Joseph Campione, Inc. prides itself on baking the same bread that its namesake founder did when he opened his first small bakery on Brady Street in 1960, albeit with one key difference: It’s frozen now. In 1985 the Campione family entered the then-fledgling frozen-food market with a line of frozen garlic bread. Their timing couldn’t have been better.
“Consumers were looking for quality frozen products that could be prepared in minutes for their families when they were on the go, since there were so many households with two working parents,” says Anne Campione, Joseph Campione’s vice president of sales and marketing. “That really made dinner a 15-minute deal for a lot of people, so sales of all these frozen foods skyrocketed.”
In 1994 the company moved from an old processing plant on Milwaukee’s North Side to a new facility in Oak Creek, which has since expanded. The company now employs about 400 people and ships its breads across the entire country, both under its own label and private labels for major retailers.
Over the last quarter century, the company has adapted to the growing frozen-food market by expanding its product line. It now offers about 30 products, including bread sticks, cheese breads and one of its most popular offerings, Texas toast (“eight slices of bread that are individually cut already and coated on both sides with a garlic-flavored topping,” according to Anne Campione, “you put it in the oven and in 5 to 7 minutes it’s done and ready for the table.”) One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the company’s basic garlic bread recipe.
“It’s still stone oven-baked with a cornmeal bottom and French cuts on the bread and a full-flavor creamy, buttery garlic topping,” Anne Campione says. “You bake it up and truly think it is a restaurant-quality homemade experience. It’s comfort food that really appeals to everyone.”
