Campbell Soup to Buy Fast-Food Supplier : Acquisitions: Brea-based Fresh Start Foods provides hamburger buns and English muffins worldwide to one customer: McDonald’s.

Campbell Soup Co. said Monday that it is buying an Orange County company that is a major supplier of hamburger buns and English muffins to McDonald’s Corp. around the world.

Fresh Start Foods L.P., which has annual sales of about $75 million, operates several large commercial bakeries that cater to a single customer: McDonald’s. The company, based in Brea, has operations in the United States, including a bakery in City of Industry, as well as in Europe and South America.

Campbell did not disclose the terms of the acquisition, which is subject to government approval.

“I feel very positively,” Fresh Start’s president, Craig Olson, said in a telephone interview from Germany, where he was inspecting one of the company’s bakeries.

A Campbell spokesman at the company’s Camden, N.J., headquarters said the acquisition reflects the firm’s increasing involvement in restaurant catering.

“A lot more money is being spent away from home. People are more on the go these days,” spokesman Kevin G. Lowery said. The Fresh Start purchase is a good fit for his company, he said, because Campbell is already a supplier of condiments and soups to McDonald’s.

Fresh Start was started 30 years ago when McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc asked Harold Freund, operator of Freund’s Baking in Burbank, to build a bakery that would supply the fledgling fast-food company.

Freund, now retired, built the plant in City of Industry. The company eventually added seven other plants, in Stockton; Waipahu, Hawaii; Salt Lake City; Kansas City, Kan.; one in Germany, and two in Brazil. Another location is set to open in Chile later this year.

The bakery company changed hands several times, most recently when 16 managers bought the operation in 1988. Though the buyout added debt, Olson said, Fresh Start’s rapid growth over the years made the company attractive to Campbell.

The company now has 480 employees worldwide, about 165 of whom are in California, including 22 at the Brea headquarters. All are expected to be retained under the acquisition, including managers.

Campbell’s shares closed at $37.50, up 25 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange.