RPIA Testimonial from Atwood’s Bakery, Alexandria, LA

It's amazing what a collective can do! We are a small full line retail bakery that is located in a city of 50,000. Our store has approximately 4800 square feet of which 1200 square feet are used for warehouse storage.

Why so much storage? We are a minimum of 4 hours from all of our suppliers. Because of the distance, we get only one truck per week from New Orleans, Dallas and Jackson and we have to have the extra inventory to operate until the next truck. We have gone to direct shipments every 3 months for specialty fillings and icings, boxes and boards. This allows us to obtain a quality product that we couldn't get otherwise -- due to their minimum orders. The downside is it takes up ¼ of our space. Storage space is costly and so is a three month inventory.

I think in the beginning RPIA was using us as a test case with the Beilman Group to see if a bakery in the middle of nowhere could get better distribution, maintain quality ingredients, keep inventory costs down and reduce warehouse space-- all this with a lower cost to me.

We signed on hoping to get one of the four and we have been very pleased. Our distribution is different. Two of our smaller suppliers, Best Brands and Alliant Foods have become major suppliers as they came to the table offering us more quality products with technical support on how to use them. We had some reductions in poundage limits to our surprise. We didn't have to change a lot of our favorite brands either.

We are very pleased with the professionalism and timely thoroughness of Bart Beilman when he came to our bakery. He is a “down to earth” type of guy who does not use pressure in any way. We gave him the numbers and he responded by surprising us with a 14% reduction in cost of goods. We thought that we were buying well and smart. Ha Ha

After switching over to this new way of purchasing, the Beilman Group is still in constant contact with us and the deals are still pouring in as more manufacturers are getting on the wagon. Are we happy with our decision? Yes, indeed!

Mark and Rhonda Atwood

Atwood's Bakery

1235 Texas Ave

Alexandria, La 71301

Abakery@aol.com