The First Week

It's noon on Sunday morning and I'm sitting on the couch watching the rain with my cat on the left and my dog on the right of me. Even though I love to work, it's quite nice to be relaxing after a very long first week.

After a busy week of stocking the fridge with various prep items (pastry cream, scones, brioche dough, etc.), it's finally here, our first day open. It's the first time in a long while that I've been up at 4:45am and I can tell you for sure I'm not a morning person, which I suppose will make for an interesting life I've chosen.

By 7am the case is full and me and my assistant baker are whizzing around in our minimally organized kitchen trying to keep up with a list that keeps growing every time we finish something.

By 10am we start on the sandwiches, which neither me nor my baker have ever done en masse. We decide to do only half that first day and see how it goes. We're working at the speed of light, and get a little buzz from all the excitement. Meanwhile, my husband's running the front with one of our barista's that we've barely trained. We're out of cinnamon brioche and blackberry oat scones so we quickly pop a few more in the oven. We're trying to keep a list of things to do and buy so we can be better in the future. It's like we have all the planning we've done, plus what's actually happening, plus what we'd like to do in the future all whirling around in our heads at the same time. It's nearly impossible to keep it all straight and not overbake the brownies.

By noon we've already worked a full 8 hour day, but it doesn't stop. We sold out of sandwiches by 11:30am so that was that. The bell on the door keeps clanging. We're whipping up new types of cookies over and over and watching our very inconsistent oven like a hawk. I'm helping out in the retail section when the line gets long. Our friends are stopping by so we're trying to chat with them. All in all everybody is so happy that we're FINALLY OPEN and they want to chat with us about what we're going to offer in the future.

By mid-afternoon, I sigh that I still have 4-1/2 hours to go and even more new employees to train. On very little energy, it's super tough to be a strong leader, but we power through it and keep saying, "once things settle down we'll do THIS or THAT". It will have to do for now.

At the end of the day, my husband runs the sales report and shows me the total. It was a very successful opening day, and we hug each other, mostly holding each other up. We kiss and both agree that Sugar will be a success. After such a long haul it's great to think that we are finally able to enjoy the community of people, employees and customers we've worked so hard to create. It feels good to be home again.

Calm Before the Storm

Relaxing this weekend after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Monday, I'm walking down to the permit office to pull a permit to have our gas line installed. I will soon be baking in the kitchen. Then, still uncertain on the exact date, we will open our doors and let the fun begin.

One in, one out

One in, one out. That's what we say when we're letting the dog out, and the cat comes in.

I am sorry to hear Sugar Nighclub is closing, although I must say I will miss those late night calls I get on my voicemail monday morning of drunk kids calling me on their cell phones in their car trying to figure out where the club is. Those calls gives me a good chuckle, allowing me to remember those wilder days of my youth. Mind you, I'm not one of those jealous of youth over 40 babes who sits around on the porch telling stories to the youngins about brighter days. No, kids, I'm still in the game.

And when we open, we'll be the new kid on the block, the young fresh bakery filled with dreams and aspirations of being the sweetest place in Seattle. And folks, I promise, we will deliver.

Photo courtesy of Jonah Spangenthal-Lee

Buzzing Out

We played with our new espresso machine tonight and got all buzzed out, which makes us even more anxious for our last step to fall into place.

We're waiting for Puget Sound Energy to install our gas meter, which we put in our application on October 3rd. Not sure why anything should take this long, but we're trying to be patient. We don't know what to expect with inspections, but we're crossing our fingers for the best.

So instead of baking pies for Sugar this Thanksgiving, I'll be hosting Thanksgiving at our house. I'm really happy about this because last year's Thanksgiving was really tough...my husband was on his third cycle of Chemotherapy and he was really nauseous. We finished his treatment mid-day, and then came home and tried to have a semblance of celebration. His dad insisted on bringing by some of their leftovers, but it just wasn't the same as sitting at the table with people you like and just "giving thanks" to have them as friends and family. I suppose Thanksgiving is the one holiday I honestly like, because the concept is so simple, just appreciate living, have good food, and smile that you made it this far. It's a lot better than Christmas, which gets all mixed up in the whole "what did you get?" thing.

So I'm Thankful I suppose that some day the bakery will open, but still, still, we can't really say when. We're paying rent and losing money, but a little creative energy will help us surmount that obstacle. Instead of concentrating on the holiday season we've missed out on with the bakery, I'm putting my thoughts to the future, and all the great things Sugar will do when we open.

Keeps getting weirder.

"We'll put a stop to your worries one PENETRATION at a time."

That, folks is my electrician's biline. I don't think I need to tell you any more about how THAT is going.

Sneak Preview

Friday was absolutely crazy. We got a bit of a late start and then were stuck in traffic almost all the way to the kitchen, I realized we forgot a whole bag of tools and supplies in our other car. John dropped me off and went back home to pick it up, but on the way out of the parking lot, he scratched the tire on a big tractor that was doing some ditch digging and it popped. He grabbed our painter's truck and gave me the motor club card so I could call for a tow. Meanwhile, i tried to pick up the space, but kept getting interrupted by the electrician calling, followed by credit card companies and such. As soon as the tow truck driver arrived, and we were out looking for the special tool to get the spare tire from under our "fancy european but now trashed minivan", the gentle rain became a torrential downpour, and I ran back to the kitchen to grab another sweatshirt to try to stay somewhat dry. Puddles were forming all around us as I ran back and forth signing this and helping with this. I ran back into the bakery and took a deep breath, had a good laugh with our painter about all hell breaking loose. He's such a mellow guy he just continued to paint while I tried to clear the floor so we could lay some tile.

I tried sweeping, but that just kicked up the dust. The brush attachment from the vacuum that we brought to the kitchen especially to vacuum the floor was unfortunately in the car with the flat tire on its way to Les Schwab to get fixed. We had also forgot to buy a mop for the bakery the previous night, so I ran over to Bartell and grabbed two of their biggest mops, tried to mop with them, but they proved to be completely ineffective on the concrete covered with layers of glue and such. I decided to hose the place down, and try to sweep the water out, but quickly learned our floor had a slope in the wrong direction, and was fighting an uphill battle with the water. I pulled out the shop vac to suck up the rest of the puddles, but then noticed the paper and glue from the linoleum was peeling up. So then we were back on our hands and knees (with cheep kneepads no less) stripping the floor of any loose material to begin the sweeping all over again. Phew.

Time was ticking and if we wanted to get the tile dry by the time equipment started arriving on Tuesday, we'd have to get some sort of heater, so John rented one, and when he got back, we went to lunch and took a deep breath.

We started tiling late into the afternoon, and by the time we were done with 1/3 of the space, we were losing it, our cuts were coming out just completely wonky, we were losing tools left and right. It was time to quit for the day.

Suprisingly, the next day worked out fabulous, and once we got over our sore limbs, we were back in business and getting into a groove. The tile went into the bathroom in like 20 minutes flat! Today we do the grout, which will hopefully be dry by tuesday. We're definitely going to cover that floor up to protect it though!

Today is grout day, and once that's done we're down to a few last minute details on our part f the construction. We're still waiting on a permit for the hood, and plumbing needs to finish up and electrical needs to start, but it's coming together.

Our target date? We're going to stop predicting. We're opening as soon as we can. It's going to be worth the wait, I promise!

betty crocker

Allow me to introduce our dog Betty Crocker. She hasn't had a walk in almost a week, and although she tries to be patient with us, she is still moping around a bit, and letting out a big sigh when she plops back down on the couch when she realizes I'm leaving.

It's just lately, my schedule has been a bit irregular. This week is really packed with getting the concrete in so we can lay the tile so we can get our equipment delivered. Not to mention there's a huge sewer project going on in the alley adjacent to our space which is going to make delivery challenging to say the very least.

However through all this chaos, Betty has had the pleasure of taste-testing a peanut butter snickerdoodle. A couple of weeks back she snuck up to the kitchen counter and nabbed some energy bars I had been experimenting with. Without restraint, she ate the whole pan and needless to say was a bit sick for a day or so. These energy bars are really fabulous, and we're going to have to call them Betty Bars. They're good for breakfast on the go, or a healthy snack. Yum.

the walls are pink

When I said I picked up my APPROVED plans from the health department a few weeks back I think I spoke too soon. I forgot to give the City just one more chance to cause a delay. They decided to misplace the plans for about a week, telling me a different story every time I called, passing me off to bogus supervisors, until finally I called the Mayor's hotline and was put right through to the person who gave my plans to the right person. We could not call for an inspection until we had the approved plans so we were just sitting around in dirt.

So I quickly called for a plumbing inspection on the rough-in (that's the part that's underground). Because my new plumbers rock, we of course were approved and tomorrow we get to put the dirt back in the hole, fill it with concrete, and then lay our tile floor. We were originally going to paint, but then we suspected there might be asbestos leftover from the floor tiles we popped off so instead of getting into abatement and such which could cause further delays, we decided tile was a better option, plus we've done it before and it will be much more durable than any paint would be.

