June 8, 2021 • 22 mins
Like so many food industry workers, Meg lost her job during the pandemic. And instead of going back on the job hunt in this historically challenging environment, she decided to gamble on herself. She launched Das Butterhaus (https://dasbutterhaus.com), named for her love of German pastries - and now she's baking in a local kitchen and selling her delicious concoctions for pickup and delivery. Learning how to be an entrepreneur - bookkeeping, marketing, etc. - at the same time she's standing up her new business has been all consuming, but she's relishing her newfound contact with her customers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is on the Job, a podcast about finding your
life's work. On the job, is brought to you by
Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing you stories of
folks following their passion to carve their own career path.
During the pandemic, the restaurant and service industry have changed immensely,
and in the wake of these changes, tons of weight
(00:27):
staff and cooks and managers and caterers have all lost
their jobs. Well, today we talked to a baker who
lost hers, but instead of looking for a new job,
she's creating her own. The sound you're hearing is the
start of a new business just getting sort of. It's
(00:51):
a sound of a standing mixer making chocolate chip cookies.
So they're just salted chocolate chip cookies. It took me
like two months to get this right. I had to
try something here. They are not just salted chocolate chip cookies.
They are a masterpiece, lovingly and maybe obsessively concocted in
Meg's kitchen. Meg Dawson, I'm thirty years old, I am
(01:13):
a baker, and I own operate and bake at Doss Butterhouse.
Oh my god, I know it's not good to eat
on an audio, but this is one of the best
cookies I've ever had. Right now in COVID, Meg is
(01:36):
baking in a commercial kitchen where she lives in rural Charlotte, Vermont.
Doss Butterhouse is her first business. She just started selling
baked goods for pickup and delivery. She's been baking for
a long time, but for the first time she is
doing it her way. Cookies are so controversial. I think
that melted butter in a chocolate cookie is like the
(01:57):
only way to go. It's a consistent bake every time.
She cares a lot, and it's clear when you taste
her food that it just feels like this is a
person who's deep in a creative process. They're still gooey
in the middle with crispy edget like it's just like
a perfect cookie every time, and people are like, cream
your butter. As we set up top. The restaurant service industries,
(02:18):
they've taken a huge hit during the pandemic, and Meg,
like many people who worked in culinary, had their career
a bit derailed by the pandemic. But instead of looking
elsewhere for a job, she's doubling down and frankly thriving.
You really are. You don't seem like you're wasting much
time in this pandemic. I'm so grateful to be able
to make cookies like like, it's like my six year
(02:42):
old child's dream, Like you can work with cookies and
chocolate your entire life if you wanted to. For money,
people will pay you to make cake. Isn't that awesome? Okay?
(03:05):
To hear more about Meg's story and how she got
here taking this leap of faith with Doss Butterhouse. I
sat down with her outside the kitchen. Are you gonna
make hear me a sound? With her two black cats,
Hobart and Cornishan. Hobart like the mixer, and Cornishan like
the pickle. She lives here in Charlotte with her fiance,
not far from the kitchen she bakes in. She definitely
(03:25):
found her place in this tight community here. But she's
originally from the South. I was born in New Jersey,
but I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah. Definitely a
weird kid. Definitely have been cooking my whole life. I
was like that weird kid that would like bring risotto
to like a potlock in sixth grade. That's so weird.
(03:46):
It's super weird, but people loved it. It's cheesy, it's delicious.
Me grew up in a household of cooks. Her dad cooked,
her mom cooked, But my grandmother was like an amazing chef. Amazing,
Like she would watch Julia Child and then go into
her kitchen and make that for dinner. Like she would
(04:08):
be like ironing watching it and then being like I
can do that and just start making Like she was
like a five star chef. So she was watching Julia Child,
you were watching her. Yeah, yeah, basically. So even though
Meg was the weird Risotto kid, she said, she went
to a pretty nerdy high school and fit right in there.
