Memory Of The Week: The History Of Hardin's Bakery & Flowers Baking Co. Of Tuscaloosa

Editor's Note: As part of an ongoing partnership with our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa, Patch will be bringing you a quick piece of local history per week provided by those working hard to preserve the memories of our community.

As a nonprofit, 501 (c)3, Historic Tuscaloosa operates on a daily basis from membership dues and is always looking for new members. Everyone is welcome to join and those interested are asked to visit historictuscaloosa.org or call (205) 758-2238.

TUSCALOOSA, AL — This installment of Historic Tuscaloosa's Memory of the Week takes us back to the source and humble origins of a wonderful smell that many enjoy every day driving along 15th Street.

Click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter and breaking news alerts.

Historic Tuscaloosa's Event & Digital Media Coordinator Sarah-Katherine Helms told Patch that Jack Hardin first began his bakery in 1900 in Northport, where he developed a customized local product that could be sold at a lower price than his competitors.

During this time, Helms said bread orders were loaded onto a wagon pulled by a hardworking horse named Molly, who was a visible member of the Tuscaloosa community for over 20 years. S

She would then retire to "light buggy duty" with the advent of automobiles.

Hardin — who served on the first very Northport City Council — was also noted as an innovator, with Hardin's Bakery becoming the very first business in Tuscaloosa to trade horses and carriages in favor of motor vehicles. Once delivery trucks were added, its service area expanded further.

From there, and after being purchased by an outside firm, Flowers Foods — a publicly traded company that reported roughly $5.1 billion in annual sales in 2022. The company operates 46 bakeries in 19 states, making Flowers Foods the second-largest packaged bread producer in the United States today.

In considering the Tuscaloosa bakery's origins, though, Hardin first decided bread would be his ticket to success and opened a small bakeshop on Main Street — now Main Avenue — in Northport. In the beginning, the bakeshop specialized in bread, cakes, pastries and ice cream.

The little shop in Northport had a store in the front and a kitchen in the back, but was destroyed by a fire in 1914.

Hardin bounced back quickly and reopened in two separate buildings on Broad Street, with the retail store in one location and the bake shop, producing Butter-Krust bread, in another.

Helms said Hardin was noted for being a savvy businessman with an exceptional ability to see potential, while also possessing a strong work ethic and an outstanding reputation that allowed him to turn potential into reality.

As the company grew, Hardin then saw the need for a specialty bakery in the Tuscaloosa area and traveled to New York, where he hired an expert German baker to operate Hardin's Bakery.

Hardin died in 1926 and his company's plant at its present location at 15th Street and Hackberry Lane in Tuscaloosa in 1956. He would not get to see his company grow into the massive and complex operation it is today and the Tuscaloosa plant was purchased in 1972 by Flowers Foods LLC of Thomasville, Georgia.

At present, Helms said Flowers Baking Co. of Tuscaloosa delivers in fleets all over the country and operates a network of Flowers bakery items and plants throughout the Southeast.

The 15th Street bakery in 1996 then invested millions in its operation with the latest baking technology, installing computerized loading, and stacking machines for trays and pans, a new, state-of-the-art bread slicer and bagger, and two silos that each hold 150,000 pounds of flour.

Later, in 2004, the bakery added a new proofer, in which dough rises before it is baked.

As the times changed and methods became more advanced, Flowers Baking Co. of Tuscaloosa began baking organic bread in the plant in the spring of 2016 — becoming the company's first organic-only baking plant in the eastern U.S.

The 90,000-square-foot bakery at present can reportedly turn out more than 4,000 loaves of bread and almost 29,000 buns an hour. Its brands include Nature's Own, Whitewheat, Sunbeam, Bunny, and Mary Jane, just to name a few.

The Tuscaloosa bakery today sells products ranging double fiber bread with omega-3 to 100% whole wheat bread made with organic bread with no sugar, lower carbs, and reduced sodium, and bread with the taste and texture of white with the nutritional benefits of wheat.

Helms also provided interesting insight from a book in the Historic Tuscaloosa archives titled "Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow."

"Long ago, Jack Hardin and the Flowers brothers recognized the need for fresh, quality bread in their hometowns and created bakeries to meet that need, " the book says. "The fact that their bakeries are prospering today is a testimony to their vision and the successful business strategies the leaders of today's bakeries continue to follow."

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you're interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com