Tandem Foods Plants Its Biggest Line in Pennsylvania

Tandem Foods will spend $42 million on a new cold-form bar line in O’Hara Township, a project Pennsylvania officials said beat California. Governor Josh Shapiro’s office said on September 21, 2026, that the work will create 83 new jobs over three years and keep 446 full-time jobs in Allegheny County.

The spend is for unnamed snack brands, not a Tandem label. A year earlier the same company called a new wafer plant in Cypress, California, the largest bet in its 40-year history. This time the bigger check stays near Pittsburgh.

Tandem Foods Commits $42 Million to an O’Hara Line

Tandem Foods is a contract maker of better-for-you snacks for packaged-food companies and smaller brands. It already leases three plants in O’Hara Township, where it runs cold-slab bars and chocolate moulding, and it will take another 79,000 square feet at 615 Alpha Drive for a line dedicated to cold-form bars. Chief executive Michael Buick, who took the job in 2023 after posts at SunOpta, TreeHouse Foods, and ConAgra Foods, tied the project to customers already on the books and to work still in the pipeline.

The installation of our new cold-form line represents the single largest investment in Tandem Foods’ 40-year history and is a direct response to the sustained growth of our strategic partners and the exciting pipeline of new business we’re developing.

Michael Buick, CEO, Tandem Foods, in the governor’s September 21, 2026 announcement

Headquarters sit in O’Hara Township. The company runs eight plants in the United States: four in California, three in Pittsburgh, and one on Long Island, New York. The new money is for equipment and a larger lease, not a greenfield factory.

THE O’HARA PROJECT

Buick thanked Shapiro and the Department of Community and Economic Development and pointed to a manufacturing workforce the company has used for years. DCED Secretary Rick Siger called the choice a vote for Pennsylvania’s plants, business climate, and supply chain.

Why the Company Is Adding Cold-Form Capacity

O’Hara already makes cold-slab bars, which are mixed, rolled on chilled drums, cooled, slit, and cut without a bake. Cold-form work is the same family of process: the mass is shaped cold so proteins, nuts, and inclusions are not cooked off. That is the kit better-for-you brands need when a recipe cannot go through a cookie oven.

The new line is reserved for that format. Wafers, baked bars, and extruded pieces stay on other equipment, including the Cypress wafer ovens opened in 2025. Putting a dedicated cold-form line next to existing slab and chocolate work in Pittsburgh keeps mixing, cooling, and packing in one cluster instead of adding another bar format to the California network.

FORMATS ALREADY IN THE NETWORK

• Cold-slab and cold-form bars: Chilled sheeting and forming for dense nutrition and protein bars.
• Baked and extruded bars: Oven and die work for recipes that can take heat.
• Chocolate moulding: One-shot moulded pieces already made in O’Hara.
• Cookies, wafers, fruit bars, and granola: The wider better-for-you set the combined company listed after the merger.

Co-mans sell scarce line time, not brands. A new cold-form line in a township that already runs slab and moulding is a slot for customers who cannot wait for California wafer space to be rebuilt as bar space.

Pennsylvania’s $420,000 Grant on a $42 Million Line

The Shapiro administration is putting $420,000 into the project through a Pennsylvania First grant that DCED proposed and the Governor’s BusinessPA team coordinated. That sum is 1 percent of $42 million, or about $5,060 of state money for each of the 83 new jobs. The company is paying for the line.

Officials still framed the news as a contest. The governor’s office said Tandem Foods chose Pennsylvania over California. Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato thanked the company “for choosing Pittsburgh over California for this expansion” and added, “When we compete, we win.” Shapiro said that when Tandem Foods chose Pittsburgh, people across southwestern Pennsylvania would benefit.

The loudest public complaint after the announcement was the grant, treated as if Harrisburg had bought the headline. The arithmetic is the other way around. A $420,000 check does not move a $42 million line by itself. What Pennsylvania had, and California would have had to match, was three plants already running, a workforce Buick said the company has used for years, and a state eager to put the win on camera.

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding tied the project to Shapiro’s decision to put food and farms at the center of the state’s 10-year economic development strategy. Food making is the industrial end of that argument: bars going out of O’Hara still need nuts, syrups, dairy proteins, and packaging from a regional supply chain.

Cypress Took the Wafers, Pittsburgh Takes the Bars

The California side of the company is not a rumor. In September 2025 Tandem Foods started the first line at a new plant in Cypress and said that project was the largest investment in its 40-year history. The first line was wafers. The company said the work lifted wafer capacity by more than 150 percent and made it the largest wafer manufacturer in the U.S. Buick used the same sentence then that he used in 2026: the spend answered “the sustained growth of our strategic partners and the exciting pipeline of new business we’re developing.”

