Enjoy Life Foods officially opened its new allergy-friendly bakery on Sept. 8. Located in Jeffersonville, Ind., a few miles north of Louisville, the plant is home to what Enjoy Life says is North America’s largest dedicated allergy-friendly bakery. The facility will produce hundreds of millions of products a year for people around the world with food allergies.
The Jeffersonville site boasts 200,000 sq. ft. of production capacity and will continue the company's commitment to producing and packaging all of the brand’s baked free-from products, including cookies, snack bars, chocolate bars, baking chocolate, baking mixes, and savory snacks. The products are currently available in the U.S. as well as global markets in Canada, South Africa, Israel, Mexico and Singapore, and will soon be launched throughout Asia and the E.U. More than 100 employees from Jeffersonville and the surrounding local communities have joined the company's team at the bakery, and Enjoy Life plans to bring on 100 additional employees in 2017.
With the dramatic rise in food allergies in recent years, including 75 million people currently living with food allergies and intolerances and approximately 25 million people who require gluten-free foods due to Celiac disease or gluten avoidance, Enjoy Life Foods is well-positioned for significant growth with the opening of the Jeffersonville bakery.
"This is a historic milestone for our company and for the allergy-friendly community as a whole," says Joel Warady, chief marketing & innovation officer at Enjoy Life Foods. "We have the opportunity to provide our many loyal fans with delicious free-from products they have come to know and love. Having the largest dedicated allergy-friendly bakery in North America also allows us to further grow our operations to provide even more great-tasting products to families across the U.S. and Canada, while expanding our reach to people seeking allergy-friendly food options around the world ... "
The company's growth plans are supported and enabled by parent company Mondelēz International, which operate Enjoy Life Foods as a separate, wholly-owned subsidiary while providing back-office support and global resources to help accelerate growth. Mondelēz focuses on becoming the leader in well-being snacks, with the goal of about half of its portfolio comprising well-being choices by 2020.