School where for your senior year you pick your own
(04:29):
mentorship at a job. In the real world, most people
would do their mentorships at like a doctor's office or
like a law office. And I asked if I could
do it in a restaurant, and they're like, sure, whatever
you want. That was like my first intro into like
actual kitchens. So you love cooking, but you've never been
like in the food culinary kitchen world. What was it
(04:51):
like when you get thrown into the fire. It was
a total I mean, when you cook at home. It's
a totally different experience because you're cooking for yourself and
so you can screw up as many times as you
want to. But when you're cooking in a kitchen, and
especially in like a small family owned thing, it's like
you can't really mess up. That's their money, that's somebody's business,
(05:11):
and there is a slim margin of error. And where
that might have been a daunting environment for a regular
teenager to step into, Meg was hooked. I loved it.
I loved being in a kitchen. I loved working. I
loved I know this is gonna sound stude, but it
makes you feel important, Like it makes you feel like
you're doing something for a reason, and like that was
(05:34):
kind of the first time that I felt like I
was good at what I was doing. Meg played sports
in high school but said she was never the best
on the team. She was a good student but usually
got bees. But in the kitchen she felt like she excelled,
and she felt right at home and accepted. They thought
it was cool that I was the weird Zoto kid,
you know what I mean, Like like it felt right.
(06:01):
She started off college at BU. She then transferred back
home and went to the University of Virginia while working
at two restaurants. Basically worked like forty hours a week
at two different jobs and went to school. And then
I graduated and immediately moved to New York. What you
got there? She applied for about twenty five jobs in
restaurants before she even got one break. I've got a
(06:25):
job working with a really amazing pastry chef. I never
wanted to do pastry, like I was always a cook,
and I never thought pastry was where I was going
to go. I thought, like, I'll take this for a
couple of months, I'll figure out what I want to do.
And turns out I loved it. For Meg, this was
a new medium she could express herself with, like cooking,
(06:47):
but more organized. It made it really fun to be creative.
I could take these very specific ratios. It's like, you
know that, like this plus this plus this makes this
Like it's very specific. It comes out the same every time.
From that, you can kind of morphit into what you
want to do. So she kept working in different kitchens,
(07:09):
each time picking up on more aspects that helped her
understand the business more and more, and she eventually found
her way to Vermont, where she ended up landing a
huge gig running the bakery and an esteemed farm and
restaurant in Charlotte, where she could only make a menu
based off of what was seasonally available at local farms
around her. To have to think, like that is so
(07:30):
great for your brain and it's so great for creativity.
You thrive when you have constraints to work with them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
like having parameters where it's like, okay, like you only
have rhubarb for two weeks. Good luck. By the time
she got into the swing of things at this farm restaurant,
Meg already had a decade of experience. This was a
(07:50):
great job, but by this point she knew enough about
baking and about the business itself to start concocting her
own ideas. I felt like there were parts of myself
that I was like tamping down constantly, which is just
what you do when you work for someone else, is
like you're constantly doing what other people tell you do,
and that's part of the job. Meg was running the
(08:13):
kitchen here when COVID hit in twenty twenty, and like
most restaurants, hers pivoted to pick up and delivery, and
they were slammed. It was especially now when she got
overworked that she started squirreling away ideas for Doss Butterhouse. Yeah,
a dream bakery where she had the freedom to make
what she wanted to make, which had like sprinkles and
like salt and all of these things that like I
(08:36):
loved and especially like during COVID. It was almost like
a coping mechanism of like being so insanely busy that
I wanted to cry, and then coming home and like
thinking about what I would do better if I did
it myself. And then late into twenty twenty, she got
hit by a rogue wave. Even though the restaurant had
(08:59):
one of the best seasons had ever had, they started
letting people go. Yeah, they laid off a huge part
of their staff, including myself. There were a lot of
really amazing people that I worked with. It was really
surprising and really sad. Yeah, it kind of sucked. What
were your initial feelings when you think I can constantly
(09:23):
say a workaholic, Well, suddenly without a job and a
job that you were very intimately tied to running this
entire kitchen, I kind of and this I don't I
know that a lot of people wouldn't do this. I
basically within like three days, was like, Okay, I've been
(09:45):
thinking about Doss butter House. I guess I'll just make
dossboter House a thing. She did make Doss butter House
a thing, in in case you're wondering. The awesome name
is inspired by German pastries and her love for pretty
much all things German. I was really inspired by like
Grimm's fairy Tales with like the Gingerbread House, where it's
just like a big plaval house full of butter instead
(10:07):
of candy, because I don't like candy. I like butter.
