Baking & Snack - June 2023 - 32

DEWEY'S BAKERY INC.
" OPERATIONAL
EFFICIENCY HAS
BEEN A GUIDING
STAR FOR US.
EDUCATING OUR
TEAM, REALLY
ENFORCING
THE FACT THAT
NUMBERS DRIVE
THE BUSINESS. "
David Catlett, Dewey's Bakery
About 250 to 300 boxes
of Dewey's treats are
shipped daily during the
first nine months of the
year, but that number
skyrockets to 2,500 during
the holidays.
said. " That is really the heart of what we continue to do
in our main cookie that we sell nationally. The way we
make those cookies obviously on a much larger scale is
now a more automated way of doing that same thing:
super thin, highly flavored cookies, such as our Meyer
lemon and spiced ginger. We find that as consumers eat
them, they do have that surprising intense flavor hit for
a little cookie. "
Feeding both lines are four mixers, two 900-lb machines
from the Italian Mixer SRL company, and two
Triumph mixers, one with a 600-lb capacity and the
other 1,200 lbs. All of the bowls except the largest can be
rolled to the hoppers, which have an automatic lift system.
Ingredients are added manually.
The hoppers, part of the Polin systems, are automated
dough loading systems. On the K2 line, a 12-hour shift
will yield about 16 batches of dough, which is pulled
from the hopper and forms a wide sheet as it travels to
a wirecut system that cuts the half-inch-thick dough
into chunks.
The belt carries 24 dough balls across then travels into
the three-chamber oven, producing 106,000 small cookies
an hour. The day of Baking & Snack's visit, the bakery
was making ginger snaps for a co-packing partner.
Out of the oven, cookies go through the TP Food North
America Tecnopool Spiral cooler, into a vibratory Meyer
Bucket Elevator System, then through the Heat and
Control Fastback system and an Ishida Scale System. On
this day, cookies dropped into a Control GMC tub filling
machine. They traveled through a Ceia metal detector
and were manually packed into boxes assembled by the
Lantech automated box formers.
The dough on the K1 line that makes thin Moravian
cookies has a BTE multi-stage dough sheeting system
before the cookies travel to a die.
" A die cuts them out, and we have a web-based extraction
point where cookies pass through one area
32 Baking & Snack June 2023 / www.bakingbusiness.com
in the web, and the webbing is reintroduced instantly
into the dough, so our waste is extremely low, " Mr.
Catlett explained.
After being baked in the Polin three-chamber tunnel
oven, the Moravian cookies cool quickly and go into
a new Benchmark laning system that shingles them,
turning them from horizontal to vertical to be packed
into sleeves of 34 cookies in the horizontal Campbell
on edge biscuit wrapper. They then go through a PPI
Technologies checkweigher and are hand packed into
boxes. The line can produce 95 sleeves of cookies per
minute.
The laning system reduced that packaging task that
used to require six to eight workers down to two.
" The product comes out in the little individual 4- to
4.5-oz sleeves, and it's got the flexibility to do variable
sizes, " Mr. Catlett said. " We're still manual post that, and
a big focus of automation going forward into next year is
to try to automate that on the back end. "
Mr. Senackerib said when he gets the chance to step
back and take stock in what the business has accomplished
in the last few years, he's pleased with what
he sees.
" It's an exciting time in the company's life because
we're growing so rapidly, " he said. " We've grown substantially
in the last couple of years. We'll continue
to do that. The investment in capacity and automation
and infrastructure is a level of confidence in
the growth. "
He would like to see Dewey's Bakery become one of
the leading premium cookie companies in the country
in the next few years. If the company continues to see
the kind of growth it's experienced in the last couple of
years, the team may be well on its way.
" I'd like to walk into customers and have them say,
'OK, the Dewey's guy is here, " Mr. Senackerib said. " I've
been waiting for them. I've got some ideas for you.' "
*
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Baking & Snack - June 2023

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