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Bakery keeps it fresh.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

If United States Bakery was aligned with industry trends, it would see the University of Oregon's desire to put a stadium on its Williams bakery site as an opportunity to close its Eugene operations permanently.

Plant closures have been the rule in the baking industry over the past four years, Josh Sosland, editor of the trade publication Milling & Baking News said. The nation's dominant baking companies have gained efficiency by closing plants and consolidating operations.

But United States Bakery has a philosophy of keeping its bakeries as close as possible to the people who'll eat the bread, Chief Executive Officer Bob Albers said.

If the university deal goes through, the Portland-based firm will build a new roughly $32 million plant somewhere nearby, perhaps at Glenwood or Gateway - adding a negligible number of miles to its bread trucks' rounds.

"The old rule used to be you had a 150-mile radius to maintain some freshness," Albers said. "Some companies stretch that out to 350 miles. We don't. We're at about a 200-mile radius at all our plants."

That philosophy keeps the ovens stoked at the 190-employee Williams bakery in Eugene, and five other United States Bakery plants in Washington and Oregon. And it keeps the privately held company healthy despite some spectacular recent failures in the baking industry.

An immigrant industry

Bread baking always has been a local prospect because of the perishable nature of bread. Without preservatives, it dries and hardens within days.

This limitation meant that in the early 1900s, commercial bread baking was an easy niche...

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