Meanwhile, I've been prepping the walls and painting. The plaster is really sketchy so in some areas I had to roll the paint very lightly so that the wall wouldn't flake off! I think the primer is holding it together. I'll do the other half (the dirt half) later and give my buns a rest from trapsing up and down the ladder to reach the high ceilings.

So the place is really quickly shaping up. When are we opening? Depending on the last remaining possible bottlenecks, the gas install and the ventilation hood install (waiting for permits of course ;) we're hoping for the first week in November. Hard to promise, but we're working out butts off to get open.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Today I walked down to the Department of Health and walked my APPROVED plans back to the Department of Planning and Development. Turns out walking your plans from place to place really speeds things along. Another thing that works with the city is not to talk too much, and if you do talk, definitely throw some names, saying things like "John Doe wanted me to do it this way". And you have to say it with conviction like if you don't do it John Doe's way, you're going to get in trouble, not the other way where you sound all defensive.

Anyway, my brother came up last weekend and we started building cabinets and getting the space all prepped for paint. Luckily, those are two things you CAN do without a permit, so we jumped at the chance. However, our string of lights is probably not up to code. Shhh! He has been doing a phenomenal job, and the space is looking really really great. He's back with a friend this weekend and they're going to finish the work. Monday, plumbing resumes. Finally, I will have a bathroom again!

Moving Mountains

Funny thing after going through such a major ordeal like cancer is after your body recovers, your mind takes a while to catch up. Sure I didn't actually go through chemo myself, but being so close to my husband while he was only able to lie on the couch barely able to make it to the toilet was sort of like feeling that nausea myself. Thankfully, that chapter is over and we're supposed to be healing, starting over, cherishing every moment and such but what's happening instead is we have this strange desire to ask for special treatment every time something doesn't go our way. I guess you call that being a victim. I can tell you that after doing it for almost the last year it doesn't really pay off. Of course other people care about you to some extent, but they aren't going to waive late charges just because we're too disorganized to pay our bills on time, and they certainly aren't going to give us special treatment at the city to push our permits through faster. I know, I know the city is slow and they do have their own issues that are fair game to rail on. But nobody is going to have pity on us, because it's not THEIR life, it's our life.

It's been about a year since my husband went in for emergency surgery starting the whole cascade of events leading to the discovery that his cancer had spread. It's been a very long year, but now it's a new year, time to change. Time to move mountains.

I made a list of everything I can do WITHOUT my permit from the city and we got to work. We finished our demo of the space and cleared out most of the rubble. We got some crazies from Craig's list lined up to take the scrap metal and I'm thinking about paint colors. My brother's flying up from non other than Cool, California (yes, it's an actual place!) to help build our case. I'm still working on the new banker, but I think I have only a few details to send her way, and we'll finally have funding to be able to finance this puppy.

I feel much more comfortable breaking up such a big undertaking into small manageable jobs. It took me, my husband, his dad and stepmom a grand total of 27 minutes to move a huge pile of concrete rubble in small buckets. I think that's a sign of things to come.

We've got Intake

After visiting the Department of Planning & Development approximately 4 weeks straight, and getting bits and bits of misinformation, and being slightly discriminated against because I'm not an architect, we finally coerced them into giving us the golden Intake appointment! I had to resort to bringing in some muscle in the form of my tall hubby, but in the end we ended up with a very very helpful permit specialist who gave us the green light to make our Intake Appointment. He warned us it would be about 6 weeks before we could resume the buildout (my heart did a little backflip). but then in the end we totally lucked out and got in NEXT Tuesday to submit our plans for review. Getting the Intake appointment is the first big step, its the part where we submit our plans and pay our fees and get 1-1/2 hours to show them our stuff before they take a couple of weeks to review our plans and give us the Royal Permit!

Also, we contacted another bank and things are looking good. I'm just so suprised that the first bank only wanted to finance us for part of our startup costs. That means we'd have to put the remainder on credit cards which would rack up finance charges and make it pretty darned hard to pay back our loan. We'll meet with them next week, but of course the focus is on permit permit permit. My heart feels normal again. I think I'm going to bake something tonite.

Sex is Still Free

My husband and I spent the greater part of yesterday adding up all the bills that were due tomorrow. Our credit cards are maxed out. The plumber decided to subtract another 800 bucks from the refund we desperately needed while we wait for the permit for the city. We got shorted on the loan. Our situation is a bit dire; luckily we still have food in the pantry. We've resorted to barley in the summertime, folks!

Thank the heavens for sex when you need a little relief from the stress of how you're going to pay bills and how you're going to survive for 4 weeks on the small change in the jar that is mostly pennies. When the medical bills are so out of control and nobody will give you a break, even our home mortgage company won't let us just defer ONE measly little payment. My husband is selling every little piece of audio equipment bless his heart. I've put most of my art books up for sale on Amazon.

We really need to open the shop so I can start baking again and bring some money in. But for now, I'm going to spend the evening baking bread and thanking my husband for the great partnership he's given me. We're saving the bottle of wine we got from Paris for a special occasion, but we can certainly enjoy a few other carnal pleasures that are thankfully still free.

Sleepless Nights

When you undertake any large multi-component project, it's very difficult to keep track of every little detail. I'm sitting in the kitchen right now thinking about what has gone on the last few weeks since we signed the lease.

We finished most of the demo of the space, ripping out stinky old carpet and removing ceiling tiles. I've fixed up the upstairs loft area and moved my office in, which is phenomenally great because I can focus on work without being distracted with laundry. I must say working from home is not what you think it is.

The plumber has started digging ditches for the fixtures we will install, but since we have to wait for Department of Health to approve, he had to stop, which means I don't have a toilet. Luckily, the neighbor has been graciously letting me use his, and I've been feeding him cake to keep him on my good side. The plumbing inspector down at the Department of Planning and Development is not being very helpful and is making me fulfil all these super stringint regulations that other places never had to. Like for example, making me put extraneous walls to section off the restroom from the kitchen space, whereas other bakeries are able to use a partition wall, or even just a fan. Of course we want to keep the toilet as far away from the kitchen as possible, however we're running out of room for our equipment. I am sure it will all work out.

The bank has only approved us for $28,000 as a business line of credit, which in 6 months will be almost 12% interest. We need about $75,000 to do our buildout and about $25,000 working capital for the first 6 months. They are basing it on our previous year of gross sales, which was a little lower than average because of my husband's cancer. I mean, we paid our bills and made a profit. Our rent was low so we could definitely afford to reduce our sales so I dont' see what the problem is. I don't know how restaurants get their usual $250,000 in startup costs. I just don't know how to convince the bank that our cash flow projections are conservative. It's bogus. I guess we are going to look into other options. I am trying not to ask my dad because after all, I am 40 now and should be able to handle my own expenses.

Our First Week

We've begun the process of clearing the decks in the space, removing the old carpeting and the dropped ceilings. We found a secret room in the ceiling where only the walls remain. Hard to describe it in words, but I just like the idea of trying to imagine all the different businesses that have been in the space since it was built in the 1930s. I found an old deflated balloon with "You're Incredible" written on it. I replied back out loud after wiping a bit of sweat from my brow, "Thanks!". Ventilation seems like it might be an issue, so we're going to try to creatively resolve it, but definitely having that extra air space with the 14 feet ceilings is going to help. However, we were doing the work on the muggiest days of the year, so the stuffy observation may be out of context.

So far, the process has been about making sure the contractors I'm working with do what they say they're going to do. A plumber we were excited to use decided not to show up on Saturday. I called him several times, but he just disappeared; probably just fell into the toilet. We've lined up another plumber, and his quote was a quite a bit higher than we budgeted for, but he's Johnny on the spot ready to go, and we've really got to get that part going since the city is changing the grease trap requirements on July 31 so our cost would be substantially higher if we wait. Also the phone installer decided to show up early, so we missed our appointment because we weren't there yet. And the funny thing is we tried all afternoon yesterday to reschedule, but the line was busy. Aren't they the PHONE company???

But we're trying not to let too many of these setbacks get us down and we're trying to keep our eyes on the prize. Installing the gas line is going to be way cheaper than we budgeted for so that was super cool. and another major thing is that I think I may have finally decided on a point of sale system that can integrate with a recipe costing software. All in all things are starting to fall into place.

We've only just begun

We signed the lease yesterday and picked up the keys today for our new retail location at 1014 Madison in the wonderful First Hill neighborhood in Seattle. We must have been extremely excited because I immediately got some posters printed and we put our name in the window right away.