Twelve months later he said the O’Hara cold-form line was the single largest investment in that same 40-year span. Both claims can stand as successive company statements. They also split the map. Wafers, which need ovens and heat recovery, went to Orange County. Cold-form bars, which need chill and slab discipline, stay with the Pittsburgh cluster that already moulds chocolate.

Cypress was built with room for more lines. That is why “Pennsylvania beat California” is a win for this bar project, not a retreat from the West Coast. Four of the eight plants remain in California. The work that did not go west is the next cold-form slot.

THE TANDEM BUILD-OUT

1. 2019: AUA Private Equity forms TruFood Manufacturing with food executive Ted Schouten and later adds Simply Natural Foods.
2. October 18, 2022: Mubadala Capital buys TruFood from AUA funds, with management staying on.
3. 2023: Michael Buick becomes chief executive.
4. April 30, 2024: TruFood completes its combination with Bar Bakers; Manna Tree joins the capital stack.
5. January 2025: The combined company takes the Tandem Foods name, with the tagline “Powered by Collaboration.”
6. September 2025: First wafer line starts at the new Cypress plant, sold then as the largest investment in 40 years.
7. September 21, 2026: Shapiro’s office announces the $42 million O’Hara cold-form line, which Buick now calls the largest investment in that 40-year history.

Bar Bakers, started in 2013 and based in Los Alamitos, brought more than 1,000 employees, four California plants, and two warehouses, plus cold-form, baked-bar, cookie, and wafer tools that TruFood did not have on the East Coast. TruFood brought more than 400,000 square feet of eastern plants and a Pittsburgh home. The 2026 line is the Pittsburgh half of that marriage getting the next major bar machine.

The Abu Dhabi Fund Behind the O’Hara Line

Tandem Foods is not a family candy shop writing a one-off check. Mubadala Capital, the asset-management arm of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company, acquired TruFood Manufacturing in 2022 from funds tied to AUA Private Equity Partners. Pete Tsudis was chief executive at that sale. Buick came in the next year.

The combination with Bar Bakers in 2024 added Manna Tree, a Colorado firm that invests in nutrition companies. Harold Rothman, Bar Bakers’ founder, joined the board. Gary Jacobs, then Bar Bakers’ president, became chief operating officer. Adnan Azam, an executive director at Mubadala Capital, said the deal was meant to add network and production capacity in high-growth snack categories.

The better-for-you bar market is large and growing and TruFood and Bar Bakers’ innovative product portfolio and unwavering commitment to nutrition and quality make them the leader in manufacturing for the bar category’s largest health-forward brands.

Steve Young, managing partner, Manna Tree, on the April 30, 2024 combination

That is the wager sitting under the O’Hara lease. Sovereign and private-equity money already paid to stitch a California co-man onto a Pittsburgh one. The $42 million line is the next machine those owners are willing to park where the slab work already lives. Stefani Pashman, chief executive of the Allegheny Conference, called Tandem Foods a home-grown company in the region. The equity file is in Abu Dhabi and Colorado. The plant file is still on Alpha Drive.

The Brands on the Line Have No Public Names

Buick’s “strategic partners” never appear in the state’s release or in the company’s public notes on the project. Tandem Foods sells line time to packaged-food companies and to smaller brands. Club, grocery, drug, and convenience stores are where the finished bars land. Which labels get the new cold-form capacity is the part of the story the owners have not put on the record.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The customer type: Packaged-food companies and entrepreneurial brands in better-for-you snacks.
• The format: A dedicated cold-form bar line, not a wafer oven and not a new chocolate mould.
• The clock: New jobs are to be filled over three years as the line goes in at 615 Alpha Drive.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Named brands: No customer was identified in the September 21 announcement.
• California’s offer: Officials said the company passed on California; no competing term sheet was released.
• Pay and shifts: The 83 roles were not listed by wage, skill, or shift pattern.

That silence is normal in co-man work and still shapes who wins. A brand that already runs with Tandem Foods in O’Hara gets a path to more volume without building a plant. A brand still shopping for cold-form time is in the same queue, only now the next machine is spoken for by a “pipeline” the public cannot see. California keeps wafer share. Pittsburgh keeps the bar slot.

83 New Jobs Over Three Years

The state’s scoreboard is local and slow. Eighty-three hires over three years, 446 jobs kept, a larger lease, one new line. Innamorato said she looks forward to Tandem Foods adding more people in Allegheny County. Siger said the project helps a Pennsylvania company compete in global food making. The company still runs four plants in California, and Cypress still has empty floor for later lines.

The line will go in as those 83 jobs are filled. Until the brands on it are named, the winners on paper are Pennsylvania’s existing bar cluster, the funds that already own both coasts, and whichever partners booked the capacity first.