Rustic Crust partners with American Flatbread

The next time you find yourself in the Cayman Islands feeling nostalgic and longing for a little taste of home, look up Kirk Supermarket on Grand Cayman. A trip to the frozen section will yield five different varieties of American Flatbread.

Conceived in 1990, American Flatbread’s wholesale operation currently distributes frozen pizza to stores in 35 of the 50 United States and pursues a more far-reaching client base in locations as distant as the Cayman Islands.

With demand continuing to grow beyond established customers, the evolving company recently has been forced to reevaluate its business strategy, and on Feb. 9 American Flatbread finalized a licensing agreement with Rustic Crust, the nation’s leading retail brand for natural and organic pizza crust. The agreement gives the bakery the green light to produce, market and sell American Flatbread frozen goods from their New Hampshire establishment.

“We started looking at our company this summer, and basically what we found was that our strength was the hospitality part,” explained Megan Duni, marketing programs director of American Flatbread. “Frozen production is really not a strength of ours.”

For American Flatbread, the “hospitality part” includes restaurant operation and catering. The company also concerns itself with community events like Benefit Bakes, hoping to foster hospitality in the surrounding area, an important component of its mission statement. From a business point of view, it made sense to the company to focus its efforts on these stronger operations.

But the decision to partner with Rustic Crust was not motivated purely by practical applications.

“Our frozen production is not in line with our core values, food integrity and sustainability,” Duni said.

Limitations of the current baking facility in Waitsfield, Vt., have prevented American Flatbread from maintaining a more sustainable wholesale operation.

“We’re baking on 200-year-old farm,” Duni pointed out. “It’s literally a farm converted to a restaurant. It’s a facility with multiple stairs and really limited room. Because of the structure, we couldn’t implement parts of efficiency that could make us more sustainable.”

Duni cited Spiral Freezers, for example. The technology of its freezer allows the product to freeze more rapidly, and gives it a longer shelf life.

“There are machines that could make us more efficient that won’t take away from the quality of the product,” Duni observed. Rustic Crust has the resources to make this efficiency a reality.

But while American Flatbread understands the benefits of the agreement, local customers have expressed concern.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding,” Duni said.

“It stems from language. Unfortunately the very first news outlets misrepresented the agreement. It said in a headline that American Flatbread had been sold, and there was a lot of confusion.”

Duni explained that the integrity of the brand has not been compromised.

“We didn’t sell anything, we’re still here,” Duni said. “This is freeing up our restaurant. We can have a renewed focus on supporting local agriculture, community support and community outreach.”

The company feels confident that Rustic Crust was the best choice for the positive outcome it anticipates.

"We’ve been doing this for a long time, and many people have approached us about an agreement,” Duni explained.

“We were never interested in that, but when we did look at the model, Rustic Crust was right there. We realized that we share the same values.”

Duni believes that these are values that Rustic Crust will be able to enforce at an elevated level.

“In making our frozen pizza, we’ve been sourcing good ingredients,” Duni said.

“But the model wasn’t completely in line with our core values.”

Duni pointed out that American Flatbread sources its tomatoes, for example, from California.

“Rustic Crust is committed to local,” Duni said.

“They will have the ability to source even more local ingredients, and the food integrity will be just as good if not better.”

For all the good that it expects to come from this agreement, American Flatbread did not rush into negotiations.

“This is a decision that we didn’t make lightly,” Duni said.

“We made it because we really feel that it’s best for our company, our employees, and our customers.”