Baking&Snack - June 2014 - 35

the day," Mr. Levitan observed. "And you're more likely
to find Jean-Yves in the bakery than his office."
Mr. Charon grew up in the Brittany region of France
and trained in baking with pastry chefs there and in
Rennes, Paris and London. He came to the US to work
as an executive pastry chef in San Francisco and started his own individual-portion dessert company, Paris
Delights, in 1988. Three years later, Mr. Levitan traded
in his career as an MBA-degreed management consultant and tapped his business school friends for funding
to buy The Cheesecake Lady, a bakery at Hopland, CA.
The two men met at a national food show and found
their businesses to be a natural fit. They formed Galaxy
Desserts in 1998.
The new bakery specialized in French-inspired, allnatural desserts and pastries. Its first products were individually portioned, mousse-based desserts, developed to
answer banquet and special event needs for upscale hotel and restaurant operations. Pastry chefs loved them.
So did caterers and airlines.
Then came the company's croissant boom, and it outgrew its original 18,000-sq-ft location at San Rafael, CA.

A building in nearby Richmond that previously housed
a movie sound stage allowed Galaxy to nearly triple its
floor space to 52,000 sq ft. Of this, 20,000 sq ft is allocated to production, 4,300 to packaging and 15,500 to
warehousing with the rest offices and ancillary services.
"We wanted to improve workflow and gain more onsite freezer space," Mr. Charon said. "Where there's more
room, people can work better and more safely. And now,
we need even more space." Richmond can expand by another 50,000 sq ft in an adjacent bay, and executives are
currently negotiating for that extra room.

Operating a busy plant
Although croissants provide consistent year-round business, the bakery's schedule still shows a seasonal pattern. After the three-shift, 24/7 crunch of the holidays,
it moves to a two-shift schedule for the rest of the year.
Galaxy employs a staff of 200, rising to 300 to handle
seasonal production, and runs six processing lines and
six packaging lines. Typical output, according to Tony
Lee, Galaxy's plant manager, comes to 1,000 cases a day
of mousse cakes. Croissant volume is even greater.

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Magna Mixer Co.
Baking Solutions serving your needs since 1904

11180 Southland Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45240 * Tel 513.851.6900 * Fax 513.851.6904 *2014 Baking & Snack 35
www.bakingandsnack.com / June MagnaMixer.com

http://www.MagnaMixer.com

Baking&Snack - June 2014

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