Meg was laid off in October of twenty twenty, so
she was looking down the barrel of starting Das Butterhouse
in the holiday season. I knew that the big thing
I wanted to do was Thanksgiving, though, because I knew
that Thanksgiving was like is a huge thing in Charlotte.
It was a huge thing at the farm. The farm
(10:28):
where she had just worked sold about sixty pies that
last Thanksgiving, which is a lot for this little community.
I just kind of started putting the word out that, like,
they're still gonna be pies in Charlotte. Nobody worry. This
is gonna be fine, das Butterhouse is here to say Thanksgiving.
Suffice to say it did, and so we had one
(10:49):
hundred and thirty pies. You as yourself dos Butterhouse sold
more pies, so over double what we made at the
farm the year before. Full restaurant that you'd worked out before.
She started doing events, gathering equipment and researching, licensing, learning QuickBooks,
all the things you've got to do to start a business,
(11:09):
and the whole time baking like a madwoman, posting up
at a local restaurant that lets her bake in the
kitchen and set up a table for pickup at the
front door. So what was the initial response. I think
people loved it. I have a lot of repeat customers,
like every week repeat customers, which is really really nice.
Besides loving her community and wanting to serve them on
(11:29):
a personal level, she was making her first awesome decision
as a business owner. The farm she worked at was
known for their pastries in Charlotte, and that went away.
Meg was now filling a gap in the market in
the best way possible. Yeah. When I started, it was
like I want everybody here to know that, like, pies
are gonna be fine. You're gonna have pies and you're
(11:51):
gonna have cookie boxes like no one is gonna forget
about you. We'll get back to our store in a second. First,
a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic,
takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details.
(12:12):
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(12:35):
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(12:59):
at Express dot com or on the Express Jobs app.
Now back to on the job. Back in the kitchen
where we started this episode, Mega's finishing up baking and
putting together some orders for pickoff during the holiday season.
Her pies blue people away and the community is really
(13:21):
rallying around her now, even six months in. And the
variety of pastries she's putting together today is mouthwatering. These
are like a nutty and current ruggle off. This is
the lemon poppy or cootact. These are the chocolate brownies
with hazelnuts, and there's like hazelnut praline kind of throughout it.
She's of course got those insane chocolate chip cookies from
earlier with big flaky salt on them. She's got a
(13:43):
crazy delicious banana bread cake with milk, chocolate, butter cream
and hints of coffee. Oh, the pecan tart. There's candied
two more oranges in it, a little bit of time
and a little bit of honey. And these nice little
cardboard boxes tied up with thread. They look like you're
giving away little presents. Yeah, people treating themselves. It's hard
right now, it's hard out there. Just as we're talking,
(14:08):
a woman comes in to pick up her order. Her
name's Charlotte. He's getting lemon poppycake and the banana breadcake.
My family's addicted to Meg's baking, so inventive It's like,
I can't even fathom how delicious everything is and how creative.
I would say my favorite was Thanksgiving magnate a chocolate
(14:28):
silk pie that is literally the best thing I ever ate.
She also raised about the scones, which she says live
up to the Doss Butterhouse name, Like you know, there's
like a stick of butter in each one, but it's
so worth it. Yeah you don't care, Yeah, exactly good.
It's really good. Do you pick up every week? I do?
I do. This is such a great addition to the
(14:49):
area to have this quality of pastry and cakes and inventiveness.
You know, there's nothing like this around here, So what
Meg is doing is fantastic. Charlotte really lingers for a
few minutes, box in hand with endless compliments. Meg is
standing about ten feet away while Charlotte turns from me
(15:11):
to her, raving about her food from the New York area.
And this is the kind of stuff like you go
to New York City and buy and pay sixty dollars
a cake for I can see that Meg is kind
of rubbing her hands together, smiling out of her mask
and saying thank you. It's kind of obvious that she's
a little uncomfortable. It's like I really recognize, like, not
(15:31):
only are you so talented, but the quality and what
you're doing is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, how do you feel
now that you're finally making these things you've been creating
in your head this whole time and seeing people buy them?
(15:51):
It's so complicated. It's such a complicated emotion because I
have always worked in a basement, and like I would
meet people that would be like, oh my god, you're
the baker. Oh that's so exciting, and like that's really
nice to hear it. But it's like it's really overwhelming
(16:11):
when it's oh, what you mean is you you were
removed from the customer for all these years? Yeah, And
so like the it's like the face to face interactions.
I mean, I get really uncomfortable when people like even
say like I like your shoes. So when it's something
that like you've put your heart and soul into, like
your whole life. I mean, like even Charlotte earlier today
(16:33):
she was she was telling me how much she loved
all your food, and she's very emphatic about it in
front of you. How did that make you feel? Well?
While she was saying all that. I don't know if
you saw me, but I was like basically like up
against the wall. Yeah, I almost cried then too. It's hard.
It's like really great, but it's also it's scary because
(16:57):
it's I think it puts a lot of pressure not
to fail, and I'm somebody who really really tries hard
not to fail. So it just like adds on this
other level of like, now they know who you are,
your business is you? What do you think? Will you
(17:22):
buy my stuff? Like? What do you do? You like
my stuff? Do you like me? Because my stuff is me?
So it's like you need that response like you in
order for your business to continue. It's like you need
be able to be like, yes, I like your stuff
and I'll buy it. So, like it's not just putting
(17:42):
yourself out there. It's so much more than that. Meg
Dawson has taken a huge risk venturing off on your
own and starting a business in any time. Covid acide
is kind of a crazy thing to do when you
look at it on paper, there's so many new skills
you need to learn just to do the thing you
(18:03):
started the business for in the first place. And then
still anything can happen. But Meg, that's what working in
restaurants has always been for her, chaos, except this time
it's hers. I have never felt more creatively free. I've
never felt more connected to the farmers that were like
(18:25):
I'm using. I've never felt more connected to my other
friends who have businesses. So far, I haven't screwed up
too big, but like, I know that that's on the
horizon and I just have to be like ready and
okay with it. Maybe it's not surprising she's got such
a good star. Meg's always thrived under constraints, figuring out
(18:46):
how to express herself within the parameters she's been given.
That's just her personality. But I think there's something in
that we can all take a piece of. This pandemic
has totally changed our fundamental understanding of work and what
we do. It's but a lot of us without work,
or made us see that those jobs we thought would
(19:08):
always be there could go away at any time. That's scary,
But the reality is jobs aren't going away. They're just
changing inevitably, and that leaves each of us with a
choice to be afraid of this big, scary, changing world
or figure out how to evolve and thrive within it.
(19:34):
A lot of us, maybe even you listening, we found
ourselves out of a job and thinking about doing something
totally different, making your own job, and then immediately thinking
it's too risky. Who knows what the world will look
like even a year from now. But the thing is
doing what you love for work has always been risky
and always will be and anything could always happen any time. Yeah,
(19:59):
that is owning a business is is you're just constantly
pivoting and constantly looking at what worked and what didn't
and moving forward like you have to move forward. Life
is just uncertain and stressful. And even with all the
stress of starting Doss Butterhouse, when Meg is feeling overwhelmed,
(20:22):
do you remember something she was told during her first
big pastry job back in Manhattan, words of wisdom from
her baking mentor, Caitlin. The first time I burned an
entire batch of cakes, she threw it away and she goes,
it's a lesson in loss. It's just cake. And I
think about that like every day, anytime anything is going bad.
(20:46):
It's like I am like a child. I'm playing with
cookies all day, Like this is the best job. Like
how many people get to do that. For On the Job,
I'm Otis Gray. To see all of Meg's amazing pastries
(21:09):
and follow her business as it grows. Find her on
Instagram at DOS Butterhouse. We'll put a link for this
in the description of the show. Thanks for listening to
On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation.
(21:30):
The episodes were written and produced by me Otis Gray.
Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed
by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at The Loft and Bronxville,
New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on
iHeartRadio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard,
please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts
(21:52):
or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For
more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work. Audiation
This is on the Job, a podcast about finding your
life's work. On the job, is brought to you by
Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing you stories of
folks following their passion to carve their own career path.
