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.”
Fortune Fish & Gourmet Brings Brent Casper Back to Minnesota
Brent Casper has returned to Minnesota as the Vice President and General Manager of Fortune Minnesota and Missouri.
Casper has been running the Missouri operations of Fortune Fish & Gourmet for the last year and successfully integrated the Morey’s of Missouri, Seattle Fish of Missouri and EuroGourmet acquisitions into the Fortune platform. Casper will continue to oversee the Fortune Missouri operations with the additional responsibilities of Fortune Minnesota.
Jon Novak, who was running Fortune Minnesota as the Vice President and General Manager of Minnesota, is returning to Fortune’s corporate office. Novak was instrumental in the acquisitions of Coastal Seafoods and Classic Provisions and the overall success of the entire Minnesota business. Novak will work on special projects and the integration of future acquisitions in his new role.
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He left Morey’s to establish The Fish Guys, selling that company in 2005 and working there until 2018. Casper brought all those experiences with him to Missouri to lead the tremendous growth Fortune has had in that market.
“I am thankful for the opportunity to come back to Minnesota and proud of the business and team we have built in Missouri. The strong crew that Jon built in Minnesota and I are looking forward to our continued growth during these unprecedented times,” says Casper.
Pasture-Raised Eggs for a Sustainable Future
By Lorrie Baumann
Utopihen Farms is the newest brand of premium eggs from a family that’s in its fourth generation of raising laying hens and selling their eggs. It’s a scion of Nature’s Yoke, a producer of 100 percent natural premium eggs since George Weaver III launched the brand in 2000. Now, he and his son George Weaver IV are inviting consumers to come along with them on a journey with a brand that’s dedicated to the production of pasture-raised eggs.
That journey starts in the eastern U.S. where Utopihen Farms currently has distribution, but the company is now making plans to expand the brand’s reach into the Midwest later this year – depending on the COVID-19 pandemic – and ultimately west from there. “We conceived Utopihen Farms to invite consumers to join us in the journey to make positive change in the world,” Weaver IV said. “We’re inviting them to make the change we want to see in the world…. It’s a movement; it’s not just an egg brand. It’s a move to make a journey toward, not just sustainable farming, but sustainable living and to have a larger and tangible impact both on the planet and in people’s lives.”
“We do not have to go through life looking down. We can have a better future than we have today,” his father added. “Going through tough times, like we are now, makes so many of us see how much there is to be done to make the world a better place. We’re inviting people to join us on a journey to make a true change out beyond just themselves.”
The brand currently works with 24 family farms in the area around the company’s headquarters farm in New Holland, Pennsylvania. “Each family we work with is very passionate about family farming, and we form a collaborative partnership with them,” said Weaver IV. “This allows them to care for their own family hens…. All of these go out to pasture. They have structures like a greenhouse with curtained sides that the birds can go into at night.”
Utopihen Farms will offer four products in a range that responds to consumer concerns around value, quality and allergic sensitivities to grocery retailers across the U.S. : Original Pasture-Raised Eggs, Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs, Soy-Free Pasture-Raised Eggs and Pasture-Raised Duck Eggs. All the chicken eggs are brown, while the duck eggs are white. “Each individual type speaks specifically to the consumers who are asking for it and have a need for it,” said Weaver IV.
“While we deeply understand our consumers and the marketplace, we are not marketers–we are farmers,” said Weaver III. “We are farmers. I grew up collecting eggs every day. I’m living on the farm that I grew up on.”
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“I would go and walk through the pastures. These chickens would follow me wherever I’d go, and they’d be pecking my boots, so you knew they were not afraid of people. So I was sold,” he added. “When you realize the depth of caring that exists, and the farmers get excited, you get excited – all you need to do is find a way to get these eggs to the market. I am convinced that when people start eating these eggs, they will be thrilled.”
Original Pasture-Raised Eggs are for the consumer who may be very concerned about animal welfare but who’s also price-sensitive and may not be willing to pay the premium to buy a box of eggs that has “organic” on the label. Like all the other eggs representing the Utopihen Farms brand, the chickens who laid these eggs were pasture-raised. While that’s not a term with a legal definition that’s regulated by the federal government, “pasture-raised” is a term that’s defined by Humane Farm Animal Care, the organization behind the Certified Humane® mark that’s on Utopihen Farms egg cartons. Those standards require that the birds have daily access to pasture for at least six hours a day, and they have to have enough space to spread their wings. The pasture must be covered mainly with living vegetation, so the birds can peck on vegetation, bugs and worms if they like. The Utopihen Farms chickens have a minimum of 110 square feet of pasture space per bird, which exceeds pasture-raised farming standards.
“This land is ideal for these farms. It’s super-lush, all pastures – a very beautiful area up here,” Weaver IV said. “They enjoy grazing orchard grasses, herbs and clover – the variety of vegetation helps protect and stabilize the soil.”
Utopihen Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs are for consumers who are committed to all of the elements of certified organic eggs. When they buy organic eggs, they know that the chickens grazed on pastures that were certified organic, so they’re not getting genetically-modified organisms or pesticides in their feed.
Organic certification does not in itself provide an assurance of humane treatment, since the federal government withdrew in 2017 a modified regulation that would have set standards for humane treatment of organic livestock, and the matter is still in litigation more than two years later. Utopihen Farms provides a guarantee of humane treatment with the Certified Humane mark.
Soy-Free Pasture-Raised Eggs come from chickens with no soy in their diet in answer to requests from consumers. “There are a lot of people living with food sensitivities or who are concerned about hormone disrupting issues,” said Weaver IV. “Or, consumers may be allergic to soy, so they can eat this egg. Consumers love it, for sure.”
The Utopihen Farms Pasture-Raised Duck Eggs are another answer to consumer requests. They come from Khaki Campbell ducks and are sold in cartons of six, often to bakers who value them because duck eggs have more yolk in proportion to the white than do chicken eggs. Since it’s the yolk of the egg that contains the egg’s fat, the larger yolk means more fat content, which makes baked goods richer, and the larger whites makes cakes rise higher and fluffier. The whites are also stiffer, which helps stabilize meringues. “These eggs are the shopper’s dream – especially those who want to bake,” Weaver IV said. “Duck eggs are sold in a carton of six – people typically don’t need a full dozen for baking.” Duck eggs also appeal to consumers who are on a keto or Paleo diet, since they contain extra protein, added Weaver III.
For more information, visit www.utopihenfarms.com.
