At his 125,000 square foot bakery in Montreal, Michel Saillant, chief executive of Boulart Inc., likes to manage every aspect of the high-tech production, from when the flour is poured into the mixers until the baguettes come out of the oven to be packed into boxes, flash frozen and stacked by robotic arms for shipping across North America.
For being the only bakery he has run, it is doing well: The company produces thousands of non-GMO artisanal baguettes an hour and has sales of more than $50 million a year.
However, Boulart is still a relatively small player in the Canadian artisan-style baked goods market, which is projected to be worth $1.47 billion this year in the retail space alone. In the U.S., the IRI market research company found sales of fresh bread and rolls were more than US$17 billion last year, with growth taking place in artisan-style products.
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