During the pandemic, the restaurant and service industry have changed immensely,
and in the wake of these changes, tons of weight
(00:27):
staff and cooks and managers and caterers have all lost
their jobs. Well, today we talked to a baker who
lost hers, but instead of looking for a new job,
she's creating her own. The sound you're hearing is the
start of a new business just getting sort of. It's
(00:51):
a sound of a standing mixer making chocolate chip cookies.
So they're just salted chocolate chip cookies. It took me
like two months to get this right. I had to
try something here. They are not just salted chocolate chip cookies.
They are a masterpiece, lovingly and maybe obsessively concocted in
Meg's kitchen. Meg Dawson, I'm thirty years old, I am
(01:13):
a baker, and I own operate and bake at Doss Butterhouse.
Oh my god, I know it's not good to eat
on an audio, but this is one of the best
cookies I've ever had. Right now in COVID, Meg is
(01:36):
baking in a commercial kitchen where she lives in rural Charlotte, Vermont.
Doss Butterhouse is her first business. She just started selling
baked goods for pickup and delivery. She's been baking for
a long time, but for the first time she is
doing it her way. Cookies are so controversial. I think
that melted butter in a chocolate cookie is like the
(01:57):
only way to go. It's a consistent bake every time.
She cares a lot, and it's clear when you taste
her food that it just feels like this is a
person who's deep in a creative process. They're still gooey
in the middle with crispy edget like it's just like
a perfect cookie every time, and people are like, cream
your butter. As we set up top. The restaurant service industries,
(02:18):
they've taken a huge hit during the pandemic, and Meg,
like many people who worked in culinary, had their career
a bit derailed by the pandemic. But instead of looking
elsewhere for a job, she's doubling down and frankly thriving.
You really are. You don't seem like you're wasting much
time in this pandemic. I'm so grateful to be able
to make cookies like like, it's like my six year
(02:42):
old child's dream, Like you can work with cookies and
chocolate your entire life if you wanted to. For money,
people will pay you to make cake. Isn't that awesome? Okay?
(03:05):
To hear more about Meg's story and how she got
here taking this leap of faith with Doss Butterhouse. I
sat down with her outside the kitchen. Are you gonna
make hear me a sound? With her two black cats,
Hobart and Cornishan. Hobart like the mixer, and Cornishan like
the pickle. She lives here in Charlotte with her fiance,
not far from the kitchen she bakes in. She definitely
(03:25):
found her place in this tight community here. But she's
originally from the South. I was born in New Jersey,
but I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah. Definitely a
weird kid. Definitely have been cooking my whole life. I
was like that weird kid that would like bring risotto
to like a potlock in sixth grade. That's so weird.
(03:46):
It's super weird, but people loved it. It's cheesy, it's delicious.
Me grew up in a household of cooks. Her dad cooked,
her mom cooked, But my grandmother was like an amazing chef. Amazing,
Like she would watch Julia Child and then go into
her kitchen and make that for dinner. Like she would
(04:08):
be like ironing watching it and then being like I
can do that and just start making Like she was
like a five star chef. So she was watching Julia Child,
you were watching her. Yeah, yeah, basically. So even though
Meg was the weird Risotto kid, she said, she went
to a pretty nerdy high school and fit right in there.
School where for your senior year you pick your own
(04:29):
mentorship at a job. In the real world, most people
would do their mentorships at like a doctor's office or
like a law office. And I asked if I could
do it in a restaurant, and they're like, sure, whatever
you want. That was like my first intro into like
actual kitchens. So you love cooking, but you've never been
like in the food culinary kitchen world. What was it
(04:51):
like when you get thrown into the fire. It was
a total I mean, when you cook at home. It's
a totally different experience because you're cooking for yourself and
so you can screw up as many times as you
want to. But when you're cooking in a kitchen, and
especially in like a small family owned thing, it's like
you can't really mess up. That's their money, that's somebody's business,
(05:11):
and there is a slim margin of error. And where
that might have been a daunting environment for a regular
teenager to step into, Meg was hooked. I loved it.
