Cordia Harrington is the founder, CEO, and president of Tennessee Bun Company. Founded in 1996, Tennessee Bun Company supplies buns to restaurants such as McDonald’s, Chili’s and Pepperidge Farm. TBC is one of the most highly automated bakeries in the world, producing 1,000 buns per minute, and ships to 40 states east of the Rockies and to the Caribbean.

Harrington also opened Nashville Bun Company, a producer of English muffins for McDonald’s, Sheetz, Perkins and more, in 1999. She added a Hearth line to NBC in 2005 to supply McDonald’s and O’Charley’s. Bun Lady Transport was also founded in 1999. In 2005 Harrington purchased the Cold Storage of Nashville freezer facility, and CornerStone Baking Company began production in 2007.

An active member of the community, Harrington is a member of the Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation, Leadership Nashville, Committee of 200, Chi Omega Foundation, the St. Thomas Health Services Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Board. She is very involved with Ronald McDonald House Charities locally and nationally.

Harrington has been nationally recognized in many media outlets. In 2005 she was featured on the CBS Early Show, ABC’s Money Matters, NPR’s Motley Fool and NBC Nightly News. She was number 16 in FAST Company magazine’s Fastest Growing Woman-Owned Business list in 2004 and Woman Business Owner of the Year in 2000 (National Association of Women Business Owners). Her companies have received recognition in Nashville’s Future 50 since 1999. Most recently, Harrington was named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards and in the Nashville Business Journal’s Best in Business Awards. In 2007, Harrington was recognized as Executive of the Year by the Excellence in Manufacturing Awards, and she was named Chi Omega’s Malinda Jolley Mortin Woman of Achievement. The Bun Companies were named in the 2007 list of the “Top 100 WBEs Impacting Supplier Diversity.” In 2007, Nashville Bun Company was honored by a visit from President George W. Bush.

Contact: Cordia@buncompany.com