MILWAUKEE, WI — Milwaukee Pretzel Co., a Bavarian pretzel manufacturer based in Wisconsin, is making a major move for its manufacturing practice.
The company announced plans to more than double its 22,000-square-foot facility, which sits on 4.5 acres of land, to 50,000 square feet.
“When we bought this building three years ago, we bought it on acreage that would allow us to do this, so we knew this would be something we’d want to do if we ever had the opportunity to do so,” said Matt Wessel, president and COO of Milwaukee Pretzel, about the decision to expand the company’s operations. “That opportunity came faster than we thought it would, and there’s different facets that are driving it.”
The additional square footage in the production space is the primary driver for the expansion.
“The added square footage gets ahead of the need to potentially bring in new types of automation that require more space than we have today,” Wessel explained.
Along with more capacity for Milwaukee Pretzel’s production process, he also called out increasing on-site finished goods storage and warehouse space as key factors behind the move to grow.
“Over the course of the 12-month project of the building addition, we’re going to fully map out and plan the equipment side of the expansion that we ultimately want to go in that space,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea of what we want but we haven’t done the final selections.
Wessel confirmed that along with the added square footage, Milwaukee Pretzel will bring in another freezer to increase storage capacity on-site, specialized mixers and an automated twist line to speed up production.
The expansion is estimated to be completed in November 2024 or January 2025 at the latest. With the added space and capacity, Wessel shared that the expansion will open the door for new business opportunities.
“Other than practically helping us make more product, it gives us an opportunity to aggressively go after really any customer in the country, regardless of what they make or how much they buy,” he shared. “It puts us in a position to truly be able to compete with any business that’s out there.”
With a bulk of the business in food service, added production capacity will allow Milwaukee Pretzel to make fundraising a true vertical as a revenue source for the baking company.
“We have a very rapidly growing fundraiser department,” Wessel said. “We’re doing a lot across the country, not just in Wisconsin.”
With the pending changes and opportunities on the horizon for the business, Wessell is optimistic about the potential this expansion brings.
“We’ll have to navigate coming to work at a construction site essentially, but beyond that,” he shared, “the potential that this opens up for us and being at the other end of that will be really exciting for us as a business.”
