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Jul 15, 2023

Take a photo tour of the new Potter's Crackers kitchen

Photo director With a major expansion last November from 3,000 square feet in

Photo director

With a major expansion last November from 3,000 square feet in Madison to 12,000 square feet in Fitchburg, Potter's Crackers has doubled its oven capacity. The pandemic sent grocery sales "through the roof," said owner David Payne said.

His team is now poised for a big next step: to establish Potter's as a national brand.

Baker Jason Atkinson and David Payne, co-owner and general manager of Potter's Crackers, help make five triple batches of crackers in a record-breaking amount of time for them at their new Fitchburg production facility. Production, the morning of March 15, took six and a half hours, when normally it takes nine and a half hours.

Chef Joel Carlson makes the dough for the Wisconsin rye variety of Potter's Crackers. Carlson, also in charge of research and development, carefully measures the ingredients, adds them to a commercial mixer, compresses the dough and stacks the bricks of dough in preparation of the next steps in the cracker making process. Carlson makes about 200 lbs. of raw dough in one batch, which yields roughly 17,000 crackers.

Production manager Ben Jarosh uses an automatic reversible sheeter which runs the cracker dough through a rolling-pin-like mechanism, making the sheet of dough thinner which each pass. It is then wrapped around a roller and moved to the next phase of production.

Production manager Ben Jarosh carries a fresh roll of dough over to the makeup line, where dough is cut, salted and placed on baking pans.

Production manager Ben Jarosh lays a fresh roll of dough over the end of the previous roll on the conveyor belt of the makeup line. This creates a continuous sheet of dough to keep production moving along.

The thin dough of the classic white crackers moves along a conveyor belt in the German machine, which was specifically designed for cracker production. The machine feeds the dough through an aerator and two sets of blades. Then it passes under nozzles that mist water on top of the cut dough before it goes under a metered salt sprinkler.

The thickness and dimensions of the cracker batches can be modified on a computer attached to the makeup line. The speed of the process can also be modified. Just for fun, when the machine was brand new, Potter's Crackers management cranked it up to full speed to witness just how fast it could go. Co-owner David Payne said, "It was fast. It was doing a tray of crackers every 4-5 seconds. Too fast for one person to keep up with, that's for sure!"

David Payne, co-owner and general manager of Potter's Crackers, and baker Jason Atkinson work as a team to remove trays of cut and salted cracker dough from the makeup line and move them to baking racks.

(Left) Ashley Payne, who co-owns Potter's Crackers and is in charge of strategic development, writes notes on cracker yields. That morning produced the highest yield of crackers in the shortest amount of time yet at the new facility. (Right) David Payne, co-owner and general manager, separates squares of cracker dough before the rack of uncooked crackers goes into an oven to bake.

David Payne, co-owner and general manager of Potter's Crackers, sets each one of the four industrial ovens to a different bake time, based on trial and error. Two racks fit into each oven, and a mechanism rotates them for even baking. When the timer ends, he opens the oven to check the color of the crackers for doneness. Once done, the baking racks are wheeled next to a homemade wall of fans to cool. Each fan is partially covered with a hairnet-like material to prevent dust from blowing onto the crackers.

David Payne, co-owner and general manager of Potter's Crackers, shakes a bin of finished crackers to help therm settle before pouring more crackers into it. All of this is done as each batch of crackers bakes in the oven, which means the bakers are constantly in motion. Payne said, "I’ve worn a Fitbit in the past and have logged over 30,000 steps during one production."

A roll of labels is prepared with a new expiration date for each batch of fresh crackers.

Wyatt Joseph Watts Brinker packages and boxes Potter's Crackers in a large space near the kitchen. (Right) a customer's order is prepared on a table in the warehouse.

A skateboard is tucked beneath a storage rack full of crackers in the production facility. Co-owner of Potter's Crackers David Payne uses the skate board to quickly get from one end of the warehouse to the other.

Co-owner Ashley Payne works in her office at the new Fitchburg production facility of Potter's Crackers.

Small batches of potential new cracker flavors, which are in the research and development phase, sit atop the blueprints for the new Fitchburg production facility of Potter's Crackers in the main office of the facility. Included in the flavors are chipotle, vegan garlic and herb and hunny sunny (similar to a graham cracker, but less sweet). Some of these are to be part of new line of "swavory" (sweet and savory) crackers.

Ruthie Hauge, a Chicagoland native, is photo director at the Cap Times. She received a bachelor's in fine arts from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and was a photographer for Sun-Times Media in the Chicago area before joining the Cap Times in 2020.

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With a major expansion last November from 3,000 square feet in Madison to 12,000 square feet in Fitchburg, Potter's Crackers has doubled its oven capacity.

Photo director