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La Brea Bakery Overview
Since its founding 30 years ago, La Brea Bakery has successfully evolved from a fledgling business to North America's leading artisan bread brand. Yet despite the tremendous success it has achieved, it has remained true to its core beliefs of passion, love, skill, and dedication. It positions itself as a forerunner in the artisan bread and farm-to-table bread movements, and its marketing communications, website, and social media accounts reflect this.
OVERVIEW
- California-based La Brea Bakery, the leading brand of artisan bread in North America, was founded in 1989 by Nancy Silverton and then-husband Mark Peel. It currently has around 1,001 to 5,000 employees.
- Led by CEO John Yamin, it has been a subsidiary of Swiss baked goods manufacturer and distributor ARYZTA since 2001. La Brea Bakery is the key brand of ARYZTA North America, which accounts for around 49% of ARYZTA's revenue.
- It has 12 categories of artisan bread, namely, reserve, loaves, petite loaves, thin bread loaves, baguettes and batards, take and bake breads, flatbreads, rolls, rounds, sliced sandwich bread, gluten free bread, and holiday breads. Nearly all the breads of the bakery are vegan and certified non-GMO.
- The bakery's breads, the most popular of which are the baguettes, are available throughout the United States through Amazon Fresh and in stores such as Albertsons and Kroger.
- It has six cafes across the following locations: Los Angeles, Downtown Disney, JFK International Airport — Terminal 4, McCormick Place Convention Center, Reno International Airport B Concourse, and Reno International Airport C Concourse.
- La Brea Bakery celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2019 by partnering with founder Nancy Silverton and launching special edition breads.
- ZoomInfo estimates the company's revenue at $300 million, while Hoovers estimates the company's revenue at $131.04 million.
- La Brea Bakery has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts. It has 115,066 followers on Facebook, 5,854 followers on Twitter, 12,900 followers on Instagram, and 337 subscribers on YouTube.
CORE BELIEFS
- La Brea Bakery firmly believes that passion and love should be baked into every loaf bread.
- It also believes that great bread is made with skill and dedication and that a baker's touch should have these two qualities.
- It believes as well that bread should be free of artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives.
POSITIONING
- La Brea Bakery positions itself as a champion of old-world baking by staying true to the "traditions of true artisanal bread." The bakery upholds the artisanal baking process and has not lost sight of this process since it started in 1989. It credits itself as the company that started America's Original Artisan Bread Movement.
- "Passion for great food" is what defines La Brea Bakery's identity as a people, as bakers, and as a family.
- The bakery prides itself in its use of simple yet high-quality ingredients. All the bakery's loaf breads are made with a starter of flour, organic grapes, and water, the very same starter the bakery had used when it started operating.
- It aims to play a leading role in the farm-to-table bread movement. In partnership with Wheat Montana, a grower of high-quality special varietal grains, it has recently introduced a line of single-origin bread products that were made with locally-produced, heirloom wheat.
MARKETING EXAMPLES
- A recent example of a successful marketing campaign is La Brea Bakery's campaign celebrating the company's 30th anniversary. A key part of the campaign was a video showcasing the bakery's humble beginnings, how the bakery has grown yet remained true to its values, and how the bakery has collaborated with founder Nancy Silverton to create a line of special anniversary edition breads. The success of this video was evident in marketing agency Matter winning a Gold Award of Excellence for this video in the Branded Entertainment category at The Communicator Awards.
- Another successful campaign was the bakery's Thanksgiving Heroes campaign where La Brea Bakery partnered with Matter to show gratitude to people working the holiday, such as fire fighters, police officers, and hospital workers, by "surprising them with a Thanksgiving meal" at their workplace. Parts of the campaign were a print ad calling on people to nominate their Thanksgiving heroes and a video showcasing the winners and the actual Thanksgiving meals that were given.
- Proving the success of the Thanksgiving Heroes campaign was the amount of recognition Matter had received for creating and designing the campaign. Matter won a Merit Bell Ringer Award in the Integrated Marketing Communications Award category, a Hermes Creative Platinum Award, and a PR Daily Video Award. It also got nominated for a Platinum PR Award in the Marketing Communications category.