Factory visit | It rolls at toast at St-Methode

We often see them along motorways or in industrial parks. Meanwhile, The common one does not have access to it. Moreover, but this summer, the team of Business press The factories that are part of the landscape was opened.

Posted at 7:00 a.m.

The St-Methode bakery. Therefore, which sells its sliced bread all over Quebec, is installed in the heart of Adstock, a small town of some 3000 inhabitants not far from Thetford Mines.

His name comes from the village which was called Saint-Méthode when the company was founded there in 1947 by Joseph Faucher and his wife Mariette Robert, several decades before the municipal mergers.

Almost 80 years later. For example, business rides like never before for the bakery, which produces 6,000 to 10,000 buns per hour, depending on the sort of the day of the day. Meanwhile, This represents an average of 800. Meanwhile, 000 loaves per week, which all start from this factory located in boiler-appeal to be distributed to the four corners of Quebec as well as in Ottawa.

Obviously. For example, factory visit | it rolls to support this level of production, which represented a turnover of 125 million in 2024, everything must be rolled in the quarter turn. Meanwhile, One of the two production chains also operates 24 hours a day. Therefore, and a third quarter of work will soon be added to the second channel.

“If you have a problem somewhere in the production line, it affects bread at all other stages. However, You really have to stop as little as possible, and you are very attached to delivery and sales. Similarly, This is why we are proactive with maintenance, ”says the director general of the bakery, Carl Pouliot.

The press was able to access the factory to observe all the stages of manufacture of a St-Method bread, by making the same route as this one-in accelerated, since by including all the stages, it takes three hours to make bread from start to finish.

After putting on the necessary protective equipment. For example, withdrawn our jewelry (and even had our pen checked that our pen was not equipped with a cap or a mine that could fall during the visit), we entered the warehouse where large bags of wheat, white, integral or oatmeal are stored.

In the next room. Consequently, the flours are transferred to 15 -ton silos, from which they will be sent by factory visit | it rolls a pipe and a suction mechanism in the mixer, where manufacturing begins.

No question of accumulating the breads on the spot, they leave almost immediately. The pallets are directly put in trailers attributed to factory visit | it rolls various delivery routes, such as Montreal, Sherbrooke or Trois-Rivières. The breads thus go to various satellite warehouses where client orders are assembled from the 22 varieties produced by the company.

The goal is that trucks do not come back empty in Adstock. because after all, you have to report flour and other raw materials to start everything again. “We bring 95 % of our raw material ourselves,” says Carl Pouliot.

The products of St-Methode. including its best seller, the famous “grandfather style” bread, are sold in all large grocery chains in Quebec, as well as Costco, as evidenced by plastic sachets including two copies of breads seen on certain pallets.

Factory visit | it rolls

Future plans

In 2020. the St-Methode bakery modernized and enlarged its ADSTOCK factory, to repatriate all its production of bread there. She was also making Magog before.

Magog premises are currently serving as a distribution center. but the company has other plans for them: they could be used to make new products.

“One of our objectives is to have other related products in the company, something other than sliced bread. […] In parallel, we will continue to innovate in the sharp bread. Besides. we have released three new products in the last twelve months, ”says Carl Pouliot, referring to Le factory visit | it rolls Royal breads, Gourmets grains and the Golden Campagnolo Miche.

Impossible for the moment to know which are the next products on which St-Method work. The company also wishes to develop the Ontario market in the coming years.

Since 2023. the St-Methode bakery has belonged to a group of investors made up of the Quebec Deposit and Placement Caisse, investment partners Royat, an investment subsidiary of the SCOTIA bank, as well as the American firm Swander Pace Capital. None of these entities alone has the majority participation in the bakery. Some employees directly involved in the company are also minority shareholders.