TLC Bakery Decides to Call It Quits After 28 Years

TLC Bakery will close its doors Saturday after 28 years in business, a victim of changing competition, changing dietary habits and a poor economy.

Owner Tom Bright said the bakery’s final shipments of bread to stores like the Montañita Co-op will be cleared off of grocers’ shelves by Thursday. Bright hopes to find another baker to resume operations at TLC Bakery’s store and production facility on Osuna NE, near Jefferson. Failing that, he plans to sell his equipment.

Bright said in an interview Thursday that he is focusing on helping his seven employees find work and hasn’t thought about what his own next move will be.

“The economy got me,” he said. “I have nothing left to throw on the fire.”

Bright began working at TLC Bakery while an engineering and business student at the University of New Mexico. He bought the business 12 years ago. TLC sold baked goods out of its store front and supplied grocery stores and restaurants around the state.

Revenue exceeded $700,000 annually five years ago and has declined to less than $500,000 a year, mostly because of declining restaurant and grocery sales, Bright said.

“Each year it’s been a little tougher in different ways,” he said. “It feels more like the economy than the product or anything we’ve been doing.”

Customers, responding to the bad economy, are buying lower quality but less expensive breads, Bright said. Restaurants that TLC used to supply have failed. Consumers trying to lower their carbohydrate intake are buying less bread, and restaurants don’t serve as much of it as they once did, Bright said.

Meanwhile, companies like Sam’s Club, which is part of Wal-Mart, have begun selling bread to restaurants, Bright said.

Volatile commodities prices periodically drive up the costs of supplies, while at the same time customers who once paid their bills in 15 days have been taking 40 days or more to pay, which hurt TLC’s cash flow.