Baking & Snack - October 2006 - 46

enough product in storage so they waited a bit. We were
very impressed with their loyalty to us."
Most customers felt good about Harvest Time's upfront attitude and honesty and stuck with them. "Notifying them was the right choice for the future of the company," Mr. Gaches added. "Everybody pulled together to
make this recovery and the business a success." The company used the diverter for nine months, only getting oven
No. 3 back on line in mid-August.
CLEAN-UP, LINE 3. Harvest Time isolated oven No. 3
with temporary walls and plastic sheeting while it was refurbished. "Water damaged all the oven insulation as well
as most of the wiring," Mr. Errazuriz said. "We also had to
replace the upper fire chambers and controls."
Refurbishing included tearing out wet insulation after
removing the entire oven skin. New high-temp insulation
rated at 2,000°F was installed. All chains were cleaned and
regreased, burners were cleaned and repaired, automated
controls replaced and the stone plates cleaned using CO2
blasting. Hired electricians removed and replaced burnt
electrical wiring.
"We did the main clean up and repair and replacements," Mr. Errazuriz noted. "The oven is a GastolGophan from Slovenia. Once we had it repaired, we
brought their engineers here to do a final inspection and
tuning of the oven and controls."
"The lesson to be learned here is that you can never
really prepare or train for something like this," Mr. Milner said. "Its tough and arduous. Dealing with insurance
claims, landlords and customers, it is a lot to control and
takes coordination and patience."
PAR-EXCELLENCE. Capacity is an absolute nonissue
for Harvest Time Bread. "When this Häagen-Dazs ice
cream plant was converted to a bakery, the owner kept the multitrailer
shipping dock and the 5-story storage freezer with its robotic pickand-place handling system," Mr.
Gaches said. "We only use 30% of
the freezer right now."
On the production side, changeovers on the three lines are frequent
because the company produces more
than 200 SKUs and everything is
produced in smaller batch sizes. "We
are a full-scale production facility
but still produce in the scratch baker
tradition," Mr. Gaches added.
R&D projects are driven by cusᮣ Par-baked marbled rye exits the oven to be
transported to ambient spiral cooling conveyors.
50 / BAKING & SNACK / October 2006

tomers and internally. The company's portfolio of wholegrain products is constantly evolving. "We started with
8-grain, then a 9-grain, both with 26 g of whole grain
per serving," Mr. Milner stated. "Now we have a 10-grain
with three seeds and 17 g whole grain per serving.
"We pride ourselves on speed to market," he continued. "Our 8-grain whole-grain with flax bread is a good
example of speed to market for a customer. The customer
approached us with an idea. We turned it into saleable
product in five weeks from start of development to shipping truckload quantities.
"The difference is that when customers talk with us,
they are talking to bakers, not salesmen who must, in
turn, talk with three other levels of management, then
finally to R&D who must interpret what the customer
wants," Mr. Milner said. "We go from the sales meeting to the lab and get our hands in the dough with
our R&D personnel. Nothing is lost in translation. It
makes us different."
All Harvest Time Bread products are either par-baked
or fully baked. Mr. Milner noted that 60% of the company's products begin as generic formulations, and there
are infinite possibilities to customize with infused flavors,
inclusions, toppings and spices.
The biggest growth area now is organic. "Our certification should be complete by September in preparation for
a fall rollout with a national grocery chain," he added.
"While volume is not huge yet, we are working with others as well and have had many customer requests during the past few years. Organics has huge potential and is
worth the investment and effort." Premier organic items
include three roll products and four breads.
MIXED TECHNOLOGY. The $20 million bakery, opened
in November 2000, worked with available layout to set up

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