Sweetmore Bakeries Buys Fantasy Baking for Bar Work

Sweetmore Bakeries bought Fantasy Baking Co. on Aug. 25, adding a Sylmar, Calif., plant as its sixth bakery and first on the West Coast. Terms were not disclosed.

The Chicago group already feeds grocery in-store bakeries and foodservice with muffins, pan dulce, and cinnamon rolls. Fantasy is a contract manufacturer for private-label cookies, protein bars, and ice cream inclusions, with its own lab. That mix is what changed.

Protein Bars, Fruit Fills and a Lab in Sylmar

Sweetmore said it completed an acquisition of Fantasy Baking after Shore Capital Partners recapitalized the group in 2025. The release puts the combined company at nearly 500 people and six U.S. plants, stretching across the Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest, and West.

Fantasy, founded in 1979 and based at 12322 Gladstone Avenue in Sylmar, sells private-label and branded cookies, fruit-filled bars, and dessert bars. The same plant also makes protein and breakfast bars, dry blends, and ice cream ingredients and inclusions. Recipes run organic, high-protein, non-GMO, gluten-free, and kosher.

Chief executive David Veenstra did mention a West Coast footprint. He then pointed at the lab and at better-for-you work, calling Fantasy a stronger national partner for customers who want more than one format from one supplier.

Fantasy Baking gives us a true West Coast manufacturing footprint and deeper category capabilities that strengthen our ability to serve customers’ various product needs nationwide.

David Veenstra, CEO, Sweetmore Bakeries, company statement, Aug. 25

Russ Case, Fantasy’s chief executive, said the staff had spent more than 45 years on innovation, quality, and service, and that Sweetmore’s scale would let the bakery reach a wider set of buyers. The company has traded for years as Fantasy Cookie Co.; the deal papers use Fantasy Baking Co.

The California Bakery Was Built for Brands

Sweetmore’s other plants mostly serve grocery bakery cases and restaurants with thaw-and-serve pastries. Fantasy was built as a mid-size co-manufacturer for startup brands, store brands, and national better-for-you lines. Case put it simply in a 2023 plant visit: the bakery is not a mega plant with 300-foot ovens, and it is not a rack-oven shop either.

A 2023 profile put the Sylmar site at an 85,000-square-foot building with four lines. Those lines turn out wirecut, rotary-molded, and sheeted cookies, plus co-extruded, fruit-filled, and baked bars. Packs ran from 1 oz to 20 oz, in overwrap trays, stand-up pouches, 100-calorie packs, club packs, and in-store bakery tubs.

WHAT THE SYLMAR LINES ALREADY RUN

• Cookies: Wirecut, rotary-molded, and sheeted doughs aimed at private-label and branded packs.
• Bars: Fruit-filled, baked, and co-extruded bars, with protein and breakfast bars on the same roster.
• Inclusions: Dry blends plus ice cream ingredients and inclusions for dairy plants.
• Claims: Organic, high-protein, non-GMO, gluten-free, and KOF-K kosher options, SQF-certified.

Speed is the commercial edge. Matt Cobb, then director of sales, said a line extension or limited-time offer out of the in-house lab took six to eight weeks. A brand-new item needed five to six months, often waiting on packaging as much as on dough. Joe Rivera, director of operations, said the lab does not charge for that work, while some brands pay $50,000 or $100,000 to get a recipe written elsewhere.

We don’t charge for R&D work in our lab, and that sets us apart. For some companies’ brands, they’re going to pay $50,000 or $100,000 to create a recipe, but that’s the value we offer by having a food scientist with an ability to work with them.

Joe Rivera, director of operations, Fantasy Cookie Co., 2023 plant interview

Case said the bakery uses real butter and cane sugar and not a lot of preservatives, and that its bars track health-and-wellness trends. In 2023 the company was swapping smaller lines for 100-foot ovens, 2,200-lb Peerless mixers, and Reading Bakery Systems makeup gear, a project he said would lift capacity by 40% or more, with an enrober and a 55-foot cooling tunnel on the same plan.

Shore’s Seven-Year String of Bakery Buys

Shore Capital Partners, a Chicago private equity firm with about $17 billion under management, recapitalized Main Street Gourmet in 2019 and kept buying regional sweet bakeries. Shore’s own company note said the original Ohio plant was a single 50,000-square-foot building in Cuyahoga Falls with a few dozen staff. By the 2025 recap the platform had five operating entities and more than 230,000 square feet of manufacturing space.

The Sweetmore name went on the group in 2022. Veenstra said at the recap that Shore’s capital would fund add-on deals and more product work. Jeff Smart, a Shore principal, pointed to rising labor costs and a push for unique bakery items as the reason retailers and restaurants want outside supply instead of more hours in their own bakeries. Monroe Capital later said it was joint lead arranger on a senior credit facility for that recap.

