Company History

In 1954, Ray Knutson and Wayne Larson purchased a small bakery in the lush San Joaquin Valley of Lodi, California. This bakery was appropriately named Cottage Bakery, because they developed unique recipes from those given to them by many of the local German homemakers and their own creations. Their reputation grew over the years, because of the home-baked freshness of their high quality products and the personalized service they provided.

In 1969, The Knutson family purchased Wayne's interest in the bakery and continued to develop more European-type quality products. The company added a Wood Fired Rotisserie style European Cafe to its Lodi retail store in 1995 and is proud of its high quality wood roasted meats, fresh pasta, unique sandwiches and exquisite desserts. The Cafe addition to our fine European quality Bakery's pastries, decorated cakes, artisan breads and a host of other quality products broadened our already extensive product lines.

In 1986 the company added a 38,000 square foot modern, highly automated Central Production Plant for high speed production of its own products and now services retail bakeries, in-store bakeries, airlines and foodservice accounts throughout the U.S., and Canada.

Our 50 years of experience operating retail bakeries and foodservice establishments has provided us with a deep knowledge of this business and a broad and diverse product base from which we can draw from. This history enables us to quickly develop new, exciting and innovative products for our growing list of wholesale customers in many channels of distribution across the country.

Our plant has grown to over 350,000 square feet of modern high speed production of frozen bakery products from five different manufacturing departments producing:

• Frozen Cake layers, cheesecakes, baked Danish and specialty products
• Deep frozen high quality European Mousse Tortes and Enrobed Desserts
• Frozen dough rich flakey Danish, coffee cakes, breakfast breads and Croissants
• Frozen dough upscale Bagels and energy bars
• Par-baked frozen all natural long fermentation stone baked European Breads, Ciabatta, Focaccia, Rolls and rustic Sandwich breads.

New Changes in 2004 for Cottage Bakery

We are proud to announce the opening of a brand new Administration and R&D facility as well as an expanded production facility. As of July 3, 2004, Cottage Bakery will be moving its Lodi retail Bakery to the central plant. We continue to focus our attention and efforts building a world class wholesale bakery committed to effectively reacting to the needs of our growing list of customers. Contact us at Customer Service 209-333-8044.