Baking & Snack - November 2006 - 42

full-service bakery supplying bread, cakes
and pastry to retail grocers and restaurants
up and down the Jersey Coast.
Although business was good, it was becoming increasingly competitive. When Dan and
his brothers John, Michael and Chris formally
joined the business during the late 1980s, their
father looked ahead for additional opportunities. He found co-packing. "My father decided
to change the bakery's business philosophy to
become a 'baker's baker,'" Dan Mulloy said.
"By adding co-pack production, we could
increase our product mix and run time."
The first move was to approach other bakers.
Ginsburg offered its line of rye breads to add to
the DSD routes operated by other bakeries. "We
baked for a number of bakeries in Philadelphia,
New Jersey and New York," Dan Mulloy said.
"This gave us year-round business."
Success with this approach meant Ginsburg no longer relied on its own route sales.
In fact, its specialist reputation as a rye bread
baker has led to an interesting situation. Dan
Mulloy noted that he will often see "his" rye
bread made from the same formulation but
packaged under different labels sitting sideby-side on supermarket store shelves. "And
I've heard consumers argue about which one
is best," he observed.
Jack Mulloy also noticed big changes occurring in retail baking. "He saw frozen as another key
to the future," Dan Mulloy recalled. With in-store bakeries increasing and free-standing retail shops disappearing, there were big opportunities to fill resulting product
gaps. The bakery bought a liquid nitrogen freezer and
started working with a broker to market frozen finished
rye bread and bagels to supermarkets to fill out their
in-store offerings.
In 1989, Ginsburg exited cake and pastry production
to concentrate on rye bread, rolls and bagels. As the business continued into the 1990s, it added co-pack and frozen products. "Today, we are approximately 50:50 fresh
and frozen," Dan Mulloy observed. And frozen products
took the business's products nationwide.
SEA CHANGE. Another turning point occurred in 1992,
when a large bagel company approached Ginsburg, asking it to produce and package its bagels. "That company
needed a co-packer," Dan Mulloy said. "They really taught
us a lot: how to put in controls, how to manage quality
assurance, how to audit, clean and more. It was great for
us. Many procedures were put in place then that remain
with us now. And we still have that customer today."
Co-pack business helped the bakery cope with the

44 / BAKING & SNACK / November 2006

ᮡ Rye bread is expertly cut before baking to assure optimum interior
structure and appearance.
seasonal ebb and flow of economic activity in Atlantic
City. With September and the end of tourist season, the
city and its surrounding resort communities pretty much
shut down. When the city introduced casino gambling in
the 1980s, some of that seasonality disappeared. In the
past few years, Atlantic City experienced a renaissance,
constructing a new convention center and welcoming
large new high-rise casinos.
"This is a 24/7 bakery, operating 365 days a year," Dan
Mulloy said. "Summer is still the 'season' here, but our
casino business continues through the year-end holidays
and the NFL Super Bowl. It gets slower for the next three
months, and then the cycle starts up again."
Today, the bakery operates with Jack Mulloy as president and his sons Dan, John, Michael and Chris. As c.f.o.,
Dan handles not only "the numbers" but also sales and
customer services, while John, the c.o.o., functions as
general manager and plant manager. Production operations are under Michael and Chris's control. The bakery's
chief engineer is George Sanderlin, and its sanitarian is
Jose Lugo. Dan described his father as "the big thinker"
shaping the company's direction, but its daily responsi-

Baking & Snack - November 2006

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