HOW THE PLATFORM WAS ASSEMBLED

1. September 2019: Shore recapitalizes Main Street Gourmet in Akron, Ohio, and starts the platform.
2. November 2020: Main Street buys Biscotti Brothers in Greensburg, Pa., a wholesale cookie shop known for biscotti and pizzelle.
3. November 2021: Meurer Brothers Bakery in Fond du Lac, Wis., a pastry maker for in-store bakeries, joins the group.
4. Mid-2022: The three bakeries take the Sweetmore Bakeries name while keeping legacy brands on the floor.
5. May 2024: Sweet Eddie’s, a cinnamon-roll plant in Smyrna, Ga., is added.
6. January 2025: Azteca Bakeries of Phoenix, a pan dulce maker dating to 1954, comes in.
7. May 2025: Shore recapitalizes Sweetmore through a special purpose vehicle; Monroe helps fund the credit facility.
8. August 25, 2026: Fantasy Baking Co. in Sylmar becomes the sixth plant.

Richard Boos, a Shore partner and Sweetmore’s chairman, had said the 2025 check was for the next phase of growth. Fantasy is the first public add-on after that recap.

Six Plants From Greensburg to Sylmar

Until this week Sweetmore could bake in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. California was the hole on a map it already described as national. The new roster is a set of specialty plants, not one giant cookie factory.

SWEETMORE’S BAKERIES AFTER THE DEAL

The older plants still solve a grocery problem: muffins, danishes, brownies, granola, icings, and fillings that a store bakery can finish without a full night crew. Fantasy sells a different customer. Its buyers are brands and retailers who need a co-packer with a lab, claim-ready formulas, and bar equipment. Putting both under one sales pitch is the change, even if the ovens stay in different states.

Grocery Chains Keep Handing Off Bakery Work

Shore’s 2025 recap pitch was not about California. It was about chains that no longer want to staff every sweet item in-house. Labor is expensive, and store bakeries are being asked for more unique SKUs, not fewer. A supplier that can ship thaw-and-serve pan dulce from Phoenix and club-pack cookies from Sylmar can answer both requests on one invoice.

West Coast production also cuts a freight problem that Midwest bakeries feel on every lane into California and the Pacific Northwest. Fantasy’s own site has long sold that location, on the western edge of Los Angeles and less than half a mile from highway ramps, as a way to lower inbound cost. For a national private-label cookie or bar bid, a second coast is often a requirement, not a nice extra.

Functional snacks sit on a different shelf than in-store muffins. Protein bars, gluten-free cookies, and ice cream inclusions move through CPG and dairy buyers who never walk a grocery bakery. Sweetmore could talk to those buyers before. It could not point at a West Coast SQF plant with a bar line and a free lab. It can now.

Who Advised Fantasy Baking on the Sale?

Alantra advised Fantasy Baking on the sale, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck was legal counsel to the bakery, and DLA Piper advised Sweetmore, according to the Aug. 25 company statement. Encore Consumer Capital, a San Francisco food-and-consumer investor, is listed on Fantasy’s company record as a backer, and sale notices that circulated with Alantra’s mandate put Encore on the sell side.

Encore invests only in consumer products and has been in and out of bakeries for years. The same firm closed a frozen baked goods platform when it bought Sacramento’s Chalet Desserts in May 2024, a maker of frozen bakery desserts and baked inclusions for in-store bakeries, foodservice, and ingredient buyers. A long hold in a mid-size California co-manufacturer fits that pattern: buy a plant that already sells into grocery and brands, then sell it to a larger platform when the map is the next constraint.

Deal desks treated the announcement as that exit. Food copy led on the West Coast pin. Both can be true at once, and only one of them changes what Sweetmore can put on a bid sheet next month.

National Cookie and Bar Bids Come Into Reach

Veenstra can now offer cookies and baked bars from California alongside biscotti from Pennsylvania and pan dulce from Arizona. He can also offer protein bars, gluten-free and kosher formulas, and ice cream inclusions that the older Sweetmore plants did not list. For a grocery private-label team writing a national cookie or bar program, that is one RFP instead of two vendors and a freight argument.

The gap that remains is format. Fantasy’s 2023 model was co-manufacturing for brands that pick up at the dock. Sweetmore’s core is still in-store bakery and foodservice, often frozen or thaw-and-serve. Merging those sales motions will take more than a press release. Case said joining Sweetmore would let Fantasy serve a broader audience and expand what it can do. He did not say the Sylmar lines would start baking cinnamon rolls.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Neither side named customers, volumes, or a purchase price.