Rooney Baking Company Bridgeport 1936

Bridgeport Leader June 18, 1936

The Rooney Baking Company started baking in their permanent oven at their new location on Main Street in Bridgeport last Sunday evening. They are rapidly arranging their shop and moving additional equipment from their former location in Lawrenceville.

About ten families and three single men have moved their residences to Bridgeport within the past two weeks and are employed at the bakery. Other members of the staff are content to drive from their present homes to Bridgeport.

The Rooney Baking Company has been in operation in Lawrenceville for a number of years and has long outgrown its quarters. Their present trade territory covers a radius of some 70 miles including such trading centers as Terre Haute, Vincennes, Evansville, Robinson, Mt. Carmel, Olney, Newton, Albion and a number of other cities and centers along the routes. Trucks from Bridgeport make daily trips to all these points.

M.A. Rooney is a general manager of the baking company and is ably assisted by B.G. Wasser. Walter Bouche is shop foreman and chief baker. There is a daily force of some 18 employees besides the truck drivers and extra helpers that are needed in rush periods.

The year before, the company had installed a new automatic bread wrapping machine. To keep up with the growth in demand for the bread, a modern big speed, big capacity mixer was installed, oven capacity was doubled, and the floor space increased by fifty per cent. Racks of dough moved into the new steam proof room and then to the ovens. From there, the fresh bread went directly to the slicer and wrapper and was then loaded onto one of four trucks who served a wide territory daily. Esco Tewell was one of the drivers in 1941.