CHICAGO — Specialty bakery Sweetmore Bakeries has acquired Azteca Bakeries, a Phoenix-based wholesale manufacturer of authentic Mexican pastries and baked foods. 

Financial terms of the agreement, announced Jan. 16, weren’t disclosed. Founded in 1954 as a combination restaurant-bakery-deli in downtown Phoenix, Azteca makes a lineup of frozen, ready-to-bake pan dulce (meaning “sweet bread”) that spans pastries (conchas, empanadas, barras and chamucos), cookies (chocitos, polvorones, banderas, magdalenas and galletas), bread (semitas) and muffins (mantacedas).

“Azteca’s high level of quality and service are a great match for our business, and we are thrilled to add them to our team,” said David Veenstra, chief executive officer of Sweetmore Bakeries. “Azteca’s differentiated assortment complements our portfolio with high-growth categories that are highly sought by our customers.”

Azteca becomes the fifth member of the Sweetmore bakery family, broadening a diverse offering that includes Main Street Gourmet (brownies, dessert bars, cakes, batters, cookies, granola, icing, fillings, muffins, mini muffins and quick bread), Biscotti Brothers (biscotti, pizzelle and crispy cookies), Meurer Brothers (Danish strip, Danish minis, coffee cakes, French crème cake and turtle cookies) and Sweet Eddie’s (artisanal cinnamon rolls).

“The Sweetmore organization focuses on very high quality and customer satisfaction, which supports the vision the Lopez family and the Azteca team have created,” said Felix Lopez, founder of Azteca Bakeries.

With nearly 500 employees and five facilities across the United States, Sweetmore makes premium baked foods for the US retail in-store bakery and foodservice channels. The company started in 2019 when Nashville, Tenn.-based private equity firm Shore Capital Partners recapitalized and boosted investment in Main Street Gourmet, an Akron, Ohio-based custom wholesale baking company supplying in-store bakeries, restaurants, warehouse clubs and convenience stores. 

Shore Capital then began a string of acquisitions that included Greensburg, Pa.-based specialty wholesale bakery Biscotti Brothers (serving in-store bakeries) in November 2020 and Fond du Lac, Wis.-based premium pastry maker Meurer Brothers Bakery (serving in-store bakeries) in November 2021, with the three bakeries uniting under the Sweetmore Bakeries banner in mid-2022. That was followed by the purchase of Smyrna, Ga.-based wholesale cinnamon roll manufacturer Sweet Eddie’s (serving retail and foodservice channels) in May 2024.