Down-to-Earth Attitude Helps Bridgford Rise : Management: Two unpretentious brothers oversee a decades-old family business that has flourished in competition with food-industry giants.

ANAHEIM —  When it comes to being folksy and unpretentious, the Bridgford brothers are the Bartles and Jaymes of frozen bread dough.

While most corporate executives pad around on plush carpeting in a walnut-paneled suite, the president and chairman of Bridgford Foods Corp. shout at each other across the linoleum floor of the cluttered office they share.

There are no secretaries to guard the window-walled inner sanctum nestled in a corner of the expansive factory floor. To see the joint chiefs of this company of 550 employees, including 200 in Anaheim, you just walk right in.

“I’m his secretary,” quips Chairman H. William Bridgford, 59, while casting an eye toward younger brother Allan Bridgford, 56, the company president, whose desk is a few feet away. If you want coffee, Bill Bridgford heats the water in a microwave oven and measures in a spoonful of instant. Instead of Muzak, the office hums with the muted thumps and clanks of the production line.

Bridgford Foods is a living testament of how a conservatively run, decades-old family business can remain competitive without having to rise to the size of its giant competitors.

It can also retain the folksy, aw-shucks stamp of its leaders. While Bartles and Jaymes are fictitious characters in wine-cooler advertising, the Bridgford brothers are quite real. Bill Bridgford, who wears a lab coat, oversees production. Allan Bridgford, who has a brighter shine on his black shoes, tends to marketing and promotion.

On the strength of products such as ready-to-bake dough, luncheon meats and microwaveable sandwiches, Bridgford Foods has held its own against such heavyweight brands as Hormel, Oscar Mayer and Farmer John. The company ended fiscal 1990 with $84.3 million in sales and $3.9 million in net income, with a return on revenue slightly below the average of the nation’s largest food companies. What really makes Bridgford Foods special is its spectacular earnings growth in recent years.

Profits have increased in each of the last five years, and were up 9% in the most recent year. The total market value of the stock, without the issuance of any new shares, has steadily climbed from $4.9 million in April, 1984, to $128.4 million this month. Bridgford family members control 67% of the shares.

Bridgford Foods traces its roots back to the 1930s when the brothers’ father, Hugh Bridgford, opened a butcher shop in San Diego. The company moved to its present headquarters, a century-old meatpacking plant, in 1944. The move into ready-to-bake breads came in 1962 after a baker tinkered with some dough he had accidently popped into the freezer. Today, the company has plants in Illinois, New Jersey and Texas, besides Anaheim and San Diego.

Despite its low profile compared to some of the giants of the processed-meat and baking industries, Bridgford Foods is finally getting its due. Forbes magazine recently ranked it as the 68th-best small company in America. The accompanying article noted the heated competition in the microwave-sandwich market and proclaimed that “an informal test by Forbes found the Bridgford flame-broiled cheeseburger by far the tastiest.”

Last year, the Los Angeles Times’ list of the top 100 Southern California firms ranked Bridgford Foods as having the 29th-highest two-year average return on equity in 1989--an investment yardstick that tells shareholders how effectively their money is being employed. The company moved up to 23rd place on the 1990 list, with a 27.8% return on equity.

But a little success is not about to go to the heads of the Bridgford brothers. They still stick to their own traditional business methods, some of which have been discarded by competitors who considered them too expensive, antiquated or hokey.

For instance, other companies have turned to food distributors to market their products to supermarkets. But Bridgford Foods still has its own force of 110 “field service representatives” to ensure that the store manager’s hand gets shaken and that the products are well-displayed. Though the extra workers are costlier, “nothing replaces the personal touch,” explained Allan Bridgford.

The packaging is colorful but basic. The company cranks out a full-color calendar every year filled with frozen bread dough recipes, such as “Incredible Pizza Layer Loaf” and “Hand-wiches.”

Doug Christopher, a food industry analyst for the stock brokerage of Crowell, Weedon & Co. in Los Angeles, said that Bridgford has concentrated on quality and can be more responsive to customers’ needs than some larger competitors.

“They are pretty established,” he said. “They don’t get away from the customers, being small like that.”

Ronald L. Strauss, an analyst for the brokerage of William Blair & Co. in Chicago, said Bridgford Foods appears to be well-managed.

“I like them. They are good guys,” Strauss said. “They are low-cost operators and pinch pennies.”

Allan Bridgford attributed the company’s success to its ability to find niches in the market that the bigger guys may have overlooked.

Hence, diners never find out that the hot brown bread that they are served at an upscale restaurant may have been Bridgford frozen dough a couple hours before. Many of the company’s products, such as the specialty breads or cinnamon rolls, are aimed at the restaurant, vending machine or institutions market.

Some new products make it; some don’t. Among the notable flops, says Bill Bridgford, were the holiday hams covered with candied cherries that fermented within their wrappers in the 1950s. Then there was the pizza kit that the company introduced in 1980. Consumers, it turned out, lacked the patience to defrost the dough and spread on the other ingredients in order to make their own hot pizza.

“For every 100 product ideas, we’ll try 10 and maybe one will stick,” said Bill Bridgford. With supermarket chains charging anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 in cash or merchandise in “slotting fee” payments just to stock an item, he said the company has to be choosy in adding new items.

As far as hits go, the Bridgfords point to their successful microwave-ready sandwiches--roast beef, ham and cheese, a hamburger and a cheeseburger. Introduced in 1988, the microwave line sells well against sandwiches made by George A. Hormel & Co. of Austin, Minn., and others. The Bridgford brothers say their sandwiches have the edge because of a company secret: the bread.

Borrowing a few tricks from its frozen-bread line, Bridgford Foods invented a bun that retains its soft texture and has the nutty aroma of fresh-baked bread after going from the freezer to the microwave oven. The sandwich line also helps the company appeal to younger consumers who are accustomed to microwave-ready convenience foods, and it brings the company’s meat and bread lines together into a single product.

“A cheeseburger is a melding of our technology,” said Allan Bridgford.

Though the company may cling to some traditional marketing ideas, it has not spared the introduction of new technology in its plant. The billing and ordering operations, for instance, are fully computerized.

Bill Bridgford notes that the number of workers required in the dough-making operations, where wheat flour and shortening are turned into packaged, 1-pound frozen bricks ready for shipment, has been reduced from 92 to four over the years.

One thing that has not changed is their main marketing venue--trade shows. The company attends roughly 300 trade shows a year. When the traffic around the company’s booth slows, the Bridgford crew simply bakes up a batch of its cinnamon rolls to lure people in.

Bill Bridgford said the company’s future growth may depend heavily on exports. At a recent trade show in South Korea, the company garnered 88 serious inquiries. “In a one-man, three-day show, that’s a lot,” Bill Bridgford said.

The Bridgfords are also looking toward training the company’s next generation. Running the meat operation in Anaheim is Bill Bridgford Jr., one of 10 Bridgford family members besides the two brothers working in the company. Borrowing a phrase from his Navy days, Bill Bridgford Sr. said he plans to put his company’s senior managers through his own “officers’ candidate school” in a few months. He said that prospective future leaders will be taught different aspects of the business, branching out from their present jobs.

Although any eventual successors might succeed in keeping Bridgford Foods folksy and conservative, it will be a tough act to follow. Where else can one find a company where the CEO yells at the president, “Where in hell is the pepper loaf for the Northern California route?”