I loved being in a kitchen. I loved working. I
loved I know this is gonna sound stude, but it
makes you feel important, Like it makes you feel like
you're doing something for a reason, and like that was
(05:34):
kind of the first time that I felt like I
was good at what I was doing. Meg played sports
in high school but said she was never the best
on the team. She was a good student but usually
got bees. But in the kitchen she felt like she excelled,
and she felt right at home and accepted. They thought
it was cool that I was the weird Zoto kid,
you know what I mean, Like like it felt right.
(06:01):
She started off college at BU. She then transferred back
home and went to the University of Virginia while working
at two restaurants. Basically worked like forty hours a week
at two different jobs and went to school. And then
I graduated and immediately moved to New York. What you
got there? She applied for about twenty five jobs in
restaurants before she even got one break. I've got a
(06:25):
job working with a really amazing pastry chef. I never
wanted to do pastry, like I was always a cook,
and I never thought pastry was where I was going
to go. I thought, like, I'll take this for a
couple of months, I'll figure out what I want to do.
And turns out I loved it. For Meg, this was
a new medium she could express herself with, like cooking,
(06:47):
but more organized. It made it really fun to be creative.
I could take these very specific ratios. It's like, you
know that, like this plus this plus this makes this
Like it's very specific. It comes out the same every time.
From that, you can kind of morphit into what you
want to do. So she kept working in different kitchens,
(07:09):
each time picking up on more aspects that helped her
understand the business more and more, and she eventually found
her way to Vermont, where she ended up landing a
huge gig running the bakery and an esteemed farm and
restaurant in Charlotte, where she could only make a menu
based off of what was seasonally available at local farms
around her. To have to think, like that is so
(07:30):
great for your brain and it's so great for creativity.
You thrive when you have constraints to work with them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
like having parameters where it's like, okay, like you only
have rhubarb for two weeks. Good luck. By the time
she got into the swing of things at this farm restaurant,
Meg already had a decade of experience. This was a
(07:50):
great job, but by this point she knew enough about
baking and about the business itself to start concocting her
own ideas. I felt like there were parts of myself
that I was like tamping down constantly, which is just
what you do when you work for someone else, is
like you're constantly doing what other people tell you do,
and that's part of the job. Meg was running the
(08:13):
kitchen here when COVID hit in twenty twenty, and like
most restaurants, hers pivoted to pick up and delivery, and
they were slammed. It was especially now when she got
overworked that she started squirreling away ideas for Doss Butterhouse. Yeah,
a dream bakery where she had the freedom to make
what she wanted to make, which had like sprinkles and
like salt and all of these things that like I
(08:36):
loved and especially like during COVID. It was almost like
a coping mechanism of like being so insanely busy that
I wanted to cry, and then coming home and like
thinking about what I would do better if I did
it myself. And then late into twenty twenty, she got
hit by a rogue wave. Even though the restaurant had
(08:59):
one of the best seasons had ever had, they started
letting people go. Yeah, they laid off a huge part
of their staff, including myself. There were a lot of
really amazing people that I worked with. It was really
surprising and really sad. Yeah, it kind of sucked. What
were your initial feelings when you think I can constantly
(09:23):
say a workaholic, Well, suddenly without a job and a
job that you were very intimately tied to running this
entire kitchen, I kind of and this I don't I
know that a lot of people wouldn't do this. I
basically within like three days, was like, Okay, I've been
(09:45):
thinking about Doss butter House. I guess I'll just make
dossboter House a thing. She did make Doss butter House
a thing, in in case you're wondering. The awesome name
is inspired by German pastries and her love for pretty
much all things German. I was really inspired by like
Grimm's fairy Tales with like the Gingerbread House, where it's
just like a big plaval house full of butter instead
(10:07):
of candy, because I don't like candy. I like butter.
Meg was laid off in October of twenty twenty, so
she was looking down the barrel of starting Das Butterhouse
in the holiday season. I knew that the big thing
I wanted to do was Thanksgiving, though, because I knew
that Thanksgiving was like is a huge thing in Charlotte.
It was a huge thing at the farm. The farm
(10:28):
where she had just worked sold about sixty pies that
last Thanksgiving, which is a lot for this little community.