It's such a huge project. Where to start. We're trying to get the plumber in this weekend, then start with the remaining permits and such. We've got drawings to finalize, funding to figure out, recipes to test, paints to choose, and so much more. But I'm so thankful to have an actual physical space that I can actually walk into with my very own key. Which reminds me, I've got to make a few copies of the key!

a little birdie told me so

At some point, all the planning, preparation, and risk estimating has to ultimately give in to the actual thing itself. I am a do-er, so as you can imagine, having almost one year to sit on the idea of opening a retail store and it never happening is pretty much driving me crazy. Sure we've come close several times, then something (either cancer or cold feet) stopped us. So with every day the anxiety of not doing builds and builds eventually giving way to mini-explosions. Let's just call them that, rather than refer to them in the usual way as melt-downs.

This particular mini-explosion was caused by the building stress and anxiety of being about to spend nearly $100,000 to start the retail store, and the fear that it will fail, and that all this planning will be lost in the flurry of the moment we open our doors only to find our sales numbers are not what we hoped and the business slips into bankruptcy. Of course even though I have an extreme amount of faith in myself and the bakery's possibility of success, that anxiety still manages to creep in. Unfortunately, that anxiety was also fed by my dear husband asking me to reduce my startup costs for fear of imminent failure, which made me think his faith in me was lost, which led to me storming out the door and down to the water's edge. I needed some place to drain my tears!

I did the usual mid-mini-explosion crying, trying not to let it get too strong while I was supposed to be driving. I took a brief walk and found a nice little bench and phoned my mom.

My mom and I have a very unique relationship. Early in my life, she seems to have decided I was independent enough to not need the typical mothering, and stopped trying to tell me what to do with my life. It was the smartest thing for her to do because believe me, it's nearly impossible to offer me even the slightest bit of advice. My mom has had a lot of hardship in her life which has led to some instances of psychological crisis, and as a result, most of the time when we talk it's about her problems, etc. But she is still my mom and knows instantly when I'm upset and quickly turns the floor over to me.

Through our long phone call we didn't come to any conclusions, but I felt better, calmer. That and watching the sky change after the sunset helped bring me back to center. As we were hanging up the phone, I looked down on the bench to the right of me and saw the most amazing words scribbled on it.

Sorry for the bad cell phone photo, but you can sort of see somebody's attempt to spell succeed. I mean here was one of those motivational posters sitting right next to me, and I can't believe it took me two hours to notice it. I'm not usually very religious, but I'm pretty sure SOMEBODY was trying to tell me something. Well, that's the way I'm choosing to interpret this message, even though it makes me sound self-obsessed. In writing this post, talking about success just sound silly and trite, but I think I've figured out at least for this moment that success probably can't be described in words; rather, it's a drive, a feeling, and now, because a little birdie wrote it on a bench, it's an obligation.

Strange Meat

I knew I was going to eat some sort of organ meat, or something strange in Paris. I was ok with that, and so I haven’t been too careful with my menu translations. Finally, my carelessness paid off and I was treated to a strange black sausage tartlet. It was good, tender with a crunchy outside. It had a fairly sweet flavor and nice subtle spice. I knew it was something weird, but at the time, just ate up, acting as if I knew what I was doing. I remembered the name of the thing: Boudin Noir.

Turns out I ate pork blood sausage. John ate some too. We squeeled just a little bit, but were also a bit proud for taking a little culinary adventure. Apparently, it’s one of the oldest known charcuterie traditions in France, having a history of some 2000 years. That made me feel fairly French inside, but I wondered how I would feel the next day so to speak. It’s a bit hard to stomach the idea of it, but actually it was fairly ok. Now knowing that Boudin is blood sausage, I’m not sure it would feel the same going down, but trying something once is a good way to know what it feels like.

Baguettes in Paris

Sitting in our apartment in Paris we started to notice tons and tons of baguette crumbs. We started to think about it and realized that it wasn’t gravel dust that paves the walkways in the parks of Paris, it’s finely crushed baguette and croissant crumbs from the hundreds of baguettes Parisians consume each year. The theory goes that they are swept into small sacs and placed in receptacles in the garbage areas in everybodys courtyards. Each year, a new minister of baguettes is appointed, who carefully monitors and controls the conversion of the thin flakes into dust…if crushed into too thin of a powder, they will be too absorbant and make mud too easily during the unpredictable rainy spring. If crushed too coarse, the papery flakes will be too slippery, and not provide adequate footing for Parisian women with their high heels to tromp over. It’s just a theory…

Paris and Bollywood

We’re in Paris for a much anticipated pastry pilgrimage and to celebrate my 40th. The weather’s beautiful, can you say “Paris in the Springtime!”

We headed over to a chocolate tour with David Leibovitz today. It was a bit tricky being our first time on the metro, and we were still a bit jetlagged from getting up at 5am since the day prior was the big travel day. But we finally figured out “the secret” to the metro, which boiled down to us actually finding the metro station as opposed to trying to use our metro map at the RER station. We’re still not sure how the RER works with the metro, but we’re really happy with how the metro gets us around really quickly. Geez, they need something like that in Seattle. So back to the tour…

Our first stop was Laduree which was actually on my list, but I was happy that we were going to the original store on Rue Royal. I love the way the shop looks on the outside, like a dress boutique. We snapped a couple of pics and headed in. The other thing that’s great about the high end patisseries in Paris is that they have display cases that are topless, which makes viewing the desserts very easy, and very beautiful. Laduree is famous for inventing Parisan Macaroons, and they sell some 5k a day of them (I’m sure mostly through mail order and such). We picked up a few of the more interesting flavors like Rose, Licorice, etc. But what immediately caught my eyes were these really cool pastel balls in pink and green. I had no idea what they would be like, were made out of, but had to get one to try it so got a green one. Turns out they were crunchy meringue sandwiches with chocolate ganache centers enrobed in crème de menthe buttercream. Fabulous and light.

Next we went to about 5 more chocolate shops, each with a unique style or specialty, but most of them were very progressive in their flavor choices for their truffles. I don’t have a list of names,only that most of the shops were in the St. Germain district.

(photo courtesy of Laduree, used without permission)

Stuck

I am now just waiting for that moment to come when it becomes obvious what I should do. After passing on the big retail space and pursuing the option of purchasing that catering kitchen, I’m sort of in a holding pattern waiting for the next step to become clear. Every moment raises doubts on whether I’ve done the right thing. In my heart, I feel like there’s something holding me back, and I’m just not sure what it is. Here are a few possibilities…

John’s cancer plays a huge role in this, I believe. He’s been in remission and just had a PET scan which proved that there’s no cancer activity in his system. I am sure he will never have a recurrence, but I suppose his body failing him temporarily made me realize mine might fail sometime soon. But I am not sure this holding pattern comes from me living in fear of a short life.

Again, I ask myself, is the thought of turning 40 such an anticipated turning point that I’m anxious of not having any idea what I want to turn to? Is this the time in my life when I’m supposed to know what I want? Definitively? Why am I so unsure what I want? Why am I still asking people for advice on my life. Is it fear of failure or fear of success?

Every small little setback stops me in my tracks. The internet goes down, I can’t work. I can’t do anything. I’m stuck, using the simplest and most minute little excuses to stop moving forward.

On the one hand, it would be great to move into that kitchen, but we already went through this before, and building a commercial kitchen just to do wholesale didn’t make sense. So let’s say we get a 3 year lease on that space, spend about 50k getting it up and running. Our rent seems cheaper in the short term, but add a retail later and we’re looking at another 3k probably, moving our rent even higher than the combined space. Then we’re split between two locations and I’m running back and forth all disconnected.

So the other option is to move into another shared space, but then we don’t seem to have the ability to have an office, which is hugely important when considering how much information needs to be organized when running the business. I do much better when I have all the information I need in front of me.

I’m just so frustrated that we finally had a direction, and now that direction seems like it just isn’t going to work as well as we hoped. It was clear we weren’t ready to take the big step for the retail location, and it seemed like buying that other catering kitchen was a good fit with our goals, but now it just doesn’t seem like a good option. I absolutely need to take a next step, but somehow am stuck in my tracks. Do I need more time? Do I need more information?

Onward and Upward

Well, after much deliberation and almost one month of back and forth negotiations that caused us to question every move we were making, we decided not to pursue that business that was for sale on Pike Street. For the entire time, it was about 50% yes, and 50% no, so it was really difficult. What we knew was that a lot was at stake, and that we didn’t want to risk losing it all.

So, I’ve used one of the three suicide phones from the Golden Gate Bridge to save us from failing. The goal is to have a successful bakery for the next 10 years, and anything that gets in the way of that is against the goal.

What is interesting is that my husband’s cancer scare has made me really understand how short life is and how you have to sieze the moment. This, and I’m turning 40 in two months. But I think I’ve realized that what I want is to do this right, steady, slow. I think I wanted to win in a sense, by having the bakery up and running by the time I am 40, but like my grandmother said, “Life begins at 40, but if you miss that, you can begin at 41.”

Cold Feet

Got back earlier this evening meeting with one of John (my hubby's) friends. Questions were raised. On the way home, I just kept thinking to myself, something is holding me back. Is it the people (mainly the city) that are telling me I have to jump through so many hoops just to get to the point that I can eventually open the business and THEN start the fun? Is it trying to learn CAD software in order to get those drawings quickly into the city?

