Doyon Brand Guidelines: The Quebec Bakery-Equipment Maker Owned by Middleby Since 2009

A Quebec bakery that learned to fix its own machines.

Doyon is a bakery-equipment brand that began in a bakery. The company’s own history page says the Gustave Doyon Bakery was set up by Gustave Doyon in 1929 in St-Côme, Quebec. In 1950, the company says, he established a separate business, the Gustave Doyon Equipment Company, to repair his own bakery equipment and to sell used machines to other bakers.

That 1950 date is the one Doyon and its owner use as the start of the brand. Both the Doyon website and Middleby’s brand page say Doyon was “established in 1950 by Gustave Doyon” as a sales and repair business for bakery equipment. The company’s timeline then adds a second bakery, bought in Quebec City in 1960, and gives 1970 as the year the business called Doyon Equipment was established, a date that sits alongside the 1950 start in the same history.

The move from repairing machines to building them came in the 1970s. The timeline dates the start of manufacturing to 1973, and the company describes the mid-1970s as the point when it began making its own line. Middleby’s summary lists what that line covered: mixers, moulders, proofers and ovens, “everything to complete a commercial bakery.”

Doyon’s account of itself stays close to the trade. Its website talks about combining “love and respect for the market and the craft of baking” with its customers’ input, and says it designs and makes equipment for supermarkets, hotels, commissaries and traditional bakeries. Its homepage carries a short line, “Doyon Does It,” and a section headed “Doyon Does Artisan Baking.”

Jet Air, export and a sale to Middleby.

The product Doyon builds its story around is Jet Air. The company describes it as an exclusive system that uses a reversible fan in its ovens and proofers, so that the air changes direction during baking. It says Jet Air was created in the 1980s, when Doyon expanded into the United States and other international markets, and that it shaped the line of ovens that followed, from the small JAOP3 to the large JA28.

The range grew in other directions too. The timeline says the PIZ3, a pizza oven, was introduced in 1990. Middleby’s page adds Circle Air, a later oven design with rotating racks, and, among recent products, a knock-down roll-in rack proofer that can be assembled on site. Doyon also began making bakery accessories such as proofers, mixers, racks, sheeters, work tables and bread pans, the company says.

The family business changed hands in December 2009. English Wikipedia’s article on the Middleby Corporation lists Doyon among its commercial cooking brands and cites a Business Wire release dated 16 December 2009, “The Middleby Corporation Completes Acquisition of Doyon Equipment.” Doyon’s own timeline records the same step: in 2009 “The Middleby Corporation acquired Doyon Equipment, Inc.”

Middleby, based in Elgin, Illinois, was itself founded in Chicago in 1888 by Joseph Middleby and John Marshall as a bakery supplier making portable ovens, English Wikipedia says. Its brand pages say Doyon then “merged with NU-VU Foodservice Systems in 2009 to become the Bakery Equipment Division of Middleby.” NU-VU, which Middleby describes as a maker of on-premises baking equipment for chain restaurants, supermarkets and convenience stores, is the sister brand Doyon was joined with.

How oven makers show themselves.

Commercial ovens are bought by chefs, restaurant chains and kitchen designers rather than by shoppers, and their makers present them that way. Catalogues and websites lean on stainless steel product shots against plain backgrounds, close-ups of touch-screen control panels, and oven fronts photographed in working restaurant, bakery and convenience-store kitchens, often with a chef at the door.

The category covers several kinds of machine. Combi steamers join convection heat and steam in one cabinet; speed ovens pair fast-moving hot air with other sources of heat; conveyor and deck ovens serve pizza and baking; and charcoal ovens put live fire inside a closed box. Many makers sell more than one kind, and several of these names now sit inside larger equipment groups, Middleby of Elgin, Illinois, among them, rather than standing alone.

Much of the selling happens face to face. HostMilano in Milan, Internorga in Hamburg and the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago are among the fairs where makers show new ovens, often with chefs cooking on the stand. Alto-Shaam says it first showed its Cook & Hold oven at the 1968 NRA Show, and the makers’ own websites still point buyers to test kitchens and live cooking demonstrations, where an oven can be judged by what comes out of it. TurboChef’s website offers a way to find one of its test kitchens, and Alto-Shaam’s lists demonstrations and virtual events under the name Taste of Alto-Shaam.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it now, and where its ovens are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A full bakery, from water meter to slicer.

Today Doyon trades as Doyon Baking, a Middleby brand. Its careers page says Doyon Baking “is a subsidiary of Middleby Company and located in Menominee, Michigan,” and its contact page lists customer and technical service at the same Menominee address, with NU-VU email addresses; the site’s menu also links to NU-VU.

The range still follows the idea of equipping a whole bakery. Doyon’s product pages group it into water meters and chillers, planetary mixers (including an SM series), spiral mixers from 30 to 375 quarts, proofers and retarder proofers, dough sheeters, dough dividers and rounders, ovens and oven proofers, bread slicers and display warmers. The ovens run from artisan deck ovens to convection ovens with reversing-fan airflow and circulating racks, the company says.

Some of the product language is the company’s own pitch, and should be read that way. Doyon says its Perfect Proofer series is shipped flat for assembly on site so it can fit through a bakery door, and that its sheeters are meant for laminated pastry, pizza, naan and flatbread. It also publishes spec sheets, user manuals, Revit drawings and an annual product catalogue for dealers and kitchen designers.

Inside Middleby, Doyon sits among other bakery and cooking names. English Wikipedia’s list of Middleby brands includes NU-VU, Sveba Dahlen and the Vermont oven maker Blodgett, alongside cooking names such as TurboChef and Lincat.

For a design guide, Doyon shows a trade brand whose story is short and practical: a bakery, a repair shop, its own ovens, and a sale to a larger group. Compare Blodgett, another Middleby oven maker with family roots, and Merrychef, a Middleby high-speed-oven brand. For this guide we use crust brown, flour cream and a deep blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Doyon’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.