I just kind of started putting the word out that, like,
they're still gonna be pies in Charlotte. Nobody worry. This
is gonna be fine, das Butterhouse is here to say Thanksgiving.
Suffice to say it did, and so we had one
(10:49):
hundred and thirty pies. You as yourself dos Butterhouse sold
more pies, so over double what we made at the
farm the year before. Full restaurant that you'd worked out before.
She started doing events, gathering equipment and researching, licensing, learning QuickBooks,
all the things you've got to do to start a business,
(11:09):
and the whole time baking like a madwoman, posting up
at a local restaurant that lets her bake in the
kitchen and set up a table for pickup at the
front door. So what was the initial response. I think
people loved it. I have a lot of repeat customers,
like every week repeat customers, which is really really nice.
Besides loving her community and wanting to serve them on
(11:29):
a personal level, she was making her first awesome decision
as a business owner. The farm she worked at was
known for their pastries in Charlotte, and that went away.
Meg was now filling a gap in the market in
the best way possible. Yeah. When I started, it was
like I want everybody here to know that, like, pies
are gonna be fine. You're gonna have pies and you're
(11:51):
gonna have cookie boxes like no one is gonna forget
about you. We'll get back to our store in a second. First,
a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic,
takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details.
(12:12):
This is you. But to get an honest day's work,
you need a response. You need a callback, You need
a job. Express Employment Professionals can help because we understand
what it takes to get a job. It takes more
than just online searches to land a job. It takes
someone who will identify your talents, a person invested in
(12:35):
your success. At Express, we can even complete your application
with you over the phone, will prepare you for interviews,
and will connect you to the right company. Plus, we'll
never charge a fee to find you a job at Express.
We could put you to work with companies of all
sizes and industries, from the production floor to the front office.
Express Nose Jobs, get to No Express, find your location
(12:59):
at Express dot com or on the Express Jobs app.
Now back to on the job. Back in the kitchen
where we started this episode, Mega's finishing up baking and
putting together some orders for pickoff during the holiday season.
Her pies blue people away and the community is really
(13:21):
rallying around her now, even six months in. And the
variety of pastries she's putting together today is mouthwatering. These
are like a nutty and current ruggle off. This is
the lemon poppy or cootact. These are the chocolate brownies
with hazelnuts, and there's like hazelnut praline kind of throughout it.
She's of course got those insane chocolate chip cookies from
earlier with big flaky salt on them. She's got a
(13:43):
crazy delicious banana bread cake with milk, chocolate, butter cream
and hints of coffee. Oh, the pecan tart. There's candied
two more oranges in it, a little bit of time
and a little bit of honey. And these nice little
cardboard boxes tied up with thread. They look like you're
giving away little presents. Yeah, people treating themselves. It's hard
right now, it's hard out there. Just as we're talking,
(14:08):
a woman comes in to pick up her order. Her
name's Charlotte. He's getting lemon poppycake and the banana breadcake.
My family's addicted to Meg's baking, so inventive It's like,
I can't even fathom how delicious everything is and how creative.
I would say my favorite was Thanksgiving magnate a chocolate
(14:28):
silk pie that is literally the best thing I ever ate.
She also raised about the scones, which she says live
up to the Doss Butterhouse name, Like you know, there's
like a stick of butter in each one, but it's
so worth it. Yeah you don't care, Yeah, exactly good.
It's really good. Do you pick up every week? I do?
I do. This is such a great addition to the
(14:49):
area to have this quality of pastry and cakes and inventiveness.
You know, there's nothing like this around here, So what
Meg is doing is fantastic. Charlotte really lingers for a
few minutes, box in hand with endless compliments. Meg is
standing about ten feet away while Charlotte turns from me
(15:11):
to her, raving about her food from the New York area.
And this is the kind of stuff like you go
to New York City and buy and pay sixty dollars
a cake for I can see that Meg is kind
of rubbing her hands together, smiling out of her mask
and saying thank you. It's kind of obvious that she's
a little uncomfortable. It's like I really recognize, like, not
(15:31):
only are you so talented, but the quality and what
you're doing is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, how do you feel
now that you're finally making these things you've been creating
in your head this whole time and seeing people buy them?