It's probably this weird feeling of being ready, but not feeling sure. OK, honestly, it's the over 40K we have to spend JUST to buy the business and then begin the fun of building out the business. We originally rationalized it to be worth about 20k for us so we were essentially "throwing away" 20k because the rent is about 1k less than comparable spaces in that area. So our rational was that we'd make up the lost cash in rent savings. But it's still a lot of freaking money! And it's still a lot of risk. I have no doubt our products are bomb, but I've never run a pastry shop. I haven't successfully managed employees. (But I WILL!)

When I get a parking ticket, I am pissed and I pay it immediately. I want to put it behind me as soon as possible. I sort of have that same feeling about the 40k investment in this space. But instead of being able to let it go away, I've got to learn CAD, deal with an idiot seller who is just rambling, and delay the making of pastries.

It's this weird feeling of wanting something for a long time, seeing a few things pass you by that didn't fit, then finding the ONE GOOD THING that comes along after a while. But there's this weird feeling like we're being ripped off a bit, like we're just throwing money away. There might be an additional 40k in startup costs we might have to pay. Sure there's great light in the space, nothing could make me happier after working in the BITTER cold in a shared kitchen space, barely able to work with buttercream since it kept getting too cold. Is a good feeling worth wasting a bunch of money, or is something better around the bend?

And then, there's turning 40. I don't know why this is such a big deal, but I just feel I want this pastry shop thing to be going before I'm 40. Well, my birthday is May 3 and it's just around the corner. Realistically, it ain't going to happen, but as my grandmother always said, "life begins at 40, and if you miss it, you can always start at 41."

Portland Bakery Tour

This is going to be a long post, so grab a cup of coffee or martini, depending on what time of day it is, and read on.

We toured several Portland bakeries this weekend, with the express goal of helping to figure out how the sugar shop will look. What works, what doesn't in terms of layout. What the appropriate feeling of the shop should be based on the desserts we're going to sell. Oh, and taste a bunch of stuff to get inspired to bake again.

Our first stop was Sahagun Chocolates, which was difficult to find, and we had to resort to calling for directions, but we made it to their tiny little shop. When we say tiny we say less than 300 square feet! The atmosphere was casual and the furnishings were a mish-mash, which meant to me that they were serious about the chocolate, and that's all. There wasn't much of a theme to the decorations, but there were interesting things to look at. They had about 3 seats that faced the window with a small case and tiny espresso machine. The owner gave us a tour of the back room, and we chatted about how she liked it better than hauling stuff around to the farmer's market. They had been there 2 years, and settled into a nice flow. They had a bunch of customers stop in over the 30 minutes or so we were there, so neither the size nor "hidden-ness" of their location didn't seem to be hurting them. We bought several truffles we haven't tasted yet, had a really fabulous homemade soda, and an even better hot chocolate, which was so rich and complex we melted with every sip.

Back in the car for a few minutes for our next stop at the Pearl Bakery. We really liked how there was a big open space to walk into with a nice hexagonal tile floor and rich wood furniture. The main case was open on the top with a big glass sneeze guard in front of them. The bakery specializes in bread, and everybody had a shirt which said "eat bread" which probably doubled as a good way to get somebody to buy the shirts. We tried the bouchon, a brioche rolled in sugar, and a fig cookie. We also liked how some of the huge bakery production space was visible, but not to cluttered looking, mostly because the oven in front of the doorway was massive.

Walked a few blocks in the rain to the beautifully appointed chocolate shop called Cacao, a fairly new shop. You walked in the door through a few seats. On the left was a bunch of chocolate bars, cool looking hot chocolate, and other bits and pieces of paraphenalia scattered about. On the right was a bar with a small jewel like case with one piece per flavor of chocolates from various sources. The shop specializes in drinking chocolate although they only had three or four flavors (probably because their drinking chocolate is made in these fancy schmancy apparatus that look pretty spendy). I have to say the drinking chocolate at Sahagun was a bit more to our liking, but it was certainly nice to see the genre taken to the next level.

We then hooked up with a couple of friends to continue our tour. On the way back to the car, I stopped at a fairly new shop called Sweet masterpiece. I was initially not going to buy anything, but then I saw that they had Sea Foam, john's favorite, so I picked up a pack and then walked over to the case and started talking to the woman behind the counter who turned out to be one of the owners. Her shop included chocolates from a number of companies including her own; however they weren't really noted as such (for that matter, they weren't noted at Cacao either). The shop looked a bit like Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor with marble-ish countertops and a whole lot of brass trim. It felt "family", the sort of family with kids.

Next stop was Ken's Artisan Bakery, another place specializing in bread. The layout was really nice with a diagonally placed case which started with the cold case and then moved on to the dry case and then the register. The menu for prepared items was above on a chalk board (albeit a bit smudged). The decor seemed a bit plain, but functional. Some of the production areas were visible, but not overly so. There was a nice big communal table, which matched the comfy decor perfectly.

We did a quick stop at Voodoo Donuts, a tiny little punk (I must say supremely punk) shop tucked away near what seemed to be a part of town with a bunch of bars. Their big deal is that they stay open late and catch the bar crowd when they need a little sugar and grease after drinking. The shop was clutter-ific with tons of little clippings strewn across the walls. A dusty grimy giant foam donut hung on the wall. The case was a vertical rotating case with several different donuts haphazardly placed inside, representing what was currently available. With the grumpy staff, so-so donuts, there was almost a complete disregard for quality of anything about the experience, but it was worth stopping in, if only just to see the rawness of the shop. Like punk, it seemed it was not about the quality of the music, but about the angst in expressing it.

After Voodoo, we hit the new Pix Patisserie. We had been to the one on Hawthorne, and we were actually suprised to see that they had in three years expanded to three locations. The shop looked like a parlor with red velvet wallpaper and a series of salon-style gold mirrors along the wall. The case ran along almost the width of the shop, and it was jam packed with all sorts of chocolates, cakes, gelees and treats. there were little signs propped in each of the desserts with descriptions. It was a lot to take in. On each of the tables, there was a photo album menu(remember the shop is called "Pix") with descriptions. Pictures would have been over the top, but that's an awful lot of work for a pastry chef to take on ;) The treats were very creative and elaborately designed, almost too fussy. I know how much work it is when each piece has several different garnishes, and thusly, I know that you have to increase the batch size to make the labor work out. It's more about the bravado of the chef than the flavor of the pastries.

Then it was nap time.

The next day we only hit one place, Crema, which was more of a coffee focused place. Clean, beautiful, elegant. A bit homey and uncluttered, but the layout was not ideal for the pastries, which were just cast off to the side. We liked the light wood that was unvarnished, and the big rollup windows really opened up the space. The place was full with people parked with their laptops, and there was lots of traffic in and out of the space.

Blogging It

I spent the whole day reading blogs, maybe because it was really cold outside, or maybe because I couldn't think of anything better to do. I should have probably done a little work in the yard, or maybe some work towards figuring out some of the details of the shop, but I'm really forcing myself to balance "doing" with "absorbing".

I did manage a really nice walk with our dog, Betty Crocker. (We named her Betty first, then made the realization that her name would also be Crocker. Honestly!) We went down a bunch of unknown and cool hills on purpose so we could get some good uphill action on the way back. I told her when we walked behind the Cafe Lladro on California that "this is where the people who go to Cafe Lladro live". She was unamused, more excited about the new smells.

The blog I completely absorbed myself in was about Criollo Bakery in Portland, http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=40758 I read and read clicking on as many links as I could without losing the story. The story was heartwarming and it really hit me how much work this is going to be. I know how I get with wanting to do everything, never able to say "no" to any of my ideas. How I want to have my cake and eat it too. Always. But I have to be strong. This new bakery venture is going to be different than before. I have made a promise to my husband. It is very important to keep our life in perspective with our careers. Sure in my life those two overlap, but in the past three years the bakery has been the only thing that has gotten my energy, and it has gotten all of it. Exercising, eating healthy, and spending time with my husband are very important to me. So I've got to spend some time making sure I do my planning, and start imagining some rules to live by when I'm in bakery triage. I've got to know when to cut something out to save my sanity. I was thinking about all these things while I read about Criollo.

I finished the thread and immediately wrote to the pastry chef, hoping to get a few good words of encouragement with my upcoming adventure. A few hours later, following another thread, I learned that Criollo was CLOSED! This was a huge surprise. My husband got a look of fear in his face. The reality of owning a bakery, which we have known all along to be the riskiest venture we would ever undertake, and which is why we've had such a hard time coming to grips with how much $$ is at stake, set in real hard. I had been thinking, "she worked 120 hour weeks, I'm going to be smarter." Now I'm thinking, "she worked 120 hour weeks and it wasn't ENOUGH."

