Will Breadbots rule the grocery world?

COEUR d’ALENE — It’s fresh, it’s hot, it’s good.

It’s not even more expensive than the stuff that came on a truck packed with preservatives days ago. It’s Wilkinson Baking Company bread, and when you start seeing it available in stores near you, just remember that Coeur d’Alene made it possible.

For centuries, bakers have had to rise early in the morning to begin the process of producing bread for customers, explained company president and Coeur d’Alene resident Randy Wilkinson.

The son of a family friend performed the early morning ritual for his bakery customers. That son asked his dad if it would be possible to solve that problem for bakery workers, by figuring out how to make fresh bread without keeping hoot owl hours.

When the son died young, Wilkinson’s friend began cogitating on the question.

Years later, Wilkinson bought the idea and kept working on it. As of next spring, a major national grocery chain will field test the results of those years of work.

Wilkinson has been working on the idea since the 1990s and said that in those days the technology needed to reach his goal did not exist.

Now things have changed.

“The challenge of making mechanical equipment capable of the nuance of managing a biologically based process is really tough. The industry said it couldn’t be done,” said Wilkinson.

However, he laughed, “Because we didn’t know baking, we didn’t know it couldn’t be done.”

The Mini Bakery, which also goes by the nickname “Breadbot,” has solved that young man’s question of how to make great bread without waking at the crack of dawn.

In the company laboratory in Walla Walla, Wash., the Wilkinson Baking Company has assembled a visually attractive, compact bakery that was field tested in Walla Walla and at Sandpoint’s Super 1 Foods for nine months this year.

Customers loved it, with the Breadbots earning 30 to 50 percent of market share at the test locations, he said.

“We’re just in the process of locking down the final design from research and development, and going into an initial manufacturing and production run,” Wilkinson explained.

Now a major national grocery chain plans on testing the Mini Bakery for itself. The chance means that Wilkinson Breadbots may proliferate, and revolutionize the bread industry.

Wilkinson said 45 cents of every dollar that consumers pay for bread at the store goes to pay for the cost of shipping and preserving the bread.

By installing Breadbots in grocery stores, the company gives consumers the chance to pay less for bread, and gives grocers the chance to earn a better return on their bread sales.

The best part about the Breadbots may be the quality of the breads they produce, said Wilkinson. Currently several varieties are available from the Mini Bakeries: organic seed and grain loaves, organic whole wheat loaves, and all-natural loaves made from nine grains, whole wheat, or homestyle wheat.

Wilkinson is a retired physician, and noted that the absence of added sugar makes Wilkinson breads better on the glycemic index.

He said belonging to the Innovation Collective in Coeur d’Alene has facilitated his dream of delivering fresh, great bread to customers.

Nick Smoot said local venture capitalists are looking for people like Wilkinson who are “MacGyver-ing” their way to breakthroughs. “There’s something special about this idea that anybody can do the MacGyver thinking. When it comes to needing extra money there are people who want to invest in those ideas but just need to know how to find them.”

Bringing the right people together is what makes the Innovation Collective, and Coeur d’Alene, such a special place, he explained.

“I’m proud that people in Austin and Manhattan now know about these people in Idaho that have MacGyvered the impossible,” Smoot said.

For more information, go to wilkinsonbaking.com.