Corporate History

James T. McGlynn started the company in 1919. He was a young accountant making $20 a week when he decided to buy a bakery in downtown Minneapolis. The location was 408 Marquette Avenue. A loaf of bread cost 8 cents. He lost money in his first month of business so his wife suggested that if their bread was the best, people would buy it for ten cents. So he raised his prices, and the second month of the business showed a profit.

We always have used unbleached flour in our products and James T. added calcium and vitamin supplements to his breads and rolls in the 1930's, the first bakery in the nation to do so.

McGlynn Bakeries grew through the twenties, thirties, and forties. By the early fifties, there were 13 shops in Minneapolis and a few wholesale routes as well.

J. T. used a rather unconventional advertising campaign. The ad showed two groups of laboratory mice! One was a healthy group fed with McGlynn bread. The second was sickly group fed with another brand of bread. The text informed the reader of the nutritional value of McGlynn's vitamin enriched bread. It was through this unusual advertisement that our concern for nutrition was relayed to the public.

Banks started closing on Saturday's in the 50's, and fewer people were attracted to downtown. This hurt business, but J. T. tried another progressive move. He established Trav'l Bake in 1954. Trav'l Bake was a renovated bus housing a bakery. Burt McGlynn, J. T.'s son, drove it through the neighborhoods of St. Louis Park (a suburb of Minneapolis) offering curbside service of fresh bakery goods.

Trav'l Bake was featured in many publications including the front page of The Wall Street Journal! However, the effort was not cost efficient and closed within a year... and Burt was thrilled that he did not have to drive "the bus" anymore.

Burt began a relationship with Applebaum's that was instrumental to the Company's growth. In the early 1960's, Dayton's Department Stores were developing a new concept in retail stores... a discount store named Target. Applebaum's had planned to build grocery stores in connection with the new Target stores. Hy Applebaum approached Burt and asked if he would consider leasing space from Applebaum's and setting up on-premise bakeries in the stores.

In 1962 he resigned from Emrich Baking Company and started over from scratch. He opened his first two bakeries in the Knollwood and Crystal Target Stores (both in suburbs of Minneapolis).

Through our association with Applebaum's and Target in the early 60's, we were expanding to Duluth, Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Tulsa, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, in addition to growth in the Twin Cities.

We baked in each store and had bakery departments in the grocery section and in the dry goods part of each Target store.

Another innovation (in addition to advertising with mice, and baking on a bus) was decorating cakes in front of our customers. We started this in 1966 at the Bloomington, MN Target store.

By 1972, there were over 35 Target Stores with in-store McGlynn's Bakery departments. At this time, all of our baking was done right in the Target stores. However, plans for smaller Target stores in 1973 created the need for a production facility that could bake for expanding needs.

In October of 1973, we opened a central bakery in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a southwestern suburb of Minneapolis. We had 12,000 square feet of space. We eventually expanded the space to 130,000 square feet.

During this growth, we expanded our business to include frozen bakery products for sale to other retail bakeries and food service accounts. The first product line was croissants. It was followed with Danish, puff pastry, cookies, muffins and other products. A new, larger facility was built further west of the Eden Prairie facility to handle even more frozen product growth. This frozen segment of the business was sold to another company in 1992.

Because the frozen business was sold, we moved the rest of the operations from Eden Prairie to Fridley, Minnesota in August of 1992. Today, the central bakery provides most of baked goods for the retail stores and manufactures products for sale to many supermarkets.

Another division of the company also was started during this period. DecoPac, now the leader in licensed cake decorating sets and in-store decorating programs, was an instant success for the company. By following the hot trends of retail decorated cakes in the McGlynn's Bakery retail stores, DecoPac provided a method for retail bakers to provide the most popular licensed cakes to their customers.

In addition, we re-entered the frozen bakery market in 1995 with a new division called Concept 2 Bakers. This new business grew rapidly from its beginnings in February, 1995. Concept 2 Bakers had its products produced by the central bakery in Fridley. This 145,000 square foot facility employed as many as 280 and provided products seven days per week.

Retail stores were also operated in Milwaukee and served over 18 stores in that area. Most of the stores in Milwaukee were located in Pick 'N Save food stores.