I know in my heart that she worked herself into the ground. I know how hard it is to find good help, and hard it is to continue to pay people when you could do the same job in way less time. I know how expensive running a bakery is, and I've been spending as little money as possible. I know I run that risk of running myself into the ground. These moments of anticipation are tough, the next step is HUGE, but a little reality check, even though it might make the fear grow momentarily, helps to put it all in perspective, and as a result I've been putting a lot of thought into how the bakery fits into my life rather than how the bakery takes over my life.

Oh, and those hills, they are getting easier.

The Counter Offer

After a long and arduous task of crunching numbers, we decided to meet the owner half way. I was extremely nervous going to meet him to present my offer. I knew I had to be confident about all aspects of the offer, be tough, and not talk too much.

On the way, I noticed a very interesting thing about myself. When I am scared, I just want to curl up and take a nap. I am pretty sure I'm not the only person who does this, but I had never quite realized this in my own behavior. It's this weird feeling, pulling me back home. There was a lot of traffic on the way, which didn't help. I just wanted to be home with the kitties and the puppy. But as soon as I walked into the shop and saw the owner standing there, the feeling went away.

The shop owner actually handled the over-talking for me, which made it easier for me to clear my head. I actually had to steer the conversation to the actual offer while he tried to clutter my mind with information about his business that was so obvious. He said more than three times that he would take only his personal effects from the business, and everything else would stay. As if I would want him to leave his comb! I was strong. I was confident. I was very sure of myself. What a rush! I presented my offer, which I knew I would have to sell because it was lower than he wanted. But I did not waiver. I made all my points supporting my offer, and made a solid attempt to convince him to accept it. (This was, of course, in between all of his babbling and triple explaining of every aspect of the business.) It was clear that I was in the driver's seat, and that actually felt good, which was a surprise because I thought I only liked the pastry making part of the business. We negotiated and negotiated. We talked about when rent would begin; he of course wanting me to start paying rent in March (only two weeks away), and me wanting to start in May (but conceding to start in April). It came down to about $5,000 we were grappling...not much in the scheme of opening a bakery, but in my mind not something to easily cast away. In our counter offer, we went almost $12,000 over what we thought were the useful assets of the business. But that was alright in a way because we were getting rent for about $1,000 less than comparable places in the area. But we still felt we were throwing $12,000 "away" in a sense, so adding $5,000 to that seems hard. We want to win, but we also don't want to lose. We can win by being right (and not paying the $5k), or we can win by being "wrong" (and paying the 5k). We can also lose by not paying the $5k, and run the risk of not having a shop for another full year since there's very few spaces opening up. It's a tough call.

Getting Ready for the Next Big Step

On Wednesday, I meet with the owner of a specialty food shop to make our second offer to purchase his business and assume the remainder of his lease. Our first offer, which was quite a bit lower than he had wanted, but all that we felt we could afford, was refused. After he called and told us the news, we were a bit disappointed, but as my husband reminded me, “the offer was good, and if we don’t get it, it wasn’t meant to be”. So we stepped up our search, checking Craigslist every day (sometimes twice a day), dug out any people that could help us with our search. Nothing really jumped out at us, except a much smaller place in Belltown that was not that much cheaper and poorly laid out.

On the one hand, I wanted to open a shop so badly that almost anything would work, but on the other, I knew that my shop would be something special, and I had to wait for something that “felt” right. This “feeling” was so hard to describe to real estate professionals and even my husband, but it was an extremely important component to completing the vision of the business, my dream. I knew that specialty food shop had the feeling, so I was searching for something similar. Hope seemed a bit weak.

And then a few months later, that specialty food shop owner called back. The offer he wants me to submit is about 11 grand higher than our original offer. In the scheme of opening a food establishment, it’s not that much money, but for everyday people like us recovering from cancer, it really is. So we really have to be smart about how we phrase our counter offer. Negotiating actually is quite fun if you think about it. It seems to be all about trying to make the other person think they’re getting a deal. So for example we’re going to give him most of the money he wants, BUT, we’re going to ask for two months lead time to get the shop ready. We think he’ll respond well to this offer because we’re going to tell him that those two months of lead time will be important to our success, and since we’re going to be a sub-leaser, if we fail, he fails. It feels really good to ask for what you want. I hope we get it.

Boredom and the Ultimate Pithivier

Sometimes, running a business has it’s boring moments. I spent the greater part of this afternoon going through and cleaning out my file cabinet. Because I haven’t touched the files for almost three years, the task became a nostalgic journey of sorts. It’s a huge task, but important to laying a groundwork for future organization, one of the key secrets to success in this world of entrepreneurship. I did find a nice stack of brochures and menus from other bakeries that are good to have handy, which made me think of the wonderful Pithivier I had in San Francisco.

I was going to head to Tartine, but since I have their beautiful cookbook, along the way I decided to stop at Citizen Cake in the Hayes Valley of San Francisco, right near where I used to live. With a parking spot right out front, it was an easy choice.

The Citizen Cake Pithivier was beautiful, with a darkened pinwheel etched in the top. Mind you, this was my second Pithivier ever, and I still hadn’t learned the correct pronunciation…I asked for a “pithy-vee-aay” and the barista gave me a funny look. That’s when I remembered that on my last visit the barista was snooty and I felt rushed, but that’s ok. I grabbed my nice little box of goodies and headed up to Mom’s place to share my spoils.

We cut into the pithivier and I was expecting a pale almond filling. Instead, there were luscious pale pears atop a dark almost coffee filling. The pears were poached perfectly; almost like eating a fresh pear at that brief moment that it is ripe. Below it, the dark filling turned out to be chocolate, but not just any chocolate. It had the flavor of the richest darkest chocolate bar, but the delicate texture of a moist financier. It was the most rich dark chocolate flavor I’ve ever tasted in anything other than chocolate alone. And balanced with the clean finish of the pear it was pastry nirvana. I must make puff pastry soon.

I have since learned the correct prononciation of pithivier. It’s “pee-tee-vee-aay”, or PTVA for short. Now at least my friendly barista won’t give me a funny look for that ;)

It's ON

Just got back from a fabulous trip to California...almost a whirlwind tour hitting Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Cool (yes, that's a town), and San Francisco. Tasted some great treats from a couple fabulous bakeries and visited very close friends and family. I even walked across the Golden Gate bridge for the first time,which was surprising because I hadn't done it before, even during all those years living in and around San Fran.

Walking across the bridge seemed important this trip for some reason, and I even woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:30am to do it. (since the bakery has been on haitus, I've normally been waking up at 10:00am so this early start was a bit out of par) Anyways, I needed to do what I said I was going to do, plus I needed to move the car at a certain time, so there I was in a very beautiful fog walking. I saw the city from a different angle. I thought about all those cars driving by, what were they doing, why were they going to the city? I wondered if they were following their dreams, like I was about to do.

I saw that there were only three chances to get help if you want to make the fatal jump. It seemed like there should be more, given that the first call station was pretty far down the bridge. So if you were going to end it on the GG Bridge, you were basically on your own. For my life, that meant it was pretty much how it would have to be for me. It's just the way my mind comes to conclusions.

To the point, I'm about ready to make the next step and open a retail shop for our wholesale dessert business, sugar. Probably the biggest and scariest step I've ever taken in my life, and after this trip, I've decided to take the plunge.

The Big Team

Yet again, I failed to keep my employees happy. We were getting ready for the second annual SweetFest so I called a meeting, inviting both my morning baker and my assistant to lunch. I really wanted to be tough, since I felt I was always too nice, so I came down hard insisting on both of them working the event, making Sugar a priority over any of their personal lives. Needless to say, it backfired and my assistant quit over the weekend. I definitely think abrupt changes are a sure sign of weakness in leader.

I spent a couple of weeks baking alone, then began crafting a plan for a new team. I hired two very experienced bakers at a little higher wage and put them to the challenge to help bring Sugar to the next level. They shared the responsibility of the morning scone bake, which was good for me because I could get better rest. In some way, I don’t think it was entirely fair for me to delegate the grunt work. I guess it didn’t feel like I was a team player, but then again I was supposed to be the leader and keep the vision of the company shining bright, a task I couldn’t do while waking up at 4am.

I really tried to let go of the stronghold I had on the bakery and let the two professionals I had hired take care of all the daily tasks. I was a bit frustrated with our consistency and the quality seemed to be slipping, but we did have probably the best product lineup Sugar has seen. We just had to get our act together and stabilize production so that I could get out and do some sales to support our new staff.

But lurking in the background we heard comments that we had more staff than the catering company. My staff were feeling uncomfortable doing dishes in front of their chef, who seemed to be searching for reasons to criticize them. I was trying my hardest to be respectful of the shared space, but I could feel the tension mounting. Finally, after a month of hearing a rumor, they let me know that I had 4 months to move out. That was very gracious of them to offer me so much time to find a new space, and I’m very thankful for that. Still, the news left me feeling very uneasy because I didn’t have much faith in Sugar’s ability to move forward, which left me in fear that we’d have to move backward.

