CHICAGO —After ramping up its automation, Brown Sugar Bakery on Chicago’s South Side makes about 3,000 cakes a month. Production is primarily for the Angelica’s brand of caramel cakes and some online orders that come from around the country through third-party vendors like Goldbelly.
The facility is a former candy factory, and Stephanie Hart, Brown Sugar’s owner, kept the candy business going under the Brown Sugar brand. The bakery makes its own caramel from a butter-based recipe. It’s used not only for the candy business but also for the signature caramel cakes at the storefront and online orders, as well as the Angelica’s brand.
“We use the original Angelica’s cake recipe, but with our caramel,” Stephanie said. “I wasn’t trying to change their recipe, but I wanted the caramel to flow better and have that shine ours is known for, without changing the flavor that Angelica’s was known for. We just took it up a notch … as I like to say, ‘A little more butter makes it a little more better!’”
To make all those caramel cakes, Brown Sugar invested in two Cake-O-Matic automated icing systems from Unifiller.
Although the Cake-O-Matic is not typically used for caramel application, Unifiller collaborated with Brown Sugar to customize a system that could accommodate the heat required to keep the caramel spreadable. The system also allows the team to keep accurate measurements on how much caramel is being used, an important factor in scaling up production.
In addition to the Unifiller system, Brown Sugar purchased a Unifiller cake depositor, which will help the mixing room staff deposit batter into cake pans.
While automation has increased efficiency and output, it requires a mindset change for workers used to relying on their own speed and dexterity. In the people-machine relationship, there’s a level of trust that must be earned.
“We’re getting used to working with the automation,” Stephanie said. “You’ve got to learn to trust the machines and stick with it. It’s easy to think you can beat the machine. But this was an important investment, and we can’t fall back to the old ways. I’m building up the confidence with the team that this really does work.”
The bakery also invested in slicing machinery from FoodTools to streamline the process of cutting cake layers while maintaining the uniformity needed for supermarket cakes.
As the business grows, the status quo changes with it, and Stephanie is always developing new ideas. In fact, she spent the holiday season thinking about what the bakery could do with cake scrap because the FoodTools slicer not only streamlined the layer cake process, but it also enabled the bakery to efficiently collect the scrap.
The answer? Cake jars.
“The tops of the cakes are cut off from the slicer so nicely,” Stephanie said. “All we have to do is cut those up, and we can layer them into cake jars. I’m learning how to use these machines and optimize what we can do. All those years, I was cutting cakes by hand and never thought about processing the scraps.”
With such efficiency, Stephanie and her team can keep coming up with ideas for not only new products but also new ways to market signature items that gain a lot of attention.
“For 2024, we’re working on a platform around, ‘Every day is somebody’s birthday … is it yours?’” Stephanie said. “Most bakeries don’t really market around birthday cakes; they just do them. But I’m attacking the birthday this year.”
Production is expanding, and the Brown Sugar workforce is growing with it. Between the storefront on 75th and the factory on West, the bakery is nearing 50 employees, a mix of new hires, former Angelica’s workers, employees who stayed with the candy production and the original staff from 75th Street.
The growth comes from a combination of commitment, creativity and choosing the right partners.
“One of our best partners is Dawn Foods,” Stephanie said. “They’re absolutely amazing. Not just because they make wonderful products that are very useful to bakeries like mine, but Dawn has also been inspirational and encouraging to me as I’ve grown my business.”
From collaborating on a new signature mix used in the bakery to lending marketing expertise to revamp the Brown Sugar logo, Dawn has provided a wealth of expertise to Brown Sugar in a relationship that spans more than a decade.
That partnership has been critical for Brown Sugar’s growth. Scale, Stephanie learned, is not only about machines but also about the right product development.
“I made a decision to work with Dawn mixes early on,” Stephanie said. “The reason I did that is because there’s just no way to scale if you’re working completely from scratch. You just can’t be a scratch bakery at scale.”
Working with Dawn, Stephanie developed a custom mix for the Brown Sugar brand to market direct to consumers in grocery stores later this year.
It all comes from a mindset that’s been foundational from the very beginning.
“I’ve always thought big, even when we were small,” she said.
Now that Brown Sugar has baking and candy making capabilities under one roof, the ideas just keep coming. One of Brown Sugar’s first forays into candy was the “Turtzle,” a signature pretzel version of the Turtle candy.
But lately, one of the biggest sellers on the candy side is chocolate-covered potato chips, made on the enrobing machine Brown Sugar inherited with the building. And that’s just the beginning; during little pockets of downtime, the team tinkers with what could be the next enrobed baked good or candy treat and new creations that might top the custom cakes sold on 75th Street.
So, what’s next for a bakery that’s always focused on the next big thing?
“I want to open more stores, but I want to do it uniquely,” Stephanie said. “I love popping up in chains like Nordstrom and Macy’s, but I would love to see Brown Sugar as a fixture on State Street or Michigan Avenue. Couldn’t you see it? We could be like a Lancôme counter … but with a different type of something that smells just as good.”
This story has been adapted from the March | Q1 2024 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
