THOMASVILLE — Who in Thomasville doesn’t enjoy the smell of baking bread wafting from the Flowers bakery downtown?

Thomasville residents and visitors have been enjoying that scent for 95 years.

The company that started in the Madison St. bakery in 1919 is today a $3.75 billion baking business headquartered out on U.S. 19 South with 46 bakeries around the country, more than 10,000 employees, and such well-known brands as Nature’s Own, Wonder, Sunbeam and Tastykake.

Flowers Foods is acknowledged as one of the best baking companies in the country. Forbes Magazine has named Flowers the “best-managed” food company twice. Progressive Grocer, a supermarket trade magazine, has given the company the title of “category captain” in the commercial baked goods category for the past eight years.

Today, Flowers is the second-largest baking company in the U.S., behind Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo. The company has just completed a period of intense growth, acquiring smaller baking companies that have helped it stretch the geographic reach of its bakery foods to supermarkets from Maine to California. Company watchers expect there will be more acquisitions and growth to come.

The list of recent acquisitions includes Tasty Baking Co. in Philadelphia and its Tastykake line (2011), Lepage Bakeries in Maine (2012), a bakery in Modesto, Calif. (2013), and 20 closed bakeries and five bread brands from the now-bankrupt Hostess (2013).

William Howard Flowers and Joseph Hampton Flowers, the brothers who had the vision to open the first bakery in Thomasville almost 100 years ago, would certainly be amazed at how much the company has achieved.

The Flowers brothers did not have experience in the food business — but they were smart businessmen. Their family ran a successful lumber business in southern Alabama and southwest Georgia. In the early 1900s, their father and several of his adult children, including William and Joseph, sold the lumber business and moved to Thomasville to set up new business ventures.

William and Howard surveyed the area to see what businesses might be needed. The results showed South Georgia needed an ice cream plant and a wholesale bakery.

In 1914, Flowers Ice Cream Co. opened in a building that had once been used to make steamer trunks. While the ice cream business was successful, it was seasonal. Often, the plant would shut down during the fall and winter.

Realizing the need for a year-round business, the brothers set out to build a bakery next to the ice cream operation on Madison Street. At the time, there were no commercial bakeries in the entire region. Bread was shipped into Thomasville by rail from Savannah. 

If the shipment didn’t arrive, there was no bread. “No bread in town” was a headline that ran in the Thomasville Times-Enterprise in January 1919.

The Flowers bakery opened in November of that year. It was 10,000 square feet, made of brick, and had three ovens. The first day, the bakery sold 500 loaves of Flowers Quality Bread.

The Times-Enterprise reported that the bakery had the “very latest and most sanitary” equipment and could produce up to 30,000 loaves a day when running at full production. 

In an article published shortly after the bakery opened, Howard Flowers is quoted as saying, “The bakery is being adjusted to produce with the least friction and the best result and the quality of our bread will be better tomorrow than it is today.”

In the 1920s, the brothers divided up the two businesses. Joe Flowers took the ice cream plant, which he later sold to Foremost Dairies. Howard Flowers took the baking company.

The bakery’s business grew through the 1930s and provided a good livelihood for Howard and his wife, two sons, and three daughters. His oldest son — W.H. (Bill) Flowers — graduated from Washington and Lee University in Virginia and joined the family business immediately after graduating, at his father’s request.

A year later, in 1934, William Howard Flowers died suddenly of a heart attack in Tallahassee. Bill Flowers, then 20, took over as head of the family and president of the bakery.

At the time, Flowers Baking Company had sales of just under $100,000 and employed 25 people. The price of a loaf of bread was five cents.

Bill Flowers would go on to actively serve as the head of the company for the next 50 years, focusing on the strategies he believed would make the company successful.

This included making a better quality product at a lower cost, giving better customer service, keeping better track of sales and profits, growing through acquisitions, and most important, recognizing and rewarding talent and hard work.

During World War II, Flowers Baking Company supplied fresh breads and rolls to 20 military training camps. The extra production strained the bakery’s capacity, and Bill Flowers had to go to Washington D.C. to get the War Production Board’s permission to purchase new equipment since most metal was going to the war effort.

In 1947, Langdon Flowers, Bill’s younger brother, joined the family business. Langdon had a degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT and served in the Navy on an aircraft carrier during the war. Known for his creative marketing and sincere caring for people, Langdon would go on to shape Flowers’ unique culture. This culture stresses honesty, integrity, and professionalism, and the importance of every team member.

Under the leadership of the Flowers brothers, the company began acquiring other bakeries, and soon became a strong regional baker. Since its first acquisition of Tally-Maid Bakery in Tallahassee in 1937, Flowers has completed more than 100 acquisitions. 

In 1968, Flowers Baking Co. went public and became Flowers Industries. In 1982, the company registered on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FLO.

Flowers changed its name again in 2001, becoming Flowers Foods after selling off the company’s majority ownership in Keebler Foods. The company continued its growth plan, focusing on expanding distribution of its fresh bakery foods. By 2004, Flowers had sales of $1.5 billion and its fresh distribution reached about 35 percent of the U.S. population.

Today, Flowers Foods’ breads, buns, rolls, snack cakes, pastries, and tortillas reach approximately 80 percent of the U.S. population. The company’s Nature’s Own brand is the top-selling bread brand in the U.S.