. The company's packaging operation is a source of pride for the employees at Custom Foods.
“I don't believe that another frozen dough manufacturer can put a bag in a case, package the product, put a label on it, put it through a metal detector, then put it back into a freezer faster than we do,” Tepsic says.
The storage and distribution of its products is another source of great pride for Custom Foods, and another area where multiple quality checkpoints ensure the integrity of the product.
Custom Foods storage/distribution area encompasses a few unique features that appear burdensome, but help the company adhere to its quality guidelines. The most noticeable feature is the dock design.
According to Khoury the company designed the distribution dock so that a minimum of pallets could be placed in this area at one time. “The dock is refrigerated, and the distance between the freezer door and the truck door is less than 20 ft. This assures us that product goes directly from the holding freezer to the truck without sitting in a staging area."
“Although its products exchange hands at the loading dock, Custom Foods still maintains an interest in the rest of its products' journeys. As each truck comes in, a Custom Foods employee checks the temperature on the inside of the truck to make sure it is below 20 F. The employee also checks the truck’s refrigeration fuel gauge to make sure it is at least half full.
As stated in the opening of this story, Custom Foods also occasionally packages a temperature recorder with its frozen products. The recorder measures the temperature in the package every eight minutes for as many as 120 days. “It's so sensitive that we can see when the truck driver opens the door," Khoury says.
More than five years into its existence, Custom Foods is operating a successful business based on its strict adherence to quality. The company’s sales are growing, and capital investments on new production lines, freezers and mixers are in the works.
Just like its products, Custom Foods also plans to maintain complete control over its growth. “Our challenge is to keep all of these quality checkpoints as we continue to grow,” Tepsic says. “That is why we are controlling our growth. I want to feel confident that we are producing a quality product for all of our customers. No matter how large we become.”