RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Love's Bakery is making bread around the clock after competitor Hawaii Baking Co. abruptly shut. At Love's yesterday, Keith Gaza loaded loaves for delivery.
Low on dough
The abrupt closure of Hawaii
Baking Co. leaves restaurants
and retailers struggling to
find other sources of bread
Bread retailers, hamburger shops and restaurants have been scrambling for a week to find new sources for their baked products after a major local wholesale bakery suddenly went out of business.
After a series of interrelated bankruptcies and ownership changes over the past year, Hawaii Baking Co. abruptly closed its Waipahu bakery a week ago, leaving its regular customers without locally produced breads such as Oroweat, Pali Ridge, Francisco and Island's Fresh.
Also gone was a source for specialized hamburger buns.
The result was a sudden overload of orders for Love's Bakery, already Hawaii's biggest local producer, which readily acknowledged Hawaii Baking as its biggest competitor.
"We're producing around the clock," said Mike Walters, president of Love's. "We took up the slack. They were our biggest competitor for fresh bread produced here in Hawaii." He said it is hard to make up for what had been $180,000 to $200,000 a week in Hawaii Baking business, all over the state.
Hawaii Baking, which used to be Holsum/Oroweat and was one of Hawaii's oldest bakeries, was taken over by creditors a year ago when it was unable to pay its debts.
A California company, Fresh Start Bakeries, ended up with the manufacturing side of the business, and First Pacific Food in Arizona picked up the wholesale distribution side.
RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Love's Bakery on Middle Street has been bustling since Hawaii Baking Co., its biggest rival for Hawaii-baked bread, suddenly closed. Steve Cariaga prepared dough for the oven at Love's yesterday.
About the middle of this year, Love's took over the Holsum brand, but Hawaii Baking kept on producing Oroweat and several other brands.
The company, which once had more than 200 employees, already was down to about 50. But by Oct. 26 the plant was closed and locked with no notice, and the employees who were left were out of work.
Fresh Start President Craig Olson, returning media calls out of courtesy, he said, had no comment and said he will not have any.
A bakery buyer at Daiei, who did not want his name used, said he was waiting for supplies a week ago Monday and found out last Tuesday there would be no more supply from Hawaii Baking.
Their brands were big sellers at Daiei, he said, and there was a need to find other sources.
"Everybody bought from Love's Bakery because they are similar," he said, but since Love's suddenly had to supply most of the market by itself, it had a hard time keeping up and bakery inventory now is low, the Daiei buyer said.
Daiei is looking for a new source from the mainland or perhaps in Hawaii and hopes to have that arrangement in place by the end of this month, he said.
RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Tavita Misidati loaded bread onto trays.
One of the companies caught breadless was Teddy's Bigger Burgers, which had been buying a bun from Hawaii Baking that suited its burgers.
"That Monday morning, they just didn't show up," said partner Rich Stula, at the Kailua outlet. "Our bun distributor deserted us."
"There's a lot of us scrambling for buns," he said. Teddy's two stores got some emergency supplies from Love's and have been trying Kakaako Bakery, which seems to have a bun that better matches their hamburgers.
No information is yet available on exactly what happened to Hawaii Baking. It did not file a plant-closing notice with the state labor department, but may not have had to if its staff was less than 50 or if the closing was not related to the change of ownership a year earlier.
At that time, some 200 employees lost their jobs.
Fresh Star Bakeries hired about 50 people to keep some production going, but the company closed its thrift stores. The Verizon Honolulu telephone directory under Hawaii Baking Co. says "see Holsum/Oroweat," but there is no listing under that name.
