FLATBREAD FACTORY. Flatbread entered Falcone's product line when managers accepted a small private-label contract from a flatbread company.
"At first we made it on a reversible sheeter and a rack oven. But even at such limited rates, we could make more flatbread than our customer could on his own," Mr. Falcone said. "We grew together. More than 10 years later, we continue to make flatbread for this account."
Falcone's Cookieland operates an OU-certified Kosher factory. The company ships its products nationwide, although most of its market is in the East Coast region. The majority of the company's business comes through supermarkets and independent mom-and-pop grocery stores.
The company operates its own distribution subsidiary.
"Anything done on a direct store-delivery basis works better in this area," Mr. Falcone said. "When you place it on the shelf yourself, it looks and sells better, and it makes the store managers happier."
in recent years, Falcone's management has worked hard to move the business beyond its private label basis. "Now we're looking to establish a name for ourselves," Mr. Falcone said.
That move, however, forced Falcone's to address the flatbread production problem.
TIGHT QUARTERS. Space is at a premium at Falcone's Cookieland. With flatbread on the first floor and cookies on the second, the company uses every foot of the 22,000 sq ft available in its two story bakery. A second building across the street houses shipping, storage and office facilities.
With the plant full to the rafters, and product demand growing, the one choice Falcone's did not have was, to bring in more mobile racks. instead, the bakery chose automation.
"We always knew about spirals, about how they maximize cooling in the least amount of floor space," Mr. Falcone said. He and his colleagues often saw such systems in other bakeries and at industry trade shows.
Installation proved simple. After the manufacturer assembled the spiral at the factory, Falcone's bakers tested it there. Disassembly and reassembly was quick. The bakery shut down at mid-day on a Friday and set up the cooler over the weekend. Flatbread production started at its usual time on the following Monday morning.
"We had no downtime whatsoever," Mr. Falcone said.
Leaving the makeup line, the cut dough pieces enter the 100-ft-long Bakery Machinery & Fabrication tunnel oven. Flatbread, leavened by steam as well as yeast, bakes quickly.
The loaded trays travel the full length of the six-tier spiral conveyor. The spiral operates by engaging the inside edge of the belt with its central, powered cage assembly, to move the belt forward along supporting tracks. The belt proceeds smoothly around and up the slowly rising path. Packed trays stay in place, encountering no transfers until they reach the end of the spiral track.
Not only does the spiral conveyor replace dozens of mobile racks, it also reduces the number of times that product must be handled manually from six to two. "The more you handle a product like flatbread, the more it breaks," Mr. Falcone said. "The spiral cooler eliminated manual handling and actually gives us more cooling time and capacity."
Flatbread production starts when the mixer operator pushes a button on the KB bulk ingredient system. This signals the system to deliver flour and water into the Diosna spiral mixer. The operator scales minor and micro ingredients manually and starts the mixer, producing a straight dough in the spiral mixer's mobile bowl. (A nearby J.H. Day mixer produces cookie dough that is taken upstairs on an elevator to feed the bakery's two cookie oven lines on the second floor.)
The operator wheels the mixed flatbread dough to the point where The makeup line then makes a turnand sends the sheeted dough
