Family Tradition Drives Toufayan Bakeries Through Pandemic

By Lorrie Baumann

In 1926, Karen Toufayan’s grandfather Haroutoun was a baker living amidst an Armenian community in Egypt. As soon as he could after he emigrated to the United States in the mid-1960s, he set out to make a living in his new country doing what he knew best – making the pita bread that had its origins in the prehistory of the Middle East. In the fall of 2018, Toufayan Bakeries celebrated 50 years of doing business in the U.S.

Haroutoun and his son Harry set up their bakery near the New York-New Jersey border with a small retail store in front and the bakery in the back. “They would bake the bread and sell it in their store and load it up in a station wagon and go out and sell it to restaurants and other retail stores,” Karen said.

Toufayan’s business as a wholesale bakery really started when Harry persuaded a local delicatessen that his front counter would be a great place to merchandise bread to go along with the sliced meats that the store was selling to customers who were buying them for sandwiches they’d make at home. Once that first delicatessen owner was successfully ringing up sales of Harry’s pita breads, he started knocking on other doors, Karen said. “As he got bigger orders, he automated and moved the business to North Bergen, New Jersey, and expanded his retail customers to include pretty much everybody up and down the East Coast.”

From there, the business just continued to grow, and in the early 1980s, Toufayan Bakeries expanded again through the purchase of a bakery in Orlando, Florida. Harry added breadsticks that had been the Florida bakery’s specialty to his product line and began including flatbreads and other pita breads. In 2000, the company moved out of its North Bergen bakery and into a larger facility in Ridgefield, New Jersey, where the company is now headquartered. “We operate out of 180,000 square feet,” Karen said. “The Orlando bakery has expanded many times over the years and is now a little over 200,000 square feet.” The company’s latest expansion is already under way and will enlarge the Ridgefield plant yet again. It is scheduled for completion this fall.

The company has also acquired a cookie bakery in Plant City, Florida, where Toufayan makes cookies, gluten free cookies and its gluten-free Pita Chips as well as hamburger and hot dog rolls.
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Toufayan Bakeries was the first company to introduce a Gluten-Free Wrap to the market, and its Smart Pocket is a modern take on its traditional pita breads – it’s got a pocket like a pita, so it’s easy to stuff, but it’s square, so it’ll fit into a sandwich bag. Toufayan also makes bagels as well as flatbreads that predate even pita in the history of Middle Eastern yeast-risen wheat breads. Toufayan Naan breads are offered in Garlic and Plain flavors, and the company also offers a traditional Tandoori bread. “We’ve certainly mastered it when it comes to the different flatbreads,” Karen said. And, of course, the company still makes lots of different pita breads so essential to the cuisine of the homeland that Harry embraced, and the company’s wide range of products are distributed and merchandised in bakery and deli departments of supermarkets across the U.S. “We’ve always been classified as specialty,” Karen said. “We’re not sliced white bread – we’re pita bread.”

These days, the company is being run from day-to-day by the third generation of the family, which includes Karen, the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing; her brother Greg, who oversees the factories and day-to-day operations; and her sister Kristine, who manages the company’s business affairs. “I’m lucky enough to be third-generation, and I’m even luckier to be working alongside my brother and sister,” Karen said. “Having our own roles is what makes us successful in working together, My mother and father were very strict, and they made sure that we all just got along.”

Karen’s father, Harry, is still very involved in the business, although he’s had to stay away from the bakery during the COVID-19 crisis. “We’ve been missing him terribly,” Karen said. “Thankfully, he’s safe and he’s healthy, so that’s what’s most important.”

The company has continued to operate through the COVID-19 pandemic by incentivizing the employees of all three bakeries with a bonus and has matched that bonus with large donations to food banks in the communities where the bakeries are located. “It’s a way to thank the communities where our factories are. We thought it was the right thing to do,” Karen said. “We consider all of our team, all the people who work for us, our extended family.”

“It was really important for us to stay open so that we could continue to supply our customers. This was very important to my brother,” she continued. “It was not easy, by any means. We had a lot of people who were afraid to come to work, but we instituted specific distancing procedures to ensure the safety of all our employees. I think we made certain that everyone felt comfortable coming to work. After all we can’t continue to do our jobs, if our own people don’t feel we’re focused on protecting them.”