I was barely out of bed Sunday morning when I received a Facebook message from a friend:
Simply Bread closed doors today!
For a moment, it was hard to believe. But within hours I heard the same news from a dozen others. Simply Bread, the Valley’s premier wholesale bakery, was out of business.
The news was all the more surprising given that Simply Bread was the subject of a glowing profile as a recession-defying business in the Phoenix Business Journal last year:
An independent small business is baking up success in the Valley despite the economy, and it plans to expand its presence in California and Las Vegas.
Simply Bread is moving toward that expansion quickly. The specialty baker, founded in 2006, recently relocated its 4,000-square-foot central Phoenix bakery into a 20,000-square-foot facility in Chandler.
“We were just bursting at the gills,†said Harold Back, the company’s founder and president.
The article added the company invested more than $10 million in the Chandler facility, and Back said 2009 revenues were up 45 percent.
Now, this morning, comes the official confirmation. Simply Bread is closed. Which only makes one wonder how things went so bad so quickly.
No loafers here: Simply Bread upgrades, builds new facility [Phoenix Biz Journal]
