When Pastry Smart founder and CEO Mark Ainsworth launched a brioche bun product in Whole Foods last April, he expected some bite-size orders of maybe 450 cases of buns per week. “Peanuts!” he thought. Pastry Smart could totally handle that.
“The first order came in and it was for two weeks and it was for about 3,700 cases,” Ainsworth said. Instead of having trucks come to and from the San Mateo, California bakery around twice a week, they were leaving every day to keep supermarkets supplied.
Scaling to meet growing demand for his company’s products is one of the primary challenges Ainsworth has faced since he founded the company in 2006. While the company initially focused on serving hotels and restaurants, Ainsworth moved into retail instead to grow more quickly. That provided a new set of challenges, since the name Pastry Smart wasn’t connecting with consumers.
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