Since John and Nancy McKearney got into the baking business 26 years ago, the Tucson couple has found ways to continuously reinvent themselves.
First there was the bakery and cafe, Village Bakehouse, the couple opened in 1996, a year after moving to Tucson from Michigan.
Five years later, after receiving high interest from local restaurants and grocers, the McKearneys decided to sell the business to instead focus on wholesale, creating Bakehouse Bread Company.
By 2014, Bakehouse Bread went statewide, distributing its sweet breads to Fry’s Food and Drug stores throughout Arizona. It would go regional a year later in seven western states with Smith’s Food and Drug.
Today, you can find Bakehouse Bread’s sweet loaves in more than 2,000 stores nationwide.
But the business, with about 55 employees and a facility on Tucson’s west side, is looking to up the ante, as it prepares to pitch its products to one of the biggest players in the retail game: Walmart.
More than 1,200 businesses applied for Walmart’s Open Call, with just 12 Arizona companies selected. Bakehouse is the only Tucson-area business pitching to Walmart executives on June 29 in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The Open Call process is designed to bring shelf-ready products made, grown or assembled in the U.S. to shoppers across the country, both in-store and online.
And the McKearneys say Bakehouse Bread is ready to take things to the next level, selling about 60,000 loaves weekly, with room for expansion.
The opportunity came up after Nancy McKearney was engaging in market research, something she often does before launching new efforts within the business.
“I was in a Walmart store six to eight months ago and saw that they had upped their bakery game,” she said. “I thought to myself, I could see our product looking mighty fine here.
“Walmart always impresses me. You can see it when you go to the condiments aisle. If you’re a mustard person, they have so much to choose from and I always think, they’re really taking a chance on businesses, and they seem very savvy.”
In addition to pitching their new coffee cake and other popular loaves, including zucchini, banana and cinnamon swirl, Bakehouse Bread Company will get to engage in Open Call seminars discussing finance, supplier diversity, logistics and sustainability.
Each 30-minute pitch is considered on an individual basis and if accepted, could come to fruition in a variety of ways whether that’s with an online presence on walmart.com, or landing on the shelves of a brick-and-mortar store locally, regionally or nationally.
For the McKearneys this is the next logical step.
“We think this is a good move because we’ve been taking baby steps,” John McKearny said. “We were local for quite a long time and then we expanded out in this region and now that we’re nationwide … our sales are fantastic. Our product gets positive results everywhere so this seems like the next logical step, to partner with Walmart, and keep our momentum growing.”
For more information on where to find the sweet breads, visit bakehousebreadcompany.com.
