It’s 10:30 in the morning in a largely windowless building in Torrance, California, and the air smells fantastic. Outside, the weather is already unseasonably stuffy and thick, but inside the 150,000 square foot King’s Hawaiian production bakery the blend of yeast and and just-baked sweet breads is intoxicating. It seems to hang in the air at nose level, like floating in a pool with eyes barely above the water.
Everyone who works inside is outfitted with white smocks and hairnets, bobbing around the production floor checking endless lines of tumbling rolls as they move from the dough mix area upstairs to portioning to proofing to bake to bag. It’s a highly automated process that spans multiple floors and countless conveyor belts, but the human touch is still everywhere on the production floor. Quality control team members keep an eye on the product as they whiz past, and guys in forklifts move pallets full of finished rolls to the shipping area. Others watch the bake and scan the gigantic freezer, while inside a small research and development area hands tinker with new ingredients, toggling between spreadsheets.
Despite the ubiquity of King’s Hawaiian as a brand, this is still a family-run operation, based right in Southern California — just like Panda Express. The Taira family first started cooking their signature Portuguese sweet rolls out of a small bakery space on the Big Island in Hilo, Hawai’i back in 1950, expanding in 1963 to some prime real estate in Honolulu before eventually moving to Torrance, California in 1977. The mainland jump increased production capabilities and company awareness overnight, propelling the small retail bakery into the major wholesale baking business.
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