This feeling of imminent failure put a cloud of doom over my usually optimistic personality. I started to be scared and I cut back my staff’s hours which was really unfair to them, and so after a few weeks, they both quit. I completely understand how they must have felt, and here I was, yet again, on my own with the business.

Kicking it up a notch

We were in the middle of a fairly large increase in production with recipes that we weren’t quite ready to produce in large quantities. We also had an increasing number of special orders that broke up the day weirdly. It was summer and the freezer suddenly stopped freezing. Unfortunately, one of our cakes needed to be frozen and then unmolded while it was frozen so we panicked. Luckily, we were able to get some of our product to the neighbor’s freezer, then cart them back sheet pan by sheet pan to finish each step in the production process, working as fast as we could so they wouldn’t thaw out too much. Of course we weren’t fast enough because then the neighbor closed and we had to find a second backup freezer. I was so stressed out that I didn’t do a good job of telling our landlord about the issue, so it went on unresolved for a few days. Oops.

But we got through the freezer not freezing mishap, and I of course decided to reorganize how we did the bakery production yet again. I hired a very qualified assistant who was very efficient and fast. I must say she saved the day. It was great because she took breaks. I don’t take breaks, but it was great to take breaks. I found I got a lot more done, and it was starting to seem like I could step away from the kitchen and start growing the business.

See, the problem with running a bakery is that the baking itself is so all-consuming and if that is what you like to do, it’s all you want to do. So like at the end of a busy day, you’re physically and therefore emotionally, exhausted so the last thing you want to do is try to add any more clients which would increase your work load. Plus, if you don’t necessarily account for all the little tasks that creep into every day so that an 8 hour day quickly turns into 12, you then are adding frustration to your exhaustion because you hoped you would be home by 5pm. I don’t think there was ever a day that I was home when I thought I was going to be home, it was always several hours later. This was the source of almost daily arguments with John, the sort of arguments that ended in me saying “you just don’t understand.”

John is really good at knowing his limits. What I think might be laziness is really his genius way of doing just the bare minimum of work to achieve his goals. He doesn’t bury himself in work like I do, and he’s much more relaxed and able to make quick decisions whereas I allow myself to get overworked so that I can barely decide what shirt to wear. That is why he was always able to break away from his day and jump into the bakery to help during those semi-regular emergencies. At the time I was so buried I wasn’t able to see how I could ever get perspective for the business. We had several meetings to try to resolve some of the ongoing issues with the bakery, which would solve the problem temporarily, but then the same problems would happen over and over again. The overarching secret seemed to be my leadership, which I seemed to be able to lead myself with my own goals, but when it came to my employees, I was always struggling and often failing to delegate tasks to free up more time for me.

Good help is hard to find

We were sitting at a friend’s birthday dinner talking about the demanding hours of the morning scone bake and one of his friends was sick of her job so we entertained the possibility of having her take over the position. She called the next day and said she had quit her job so the following week I auditioned her and she seemed to be a good fit. After about a week she was ready to do the bake on her own. I fell quickly into waking up when my body wanted to, which is more like 7 or 8am. I felt fabulous, well rested, and my skin even lost a few wrinkles. It wish she could have stayed with Sugar longer, because even though we had a few miscommunications along the way, it was really great having her help. Eventually, the hours took a toll on her, and it was tricky for her to justify the impact the job made on her life since I didn’t pay her that much. I contemplated not doing the scones, but they still accounted for about 20% of our sales, so we couldn’t just drop them without a backup plan.

Fame

I just happened to hear about an article written in the Stranger about pastries in Seattle. The author wrote about how the quality of pastries in coffee shops was terrible, from stale scones to overly sweet mass produced muffins. This hit home for me, since it brought me back to why we started the bakery. Still, we were struggling, and after trying to sell to coffee shops and seeing the response of baked goods in general, we were starting to understand why coffee shop owners would buy preservative laden pastries from Costco. They also have to control their costs. So I wrote a letter to the author, of course accompanied by some brioche, and she interviewed me and then wrote an article about Sugar. It was awesome to have my face in the paper with our Mousse Mountains. Our web site statistics spiked, and our retail sales soared. We had luckily just revamped the site to be more consumer friendly with more photos of our products and ways to order and such. Shortly thereafter, we landed a very important account with Metropolitan Market, which had been one of our goals right from the start. So for as much as I complain about the grueling grind of the bakery, things do have a tendency to fall into place quite serendipitously.

Grueling Grind

Without any help, it became clear to me that I could never quite get my head above the work to look to the future. So I again tried to organize the baking schedule to streamline operations. Because baking is one of those things that once you’re started, it’s hard to stop and take a break because you lose the flow, I relied a lot on John to handle deliveries and picking up supplies. It was extremely frustrating for him because he was trying to help, but of course he had other priorities and hated being called in at the last minute for emergencies based on my poor planning. We were still getting up each morning at 4am so we still had very little sleep, and weird naps after the scone bake were making it hard to concentrate and keep a flow. Eventually, we started switching off every other day, which seemed to help, but still the days we had to get up early wreaked havoc on our bodies and stress levels.

A friend of mine was between jobs so she offered to help a few days a week. She did not have any professional experience, but she was quite efficient and very helpful. She had a very good palette, and since she was hired expressly to help with production, it became very easy for me to take the role of leader.

Still, though, I was getting home late, and there was very little planning and very little business development. It was just about production and delivery, which was spinning slightly out of control. Even if I was to just take production itself, there were still so many different types of tasks…making prep items, baking, finishing. It’s not like regular cooking where you could just tell your prep cook to chop onions, then chop tomatoes, etc.; bakery prep is a little more complicated and it seemed difficult for me to break it down into tasks a person with little training could do. Plus, I am a perfectionist who doesn’t know what I want so it’s very difficult for me to lead.

Apple Pie

Baseball season was about to start, and I remembered an old kitchen mate who had been selling sandwiches in front of the ball park, and suddenly I got this idea that I could make apple pie. After doing a little research and finding no other competition, I started to do a little planning and wrote up a quick plan based upon quickly and simply getting up and running with very little startup costs. According to our calculations, we’d have to sell 200 pies/day to make a small profit, which with 80 games, added up to some $80,000, which seemed pretty good for 9 months. Plus, with one product that we’d mass produce, eventually we’d be a lot more efficient and it would get easier and easier to make the pies. Once those were stabilized, we could venture onto new products.

I hired some temporary help to produce the pies, and we made some 100 pies the first day, since they took a lot longer than we had hoped; but that seemed ok and it’s always better to sell out than make too much and have to throw product away. However, unfortunately, those big dreams ended in sadness as we only sold 20 pies the first day, and gave the rest away. The second day we sold 12, and the third day I think we only sold 10. There were a number of things going on. Number 1 was people weren’t going to games since the Mariners weren’t winning. Number 2 was people didn’t really like new things at the games (although the Shishka-Berries, chocolate dipped strawberries on a stick did quite well). Number 3 was that people didn’t understand the idea of a small pie for $5 when you could buy a HUGE pie at Costco for almost the same price. Clearly, baseball fans were not our target market, and even if we did eventually reach our goal, we would be losing about $500/day to get there, and by our estimations we’d be well into the following year before that would be possible. So we cancelled the big Apple Pie venture. To be honest, loading the van, setting up and then packing, loading and unloading the van again every day was a lot of tedious work so it was a relief not to have to worry about that anymore.

Unfortunately, my temporary help had to be let go as well, as her position was going to be paid by the apple pie proceeds. That was too bad because she really wanted it to work. Luckily, she landed a great job at a cool bakery south of Seattle.

Back in the swing of things

The holiday season was over, as were the slow first few months of the year. It was time to really start kicking into full speed ahead and start a plan to bring Sugar into profitability. I started looking at our costs, briefly, and started to see that we were losing money on labor, and probably losing money on ingredients, both due to the high cost of production. At the time, however, both me and my assistant really liked the science and exploration of developing new products, but we lacked the organization to make our time spent worthwhile. In retrospect, what I should have done is stopped the product development, and instead concentrate on increasing our client base and getting more organized to handle increased production volumes. A lot of what was slowing us down in product development was trying to reach our new target of multiplying our ingredient cost by five. We probably should have raised our prices rather than price based on what we thought the market would bear.

I tried several different tactics to try to get me and my assistant organized, but nothing really seemed to save us any time or reduce any of the stress. After working for a week on my own and finding it was less stressful, I decided it would be easier to let my assistant go. This was a very difficult decision because I really wanted Sugar to grow, and knew that without my assistant the business would sit idle, but I wasn’t ready to handle all the responsibilities of being a manager. I knew I had to stabilize who I was in relation to Sugar by spending a little bit of time producing my own products.

The Expense of Product Development

It was January and we had a little bit of time to kill, so we decided to put on a special event for Valentine’s Day, centered on the theme of extravagant desserts. I had never put on, promoted, or even planned for an event except my wedding reception, but unless you try something once, it’s difficult to know whether you can do it or not. It’s that old thing that if you don’t try, you automatically fail.

