A slice of the action

Whenever pizza companies battle over who has the biggest pie, cash registers ring at Lloyd Industries in Spokane.

The 8-year-old company custom designs and manufactures bake ware, mostly for pizzas and desserts like cakes and pies. When a pizza chain changes the size of a product, it’s frequently changed at every franchise location, which means an order will roll in for thousands of new pans.

“We love it,” company Vice President Rob Crow said with a grin. He started the company with his father, John.

Since 1996, Lloyd Industries, named after Rob Crow’s entrepreneurial great-grandfather, has grown from $400,000 in annual revenues reaped from two or three customers to a company that serves 65 of the country’s largest franchises, in addition to 7,000 individual businesses, John Crow said.

And the company is on track to hit sales of $400,000 again — for one month.

Rob Crow said he’s shooting for annual sales of $10 million in three to five years.

Rapid growth has precipitated a move and expansion, from two North Side sites with a total of 15,000 square feet, into one 40,000-square-foot spot in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park. The move should be complete before the year’s end, John Crow said. The expansion likely will result in boosting the number of employees from 23 now to about 32, Rob Crow said.

John Crow said the jobs to be added will pay about $20,000 to $40,000 a year, depending on position. The added positions will be in manufacturing, customer service and Web design. The company is also hoping to build a test kitchen in its new location.

Part of Lloyd Industries’ niche is the company’s ability to custom-make a baking pan in any shape, thanks to a programmable spinning lathe that cost $250,000, John Crow said. The company has two of the machines. So when a customer wanted to make 4,000 football-shaped cakes, Lloyd Industries was the obvious choice.

Perhaps the company’s most popular item, with 7,000 sold, is a pizza cutter that looks like a hubcap. Dubbed “The Equalizer,” it cuts pizzas into same-size slices. It’s particularly popular with pizzerias under contract to serve school cafeterias, the Crows said, because it eliminates the problem of children fighting over who gets the biggest slice.

People who think a pizza pan’s just a pizza pan should think again. Every time the industry changes, adding dessert pizzas or low-carb pizzas or crusts with different ingredients, pizzerias need new pans, Rob Crow said. Lloyd Industries’ first customer, a southern California pizza chain with 500 restaurants, recently ordered new pans for every location.

And Lloyd Industries doesn’t have to dream up new ideas; its customers do it for them. When a customer wants a pan that’s a little bigger or one shaped like an armadillo or one with holes punched in it to allow more heat to pass through, Lloyd Industries can answer the call.

The recent hiring of a new operations manager also should help the company grow, Rob Crow said. Doug Weyer, who spent close to 20 years with a food equipment company in Kent, Wash., is planning to streamline policies that will improve the company’s efficiency.

For example, Weyer said, putting all the machines required to manufacture the football pans next to each other shaved seconds off the process. That may not seem like much, but, “You think of 10 seconds on 4,000 footballs,” Weyer said. “That’s a lot of extra products you can make.”

Rob Crow said he expects the company to grow 50 percent a year for the next few years. The additional employees will double the volume, he said, and the additional efficiencies could triple, or even quadruple it. And despite the robust business with pizzerias, Rob Crow said he expects the company’s growth to come mostly in the commercial baking arena over the next few years.

“Often it’s our innovation that gets us in the door,” Rob Crow said.