The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Help, I need ideas on how to expand my hamburger bun business.

adam_dolcebakery's picture
adam_dolcebakery

Help, I need ideas on how to expand my hamburger bun business.

My small bakery is doing good business making brioche hamburger buns. We started out only making desserts and doing the brioche buns in small batches but now, word has spread and we are getting pounded with orders for the brioche buns. The problem is that we are hand rolling all of them (around 2000 a week) and it is killing us. I need equipment but I don't know what to look at... 

Does anyone have experience with a dough rolling machine? We are limited in that our kitchen only has single phase electricity so we have to look for equipment that can accomodate that specification. Does anyone here make hamburger buns on a large scale? What equipment do you use? What would you recommend for a small bakery such as ours? We have clients lined up and we could   triple our sales but I can't ask employees to hand roll 5000 buns a week on top of everything else. I need help! Thanks! :)

Frequent Flyer's picture
Frequent Flyer

...so I could be off base, but you may need a dough divider and rounder.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dough+rounder&_sacat=0

FF

PeterS's picture
PeterS

but, this sounds like another question/situation for the members of the bbga.org. Their membership is composed of many professional bakers and independent bakery owners like yourself. They have a messageboard for its members and questions like this are posted all the time. You can share your trials and tribulations with others going through the same growing pains and get help from those that have been there. Check them out. (Yes, I am a member; no, I am not on commission).

wally's picture
wally

What Frequent Flyer said.  You need to check that it will handle the weight you're using for buns - most will handle up to 4oz of dough which is pretty standard for burger buns.  You'll get 36 per batch.  Cost is going to run you anywhere from $2 - $8K for used equipment.

Larry