Paterson company makes pita bread sold around the world

In a factory in Paterson's Bunker Hill neighborhood, thousands of balls of dough drop onto a conveyor belt and begin a journey that will end in a restaurant in Saudi Arabi, or a supermarket in Singapore, or a coffee shop in South Korea.

Kontos Foods was born in Paterson 31 years ago when the founders saw there was demand around the United States for the kind of Greek pita — a pocket-less flatbread — that could be found only in small quantities from mom-and-pop bakeries in Astoria, New York.

Now the company is seeing the same demand from around the world, and is shipping its breads to a dozen countries overseas, including the place where pita was invented: the Middle East.

International sales have grown to the point where Kontos is preparing to construct a fourth building next to its three Paterson factories to serve as a cold-storage facility for the breads it is freezing and shipping to the Middle East, Asia, South America and the Caribbean.

“The Greek cuisine is everywhere, whether you go to Singapore or whether you go to South America,” said Steve Kontos, the company president. “We’ve been talking in Colombia to an operator of four or five Greek restaurants,” who has been making the breads he sells by hand because there is no commercial source.

“There’s demand all over, and there’s no supply, just like there was no supply in this country” when Kontos was launched, he said.

Kontos and his father, Evripides (Evris) Kontos, founded Kontos Foods in 1987 after seeing demand for Greek pita from food wholesalers and suppliers around the country while operating the family’s previous business, Fair Lawn-based Apollo, which manufactured phyllo dough.

Kontos remembers being in Seattle, calling on a phyllo dough customer who asked, “You’re from the New York area? Can you get me Greek pita? Get me 200 cases.” Kontos went to small bakeries in Astoria that could sell him only 20 cases or less a day.

“It took us two weeks to collect 200 cases,” Kontos said. “We shipped it out to Seattle and my dad and I were like ‘Wow, what a business. Plenty of demand and no supply.”

Kontos found he was getting similar requests from Miami, Denver, Chicago, “everywhere they found out I was from the New York area,” he said. “They wanted me to go to Astoria to pick up their bread.”

After selling Apollo to Pillsbury, Steve and Evris Kontos decided to create the same kind of Greek pita in a factory capable of producing large quantities, but developed a production method that combines machines with the hands-on, homemade technique used by the small bakeries.

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The assembly line that produces their flatbreads and Greek pitas includes a step, details of which the company guards closely as a trade secret, in which a patented machine kneads the dough and workers hand-stretch the circles of dough before they roll into the oven.

The hand stretching set Kontos apart from other commercial pita and flatbread producers, and it makes the breads fluffier and more pliable, according to fans of the product.

One of the company’s first customers was the Costco warehouse chain. Kontos bread also is sold at supermarket chains like ShopRite and Kings, and at Zabar’s and other specialty food stores. It is used on three major U.S. airlines, and by national restaurant chains.

It’s also the leading choice of gyro vendors in New York City. “Go up to any street cart in Manhattan and ask them to show you the bread. It will be the bread we make here in Paterson,” said Warren Stoll, marketing director at Kontos.

The company has branched out from its original Greek pita to produce 60 varieties, including other ethnic flatbreads, such as Indian naan.

The business has three factories in Paterson, one of which is in production round the clock. The company gets 50,000 pounds of flour delivered about every 15 hours to keep its bread factories supplied. The assembly lines have the capacity to produce between 15,000 and 18,000 pieces an hour.

About four years ago Kontos began exploring international sales by attending trade shows overseas, and the owners quickly saw there was a foreign market for pita made in Paterson.

The same ingredients that made Paterson a good place to be located for U.S. sales — access to major highways, proximity to ports and an available labor pool — have also positioned it for international growth.

The New Jersey ports mean Middle Eastern and Asian countries can get Greek pita breads from Paterson faster and more cheaply than if they came from Greece.

“Our shipping lanes are really competitive,” Kontos said. “It takes 30 days to get it to the Asian market, 30 to 40 days to the Middle East,” he said. The products are shipped in 40-foot-long freezer containers.

The breads are pre-oiled, baked and frozen, using a technique that makes the frozen product re-heat well. “It comes back to life almost like it just came out of our plant. It’s soft; it’s pliable; you can fold it around a sandwich,” Stoll said.

While Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia have lots of bakeries producing pita, those breads, typically pocket pitas, don’t have the shelf life of the Kontos frozen products. “The bread gets dry and brittle within 24 hours,” Stoll said.

Kontos currently ships to a dozen countries, including Bermuda, the Bahamas, Canada, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Singapore, Panama, Costa Rica, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Dubai and Mexico.

The quality of U.S. food products is also perceived to be better in the international market, said Howard Dorman, a partner and national food and beverage practice leader at Mazars USA, a top accounting, tax and consulting firm.

“The U.S. has probably the highest standards of food quality in the world,” Dorman said. “So a lot of these countries are thinking: If we’re buying from the U.S. we’re buying a good product.”

U.S. exports of bakery and confectionery goods are increasing annually, Dorman said. “It’s a global market nowadays,” he said.

Dorman said Kontos is making a smart move by exploring new markets outside of the United States.

“If you’ve got a good product and you want to break the barriers and create new markets, the U.S. market is very competitive,” Dorman said. Foreign markets that don’t yet have the manufacturing capability can be less competitive. Being the first U.S. company to enter that market provides an advantage.

The U.S. government also offers tax incentives for companies that export their products, making overseas sales attractive, Dorman said.

Kontos is becoming one of the leading food exporters in Paterson, said Jamie Dykes, president of the Greater Paterson Chamber of Commerce. The chamber often is asked to provide export declarations for Kontos, and it has seen the increase in overseas sales.

“People don’t realize the international scope of their business,” Dykes said.

“The fact that they have chosen to maintain their company in Paterson and expand in Paterson is really phenomenal,” he said. Kontos, which employs close to 300 workers, has a reputation for treating employees as family, Dykes said.

In January, the company received the Faith in Paterson award from the chamber for “contributions to economic development, job creation and the betterment of quality of life in the Paterson area.”

In addition to being a good corporate resident of the city, Dykes said, the Kontos products “are recognized for being very high quality as well.”

And Dykes said he is glad to see that the breads are readily available in Paterson even as the company is shipping overseas. “The other day, at the luncheonette where I was getting lunch, they took out the flatbread and I was very happy to see it was Kontos flatbread,” he said.

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