(15:51):
It's so complicated. It's such a complicated emotion because I
have always worked in a basement, and like I would
meet people that would be like, oh my god, you're
the baker. Oh that's so exciting, and like that's really
nice to hear it. But it's like it's really overwhelming
(16:11):
when it's oh, what you mean is you you were
removed from the customer for all these years? Yeah, And
so like the it's like the face to face interactions.
I mean, I get really uncomfortable when people like even
say like I like your shoes. So when it's something
that like you've put your heart and soul into, like
your whole life. I mean, like even Charlotte earlier today
(16:33):
she was she was telling me how much she loved
all your food, and she's very emphatic about it in
front of you. How did that make you feel? Well?
While she was saying all that. I don't know if
you saw me, but I was like basically like up
against the wall. Yeah, I almost cried then too. It's hard.
It's like really great, but it's also it's scary because
(16:57):
it's I think it puts a lot of pressure not
to fail, and I'm somebody who really really tries hard
not to fail. So it just like adds on this
other level of like, now they know who you are,
your business is you? What do you think? Will you
(17:22):
buy my stuff? Like? What do you do? You like
my stuff? Do you like me? Because my stuff is me?
So it's like you need that response like you in
order for your business to continue. It's like you need
be able to be like, yes, I like your stuff
and I'll buy it. So, like it's not just putting
(17:42):
yourself out there. It's so much more than that. Meg
Dawson has taken a huge risk venturing off on your
own and starting a business in any time. Covid acide
is kind of a crazy thing to do when you
look at it on paper, there's so many new skills
you need to learn just to do the thing you
(18:03):
started the business for in the first place. And then
still anything can happen. But Meg, that's what working in
restaurants has always been for her, chaos, except this time
it's hers. I have never felt more creatively free. I've
never felt more connected to the farmers that were like
(18:25):
I'm using. I've never felt more connected to my other
friends who have businesses. So far, I haven't screwed up
too big, but like, I know that that's on the
horizon and I just have to be like ready and
okay with it. Maybe it's not surprising she's got such
a good star. Meg's always thrived under constraints, figuring out
(18:46):
how to express herself within the parameters she's been given.
That's just her personality. But I think there's something in
that we can all take a piece of. This pandemic
has totally changed our fundamental understanding of work and what
we do. It's but a lot of us without work,
or made us see that those jobs we thought would
(19:08):
always be there could go away at any time. That's scary,
But the reality is jobs aren't going away. They're just
changing inevitably, and that leaves each of us with a
choice to be afraid of this big, scary, changing world
or figure out how to evolve and thrive within it.
(19:34):
A lot of us, maybe even you listening, we found
ourselves out of a job and thinking about doing something
totally different, making your own job, and then immediately thinking
it's too risky. Who knows what the world will look
like even a year from now. But the thing is
doing what you love for work has always been risky
and always will be and anything could always happen any time. Yeah,
(19:59):
that is owning a business is is you're just constantly
pivoting and constantly looking at what worked and what didn't
and moving forward like you have to move forward. Life
is just uncertain and stressful. And even with all the
stress of starting Doss Butterhouse, when Meg is feeling overwhelmed,
(20:22):
do you remember something she was told during her first
big pastry job back in Manhattan, words of wisdom from
her baking mentor, Caitlin. The first time I burned an
entire batch of cakes, she threw it away and she goes,
it's a lesson in loss. It's just cake. And I
think about that like every day, anytime anything is going bad.
(20:46):
It's like I am like a child. I'm playing with
cookies all day, Like this is the best job. Like
how many people get to do that. For On the Job,
I'm Otis Gray. To see all of Meg's amazing pastries
(21:09):
and follow her business as it grows. Find her on
Instagram at DOS Butterhouse. We'll put a link for this
in the description of the show. Thanks for listening to
On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation.
(21:30):
The episodes were written and produced by me Otis Gray.
Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed
by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at The Loft and Bronxville,
New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on
iHeartRadio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard,
please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts
(21:52):
or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For
more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work. Audiation
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Morgan Huelsman
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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