Baking & Snack - April 2018 - 37

OPERATIONS
Pretzels, Inc.

Pretzels, Inc.'s new Plymouth, IN, pretzel plant demonstrates its determination
by turning adversity into an opportunity to better serve its customers.
by Dan Malovany

When asked to flash back to June 4, 2016, William
"Chip" Mann II replied, "Let's not," rolling his eyes
while shaking his head. That's the day when he received
a text at 6:20 a.m. from Pretzels, Inc.'s plant supervisor
in Canonsburg, PA, that simply said, "We have a fire.
Everybody is out of the building."
Mr. Mann, who serves as co-CEO along with long-time
friend Steve Huggins of the Bluffton, IN-based snack producer, eventually took some solace that the Canonsburg
disaster could have been much worse. "The fire happened
very fast, but everyone was safe and got out quickly, and
that's the most important thing," he said.
For several years, Pretzels, Inc., had steadily built
up its peanut butter filled-pretzel business, and the
Canonsburg facility was the only place where it produced such snacks.
Suddenly unable to serve that rapidly expanding segment of this market motivated Mr. Huggins and Mr.
Mann to attempt an ambitious, almost unheard of startup of a new manufacturing facility within nine months.
The private label and contract manufacturer produces
filled pretzels not only for its customers but also under
its Harvest Road brand.
"We were dark on the shelf with our filled pretzels, so
there was a sense of urgency to rebuild as quickly as possible," Mr. Mann recalled.
The irony - or perhaps just a coincidence - is that
Pretzels, Inc., had made a corporate decision to upgrade
and expand the Canonsburg facility just two weeks prior
to it burning to the ground.
With an overall expansion strategy already in place,
it took just a few days for Mr. Mann and Mr. Huggins
to take their entrepreneurial family-owned business in a
new direction - one they expect will abound in opportunity for the long run.
Today in Plymouth, IN, the new 45,000-sq-ft opera-

tion houses a single state-of-the-art production line that
primarily turns out its signature peanut butter-filled
pretzels as well as gluten-free varieties.
Located on 8.8 acres, the plant has ample room to ultimately expand to a total of 135,000 sq ft. In fact, due
to accelerated growth, Mr. Mann just announced that a
second identical line will be added this summer within
the current building's structure.
Because it cranks out snacks made with allergens such
as peanut butter, the Plymouth operation nicely complements the company's 206,000-sq-ft Bluffton flagship
plant. That facility currently operates eight lines that annually produce 75 million lb of conventional pretzels of
all shapes and sizes. It also has two extruded corn lines
that crank out 15 million lb a year. In all, about 300 people work in Bluffton.
Plymouth's SQF Level 3 facility was designed with the
help of The Austin Co. and built to the highest sanitary
standards rated for protein, according to Paul Schaum,
COO, who spearheaded the startup. In addition to making products with allergens, the Plymouth operation
provides additional capacity for the company as it grows.
Initially, the Austin consulting firm gave Pretzels,
Inc., 22 potential preselected build sites across three
states. The snack manufacturer narrowed the list to two
locations within a 90-minute drive from its Bluffton
headquarters - Plymouth and Warsaw, IN. Eventually,
Plymouth won out because it had a suitable shell of
a building available while Warsaw was a greenfield
site. "To save three months of startup time, we chose
Plymouth," Mr. Schaum said. "It was imperative for us
not to have a significant delay of any kind."

Freshly cut peanut
butter-filled dough
pieces march toward
the caustic bath
and oven.
Photography by Vito Palmisano

Building by ballet
A complete timeline sketches a clear outline on how
fast the rebuild took since the fire. On June 8, 2016,

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