We spend a LOT of time deciding on the menu, and an especially long time developing the cake for the chocolate sushi. In retrospect, once things seem to be taking too much time, I should have cut my losses and moved on to another dessert. But it’s hard to focus when you have a certain idea. However, when you have a certain idea and are spending a lot of energy trying to make only that idea work, you aren’t always able to step back and realize there are other ways to achieve the same idea.

There were a lot of deadlines and milestones when putting on an event, so it’s difficult to keep it all together. The most important thing was selling the event, and we did a fair job doing that; however as the day got closer, we realized we needed to fill up the space, so John invited a lot of his friends for free, just so our paying customers wouldn’t feel awkward sitting in an empty space.

The menu was pretty great, starting with habanero truffles, lemon lavender tartlets, chocolate sushi, mini chocolate mousse mountains (garnished with dry ice), white chocolate passionfruit bonbons. It was an all-you-can-eat event, so we went around a few times to give seconds to people. The event was rather lovely, and we were quite proud, but all told it was not good for business since we lost a lot of time in product development and we didn’t really sell enough tickets to pay for our expenses. It could have been good for marketing, but mostly it was good for experience. The guests really had a great time, and that was a good feeling for me that lasted a while.

New Kitchen

As our business was growing, we started looking into our growing operating costs and decided to look into building a commercial kitchen in our former garage. It would be relatively easy to do; we just had to figure out a way to make sure our animals were locked out. But the drawback was that if we wanted to have any employees, we’d have to also build out a restroom separate from our one in the house. We were sort of figuring out all the particulars, doing layouts, pricing out equipment and such, while running the business.

Meanwhile, we had met a new client while doing the Farmer’s Markets, a catering company based in West Seattle. Turns out they were sharing their kitchen with a bakery that just happened to be going out of business, so they asked us to share with them. It would actually be cheaper rent than the previous kitchen, but we’d have to buy a few pieces of equipment. We figured we’d eventually need to make some investments, and it seemed a good time to make a move. Plus, the shared kitchen space was getting a little crowded, and some of the other businesses in that kitchen were growing to the point that it was difficult to get into the oven. So we moved.

The former bakery wanted to sell us their oven, but because it was a built-in oven, we didn’t want to purchase it, especially since we didn’t have a lease on the space and we couldn’t move it if we had to move. We told them they were free to take it, but also knew that because it was built-in, they probably wouldn’t take it so we’d probably end up with a free oven, but we certainly weren’t going to pay for an oven that would be no use for us. Like we told them, they could take it anytime. But they never did.

We had a lot more space than we did previously which immediately saved us loads of time because we didn’t have to store half of our ingredients at home. Everything would be at the kitchen. Plus, we had just purchased a double door reach in refrigerator, which was right behind us, substantially reducing the time back and forth to the walk-in. So this big improvement gave us the extra push to start thinking about expanding and growing, but first we had to get through the busy holiday season.

Sales numbers and sales goals

Unfortunately, we lost all of our business earnings data from the first few months, but started fresh in January of 2004. I had this feeling Sugar wasn’t really meeting her sales goals, from the small size of the deposit slips. John was still doing the sales calls, and we lost a few clients due to poor sales of our products.

Oh, funny story about this one espresso company we had sold to. John brought by samples and they were excited about the tarts, although they said that high end things usually don’t sell. They finally agreed to try the tarts, which John took to mean they would start a standing order, which was how most of our clients were ordering. So we started delivering to them. Then one day, John was delivering and the barista refused the order, saying that she was not supposed to accept anything from us. When I called later to find out what was going on, the owner yelled at me, accusing us of delivering products she hadn’t ordered. I tried to explain to her it was a misunderstanding, and that we had thought she wanted a standing order, and then she told me we could come pick up the tarts from the previous week, that she hadn’t opened the box. Well of course those were already too old, and I was shocked that she thought I would take them back and try to re-use them. I happily voided all her orders and told her she did not owe us anything, and apologized for the miscommunication.

Anyway, our sales for January were only about $234 so we needed to do something to boost things. I was still working at that catering company about 2 days a week, which generated enough money to pay the rent for the kitchen, but John was thinking why not increase our sales to pay for the kitchen?

I had just done a cookie calendar and was thinking about adding some fancy cookies to our lineup. I made up little baggies of cookies and started showing them to our clients. This was NOT the big chocolate chip cookie, and this was something that could retail for $1.00 or so. I made up little lintzer hearts and little heart shaped cookies for Valentine’s day. They sold really well, or so we thought. Then I tried some cookies for St. Patrick’s day which were really cute and they had little fortune scrolls in the packs. They didn’t sell as strongly, but people really liked the shortbread. This is probably where I learned that ideas are hard to sell, but cookies are good to eat.

Meanwhile, John was playing music at an event for one of our clients who had been coincidentally ordering a large sized tart once/week. So he decided to bring some of my cookies to the show and hand them out. The client expressed interest in having some new cookies at his shop, so I set to work on some samples. At the time, there was a lot of interest in Lavender as a culinary herb so I worked on some lavender shortbread and some chocolate dipped mint shortbread. I remember putting a big purple white chocolate “L” on the lavender. I don’t know why; it looked a bit stupid, like the “L” on Laverne’s sweater from Laverne and Shirley. Of course any of the clients I showed it to were like “yes, I like the shortbread, but I don’t like the “L”.” Of course, our client from the big shop we really wanted more of our stuff in, wanted us to cut the shortbread differently. We decided that would be ok, but we wanted him to buy the whole pan in that case. Another client in a Tea House up north wanted the smaller shortbread as well. I started to have a lot of pride and even cockiness when it came to our products, and when I went on sales calls, I was like “of course you want our shortbread, it’s the best in the city”. It was weird that we actually had to convert the Tea House dude to our shortbread, since his shortbread was so crappy and wasn’t even made with butter, but he eventually caved and agreed to buy our shortbread, which we developed two additional flavors for him: lemon ginger, and orange cranberry. Things seemed to be looking up, and at least some of our deliveries wouldn’t be just $6.00 each drop, so that we were at least heading in the right direction to become profitable, or so we thought.

Employee Do’s and Don’ts

We started putting the word out that we were looking for help, and one of our clients introduced us to one of her baristas. It didn’t seem like the best match, but we decided to try her out, despite the fact that she didn’t have much experience in the kitchen; she did have a willingness to learn, and seemed very helpful. It was so difficult to train somebody, and I just ended up being friendly, which didn’t necessarily work as a business advantage, as she eventually got so interested in chatting that her work speed suffered a bit. Eventually, I realized I needed a little more qualified help, so I decided to call upon my former boss at the catering company and see if she was interested in helping me out. Turns out my timing was great as she wanted to change jobs anyway, so I hired her and we began working swiftly to expand the product line.

Meeting our Goals

It was about 1 week before my birthday, and I thought I’d check how Sugar was doing financially. We had hit $2800 in April! This was our original sales goal and it was a great birthday present. We were paying the bills entirely with sugar bucks, but of course we had no idea where we stood profit-wise. I decided it was time to hire some help.

The Hope of Getting Big

I was getting a little bit frustrated at the kitchen. Pieces of equipment seemed to be disappearing and reappearing, and my eggs and other ingredients often went missing. So we put an ad on Craig’s List that we were looking for a new kitchen space. This guy from a bagel company called us and said he’s looking for somebody to share his kitchen with. We told him we were making tartlets and he said he might be able to sell them to a few of his clients. At that time, he was starting to do a little distribution on the side so he could make his deliveries worthwhile. His kitchen space wasn’t that great and we’d have to buy our own equipment so we decided to stay where we were. He almost tried to say that he wasn’t going to distribute our products unless we shared his kitchen, but we held strong and told him we really didn’t need him to sell our products. We sent him an aweful lot of samples, but he was finally able to sell our tarts to a few of his clients. It was sort of a pain because he would fax us the order by the afternoon, and we had less than 24 hours to fulfill it. So we had to be really organized with our stock, otherwise, I’d have to head down to the kitchen for an emergency bake which sucked. Eventually, most of his clients went on a standing order, but it still wasn’t enough to write home about. He handled our products very poorly, we heard horror stories from the grocery stores that he would just throw our packaged tart clamshells in a big grocery cart so they’d be all broken. Eventually, his clients dropped him, and we walked away. Of course he didn’t pay his final invoice, but he was so creepy, we almost didn’t care, but sent a collection agency after him anyway who failed to collect.

What the client wants, we make

This was the beginning of the phase which sort of diversified our products, as clients would request specific products, and we would figure out a way to make them. I guess it’s hard to find good bakeries, which is why we started a bakery to begin with.

I had just quit my job at the catering company and was focusing as much energy as possible on sugar. I still did a little bit of web design, though, just to keep the cash flowing.

