A Chicagoland institution for the past 32 years, Talerico-Martin Wholesale Bakery (Talerico-Martin) is a high-production wholesale operation, producing fresh-baked Danish, muffins, cookies and donuts that are distributed daily to over 600 restaurants, convenience stores and other wholesale customers throughout the Chicago area, Southern Wisconsin and Northwestern Indiana. The bakery also supplies its products frozen to institutions, such as school systems, throughout the United States.
Running continuous production seven days per week, 24 hours per day, the bakery manufactures an average of 1.5 million baked goods, weighing approximately 400,000 pounds, every week. Much of this is a wide selection of cakes, with names like Lemon Fluff, Black Forest, Banana Split Delight, Pina Colada, Triple Chocolate Fudge, and its popular Atomic cake. But the bakery is best known for its pound cakes, which represent more than 50 percent of the bakery’s total product output. Every day Talerico-Martin makes 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of pound cakes – 210,000 to 280,000 pounds weekly. The bakery’s pound cake manufacturing line runs an eight-hour shift daily, every day of the week, and during peak season in the Fall runs 16 hours per day to keep up with the seasonal demand.