Bridgetown Natural Foods expands

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In the year since receiving its first contract, Bridgetown Natural Foods LLC can’t keep up with demand.

The startup contract food manufacturer is moving from its cramped 3,900-square-foot manufacturing space in Southeast Portland to a 60,000-square-foot operation five miles east.

The move will help meet Bridgetown’s growing number of contracts to make granola, breakfast bars and other snack products while boosting its first-year revenue of about $1 million to about $7 million in the next two years.

“We’re on the bridge of the ship riding the tidal wave,” said Mark Haas, the company’s president and general manager.

It’s been a year of light-speed growth for Haas. The company will employ more than 80 by the end of 2011 after starting with five a year ago.

The brunt of Bridgetown’s business comes from producing organic and natural granolas and snack products. While the market for organic and natural foods is projected to rise nearly 30 percent through 2012, that isn’t the driver behind Bridgetown’s rapid ascent.

The credit falls largely on the resumes of Haas and business partner Jeff Grogg.

Both Haas and Grogg — Bridgetown’s business development director — previously worked for the Kellogg Co., the Battle Creek, Mich.-based food giant.

Both worked for Kellogg-owned Kashi Co., a La Jolla, Calif.-based company that is among the marquee brands in organic foods.

Haas — who also spent a year as a plant manager with the organic food company Hain Celestial Group — spent two years as director of operations at Kashi.

“It’s sort of a rock star brand,” Haas said of Kashi. “You have immediate credibility with a lot of people.”

Haas was pegged to keep climbing Kellogg’s corporate ladder. But with a young family in its fifth house in seven years, Haas felt the need to plant roots.

So he settled in Portland, a choice he made by geographic and market-based deduction.

Haas wanted to stay on the West Coast, where market conditions were favorable, and preferably in an urban center in a state bordering California.

“Portland is known throughout the world as a place where trends can start,” Haas said.

Bridgetown’s quick start, however, adds to a trend that’s already rising in Oregon.

The state’s food manufacturing sector was the only sub-category of manufacturers to add jobs in 2009.

Oregon food manufacturers ended the year with a work force of 24,900 — an increase of 400 jobs over 2008. That’s notable considering Oregon manufacturers across all categories shed 21,700 jobs last year.

“What happens in the Northwest is we have a very active, organized community of food processors,” said Dave Zepponi, president of the Portland-based Northwest Food Processors Association. “They have learned among themselves to be innovative in their strategic thinking, which has positioned them well in a global marketplace.”

The Northwest Food Processors Association is among the agencies lending their services to companies like Bridgetown.

Haas, Zepponi said, “is an entrepreneur-deluxe. He is certainly what we want in the Pacific Northwest.”

And he’s experienced in a market segment that, despite a down year, is on pace to grow double-digits.

The nation’s $6.2 billion organic food and drink market fell slightly — 0.3 percent — in 2009, according to data from Chicago-based research firm Mintel International Group Ltd.

The market is expected to recover gradually to reach nearly $8 billion in 2012.

“Generally heavy users of organic product haven’t shifted their behavior,” said David Browne, a senior analyst with Mintel. “They’re still buying as much as last year.

Bridgetown netted its first manufacturing contract in December 2008 — a deal to make a Nutrigrain-like bar for a client.

Since then, the company has amassed seven clients, among the major multinational companies. Haas declined to identify his clients.

But the list is set to grow now that the company will have the capacity to process larger orders. The new plant will be capable of running five production lines, up from one today.

That’s critical for a small company like Bridgetown, which has been adding production time to keep up with orders.

The company operated a single shift through the first quarter of 2009. By the end of that quarter the company added another contract with a multinational company to make a granola product and by March added a second shift.

By June it grew to three shifts working six days a week. For a stretch in early January the company ran its production line 13 days straight.