About Us
For over 
years.
At Lewis Bakeries, we’ve spent the past century baking our customers the breads, buns, and rolls they love. Explore our corporate responsibilities and read about our rich history.
Measuring success.
The yardstick of success is not the money you make or the money you have — it's what you've accomplished.
We RISE every day to bake bread for our customers that exceeds their expectations.
Our culture is built around a proud company history and family legacy of quality baking. We will always remember, “Grow or Go!”
We're committed to doing the right thing. To be a sustainable, responsible company with work and food safety as our top priorities.
We strive to provide the highest quality professional service to exceed our customers' expectations.
Our goal is to provide the very best bakery products with a forward-thinking passion for growth and innovation for our company and our products.
Baking with responsibility.
Baking wholesome, safe, high-quality breads, buns, and rolls is vital to us. This is why we encourage our employees and suppliers to accept responsibility for conserving our natural resources and ever seeking new ways to use them efficiently. It’s also why we strive to prevent the waste of packaging, energy and other resources. In the words of our President Dean Short: “We believe that being a good corporate citizen will help make us a successful company.”
Staying dedicated to our people.
We continually seek input from our associates and comply with BRC standards and national and state labor laws to uphold a fair and safe workplace for them and a safe product for our customers. Our commitment to employees' rights and well-being is as strong as our dedication to baking the highest quality products. Learn more about our workplace and current opportunities.
Exploring fresh partnerships.
If you are looking to collaborate, we're open to discussing opportunities to enhance our offerings.
Looking back at years.
A century ago this year, three brothers borrowed $300 against their mother's home to start a bakery in Anna, Illinois. The bread of Amos, Armold, and R. Jack Lewis was delivered to the homes of their customers each day in a Ford Model T, and the profits often went right into buying the flour for the next day's bread.
Only twenty years later, the Lewis Brothers' Bakery had become a household name, with the bakery employing fifty people and baking 75,000 loaves a week to be delivered across twelve delivery routes.
Bunny is born.
Everything changed in 1947, thanks in no small part to R. Jack Lewis Sr. creating a brand now synonymous with freshly baked bread in Midwestern households.
Bunny was delicious, and its slogan — “That's What I Said, Bunny Bread!” — was working. Growth continued into the 1950s, and Bunny became so popular, R. Jack Lewis, Sr. knew the bakery needed to invest in automation to keep up with demand.
Bunny became so popular and well known throughout the entire territory that customers began to call for 'Bunny' bread.”
Grow or go.
R. Jack Lewis, Sr. was the company’s head throughout most of this era and was well known for his infectious enthusiasm, determination and efforts, and his words of wisdom. “You have to grow or go.” By the 1980s, expansion grew tremendously, by tracking consumer trends and using new, emerging research into nutrition. The innovations began and didn’t stop.
Healthy innovations.
R. Jack Lewis, Jr. took the helm and expanded the company across multiple states but also into another new territory: emerging nutrition research. In 1991, the first fat-free, reduced-calorie bread was made. Healthy Life, it was called, which was just what customers wanted. Healthy Life would go on to become an entire family of products.
Then, Healthy Life introduced its first bread and buns for those lowering their net carb intake, allowing those who still wanted to enjoy a sandwich or toast a way to do so, even on their new diet journey.
Still a household favorite.
Drawing from our 100 years of experience and listening to our customers, we continue to develop our great-tasting Lewis Bake Shop® products in a variety of sizes and flavors.
The innovative Lewis Bake Shop® ½ Loaf of Bread and ½ Pack of Buns were launched and have been celebrated ever since by both smaller households and larger ones with varying tastes. We look forward to remaining our customers’ favorite for 100 more years to come.
Proudly independent.
In 2019, H. Dean Short, grandson of one of the Lewis family’s founding brothers, R. Jack Lewis Sr., became company president of one of the few independent wholesale bakeries in the Midwest.