So then the big downtown coffee house guy asked if we’d make scones. Of course that meant daily deliveries before they opened which was 6am. Mind you, I’m not a morning person, so I told hime I’d only be able to do them if they were baked at nite. We began developing a couple scone recipes and went through the approval process. He finally approved the scones and we started production. It was extremely trickly working out the kinks of mass production and at first I must say the first few weeks consistency suffered greatly. We kept getting complaints about the oat scones being too heavy. I thought they were pretty good, and even brought them to a bakery at PCC (a local natural food market) for a second opinion. The client at one point said we should make a regular scone and just sprinkle oats on top. That was so absurd I thought. It wouldn’t be an oat scone then. I held my ground, and then finally produced a new revised scone that seemed to satisfy both of us. I think it’s important for the client to trust the professional, but I also think there has to be a comfortable area of collaboration. After all, it’s sort of a partnership in some way.

But one of the concessions I did make, and it was a tough one, was that I’d bake the scones in the morning right before delivering them. That meant getting up at 4am to run down to turn the oven on, put the scones in at 5am, and then pack up and leave the kitchen by 5:45am to get the delivery to the shop by 5:55am. If we were any later, we would get the sneer from the barista who would glance at the clock. But hey, what other bakery would deliver warm scones before 6am!

Getting up in the morning was grueling. I would do the bake and John would show up around 5:30 to pick up the scones to deliver them. We were both really really groggy at all times. And really this was for only about $40 bucks a day. That’s gross sales, people! We knew we had to sell scones to other clients to make it worth our while to wake up so early. Originally, I thought with a typical 8 hour day, I’d be out of the kitchen by about noon, and out on the patio by 3pm sipping tea or wine. Of course I didn’t take into account how much being groggy slows you down. Usually, I was out of the kitchen around 4pm. Often, I would sneak home after the scones were baked and take a power nap, only to return groggy in a different way. You know how they say loss of sleep makes you crazy, well I think we were both going a little crazy, slowly.

Working out some kinks

Remembering back, it was a few weeks in after we started selling the tarts that the sales dropped off quite a bit. We still weren’t making all that much, but we decided to switch things up and try something else. For one thing, the chocolate espresso pear had quickly fallen out of favor. I don’t think really anybody wanted to order it, so we quickly replaced it with a simple almond pear which was thankfully an easy switch. The other thing that started to become apparent was the size of the tarts made them not quite right for the espresso crowd. It is weird in a way because most chocolate chip cookies you can get are so huge that you could easily have one for an entire meal. However, a chocolate chip cookie was half the price of one of our tarts retail so since Americans prefer value over quality people would pick the cookie. Espresso drinks are already expensive enough to begin with, sometimes almost 5 bucks, so to pay another $3.50 for a tart would put the bill total around $8 bucks, which starts to seem like $10, which seems like an awful lot to pay for a cup of coffee.

So I made a few mini tarts and brought them home. We weighed them and had figured out they were about 1/3 the weight of the larger ones, so we settled on $.50/ea and would sell them by the dozen. We didn’t want our retailers to have to sell the tarts for over $1.00 so we priced it based on what we thought the market would bear. In retrospect, that was obviously a bad choice because the labor was going to kill us. We had not costed out our recipes, we had some general idea, but nothing exact. We had also based our markup on about triple the ingredient costs, which we’d learn was not enough of a markup. Because the recipes were so multi-faceted with various prep items and steps to produce, we didn’t exactly know how long they took to make.

However, we did figure out is that it was ok to freeze the tarts. That saved us tons of time, and I was beginning to work out a production schedule in my mind. We were still focused on only baking about 1 week at a time, and since our orders were not that huge, it was a lot of work for very little return, especially since we had just shot ourselves in the foot by making our products (and therefore our price/unit) smaller.

Getting a little Professional Experience

I knew it would probably help me to work in the industry at least a little bit, just to get a feel for mass production and how to transition from my home kitchen. So I got a job at a catering company on the East Side. I would work there two nights a week, helping them with various very basic breakfast pastries like muffins and scones. They had their own pastry chef who took care of all their high end mini desserts and other more exotic pastries. My boss and I clicked immediately and we started to figure out we had a lot in common. Unfortunately, a lot of the job involved me sequestered in a corner making massive amounts of muffin batter and cutting tons of scones. I worked really fast, but then also noticed I made a lot of little mistakes that I was usually able to correct, but it was a little annoying because I like to do things right. It was cool because I got to know the pastry chef some, who, incidentally, makes the most amazing bread, so full of flavor. My boss taught me a lot about being efficient and saving time, and she was very obsessed with saving on dishes, to such an extent that sometimes she would plan production around trying to use the same bowl or bin for an entire production session without washing it. It was definitely intersesting.

After a couple of months and the year was coming to an end, it became increasingly difficult to break up my week and spend two days on the East Side, which would upset Sugar’s bakery production and make it difficult for me to manage. The thing was that I was earning just enough to cover my rent at the shared kitchen, but then my brilliant husband said, “why don’t you just sell more pastries for Sugar to pay your rent.” So then I began outlining a plan to grow Sugar and decided to quit the catering company. I learned a lot in my short stay there, but it was time to move on. I probably gained 5 lbs because we were always snacking on mini desserts, and there were always a few scones for me to eat on the long drive home.

The next few days at the Commercial Kitchen

I went in with a fresh start and a list of things to do that day, more prepared for what to expect, and feeling a bit stronger. I made crusts and let them rest, fillings, and then, my nemesis, caramel, which worked out fine. I decided not to use a thermometer, but to watch it carefully. That seemed to work.

I think the next day I came in to roll out and bake some tarts. I was going to use the big deck oven , which was pretty absurd because I was only probably baking 1 sheet pan of tarts, and the oven held like 24 sheet pans. But I snuck in with another guy who was also baking, even though he thought I should just use the smaller oven and not get in his way even though we were supposed to share. Whatever.

The tarts came out slouchy and ugly looking. The crust wasn’t setting up quick enough and they were not holding their shape, nor were they browning well at all. Also, the bottoms were not baking evenly: the center was almost raw and the outer edges were dark and golden. We gave them away to some strange bread people that had come in. I felt really weird like I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was scared a little about my ability to figure out what was going wrong. We talked to Keith, the kitchen manager, who had been a pastry chef for many years, about what was going on and he gave us some tips. I also did a little bit of research on the web.

At this time I was still working during the day and baking at night, but the holiday season was approaching and I knew as a bakery we would be stupid not to take advantage of it. John had actually just gotten a job offer for a temporary position where he would work from home. So in the next week or so I gave my notice and on my last day, my coworkers gave me an embroidered apron as a farewell present.

Also, I think at that time, I decided to take a position as a baker at a catering company on the East Side where I would be baking mostly muffins and scones, but getting some real live industry experience.

I think our dreams of getting all this holiday business were a little grandiose, or perhaps we simply didn’t know how to tap into that market because for some reason we didn’t end up making all that much money during the holidays. I do remember working all night baking just 3 pumpkin tarts (I only had 1 pan). It was one of those funny stories where I would nap while they were baking, and wake up just before the timer went off. I also remember 1 of the tarts came out really dark and the other 2 were lighter, and John who packed them while I slept, didn’t realize this was important and I think gave one person 2 tarts which were different colors. I remember a whole lot of stuff like that at that time where I was so focused on the minute details like matching colors that I would just get very little done. This was I think the beginning of my time management crisis.

My first day at the Commercial Kitchen

We decided it was best to start small, and so we only paid for 20 hours/week at the kitchen, so I had to plan my bakery production carefully. For our rent of $500/mo (I would later find out they also charged for utilities, which was basically whatever they felt like billing which was almost $200/mo), I got ½ a baker’s rack of storage in the fridge and freezer, plus one long shelf of dry storage. We moved me in and I got to work making caramel and various prep items. First thing I noticed was I didn’t have pans or utensils and I guess they didn’t come with the kitchen. So I borrowed from another renter and tried to make it work for that first day. It was weird because I felt like I had to ask other renters about every little thing, and they didn’t seem to helpful; rather, they were probably busy and very focused on their own dilemmas about running a food business. In a way, it made me feel a bit insecure, but I’ve always had trouble in that area. I also was kind of bummed because one of the reasons I was into the idea of sharing a kitchen was to collaborate with other food businesses, but I guess we didn’t share too much in common.

Anyway, I was very careful making the caramel, and had my glass candy thermometer clipped to the pan. When I tried to brush down the sides with a wet pastry brush, small glass-like bubbles of very hot sugar syrup formed and then exploded everywhere, cracking the thermometer, and scarring the shit out of me. I don’t know what I did with the caramel at that moment (which was filled with toxic mercury from the busted thermometer, but I do remember stepping outside and calling John, crying as soon as I heard his voice. I had this feeling of not wanting to start the bakery. That it was too hard. That it was too dangerous. I was afraid I would get hurt, take an eye out or something! Eventually I calmed down, and John told me to pack up and come home. I had this feeling of defeat, but knew in that state of mind, it was better for me to start fresh in the morning.