Formica Freitag Bakery, a South Jersey institution famous for crafting signature Atlantic City sub bread for more than 100 years, is planning a major expansion to keep pace with escalating regional and national demand.
Having outgrown its current production footprint, the company is actively searching for a state-of-the-art facility of up to 75,000 square feet in the Atlantic City region. The new space will allow the bakery to scale up production, expand its distribution lines, and support long-term growth.
While the brand has long anchored its reputation on its fresh regional distribution, Formica Freitag has successfully expanded into national markets with its frozen Atlantic City bread line. The planned facility upgrade aims to deliver the advanced production capacity and technology required to supply both fresh local markets and nationwide retail channels simultaneously.
At the heart of the operation remains the classic product generations of customers have known and loved: authentic Atlantic City sub bread baked according to century-old traditions and recipes.
“Our family started with a local bakery and a dream,” Frank Formica, grandson of founders Francesco and Rosa Formica said. “Three generations and 107 years later, that dream has grown beyond anything our grandparents could have imagined. We are enormously proud of where we came from, but we are even more excited about where Formica Freitag Bakery is going.”
The bakery’s unique legacy dates back to 1919 when Italian immigrant Francesco Formica opened his neighborhood bake shop, followed a decade later by the opening of the family’s retail bakery café at 2310 Arctic Ave. in Atlantic City’s Ducktown neighborhood.
Company leadership emphasizes that despite scaling for national distribution, the core identity of the bread will remain unchanged. Formica credits part of the product’s distinctive flavor, crust, and texture to the mineral-rich water drawn directly from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer located beneath the New Jersey Pinelands.
“Atlantic City is where our family started,” Formica said. “That heritage is part of our product, part of our family and part of who we are.”
As the bakery evaluates options for its substantial new home, Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small has expressed the city’s commitment to helping identify potential local sites that can accommodate the enterprise, ensuring the historic brand’s next chapter remains tied to its geographic roots.
Whether supplying local sub shops or shipping frozen loaves nationwide, Formica Freitag Bakery is positioning itself to serve a new generation of bread lovers while staying true to its century-old heritage.
