August 13, 2025 • 50 mins
Bobbie Lloyd is CEO, Chief Baking Officer for Magnolia Bakery, the booming baking business that has taken on the world. Under Lloyd’s stewardship, Magnolia Bakery expanded from a small retail shop in New York’s Greenwich Village opened in 1996 to a global brand. When Bobbie is not overseeing the operations, she’s testing and developing more recipes. She is author “The Magnolia Bakery Handbook: A Complete Guide for the Home Baker” and “The Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts.”
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Fearless Fabulous You Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
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Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host,
Melanie Young, and I welcome all of you into my
studio today. I'm taking you to my old hometown, New
York City, where I lived for over thirty years and
missed terribly. And we're taking to a very beloved spot
(01:02):
to talk to the CEO and Chief Baking Officer of
Magnolia Bakery. Why because she is a kick ass woman entrepreneur.
Her name is Bobby Lloyd, and I so love her
story and I'm so inspired by what she's done with
Magnolia Bakery. This bakery is in Greenwich Village. A little history.
It started as a little retail operation back in nineteen
(01:26):
ninety six in a quaint cobblestone corner of the West Village, which,
if you ever go to New York is one of
the most beautiful places to hang out. It was immortalized
in Sex and the City when Sarah Jessica Parker, Carrie
Bradshaw and her palace to go get the amazing red
velvet cupcakes lines formed and it became a hit. I
(01:48):
mean it was always a hit Magnolia Bakery, but then
became a television celebrity hit and people wanted to go
and see where Carrie Bradshaw had her cupcakes. But this
storied baker is so much more than cupcakes. It's ice
box desserts, it's cookies, it's this amazing world famous banana pudding.
And the best part is if you don't live in
(02:10):
New York City and you're not visiting New York City.
Magnolia Bakery is now a global brand and has locations
around the world like around the world, and has amazing
frozen products such as the banana putting chocolate chocolate dessert.
I think it's now banana put chocolate dessert. I'm looking
for it here in New Orleans right now and other treats.
(02:32):
So how did that happen? Because a lot of women
love cook make cupcakes, and they love to make cookies,
and they start a little business out of their kitchen
and they sell maybe to their school friends, and they
create a little local baking business. Maybe they go to
the local farmers market. You probably have a good friend
doing that. We do here in New Orleans, the school bakery.
(02:53):
She's doing a great job. But how do you go
from that your home kitchen to a retail outlet to
a global brand. Well, Bobby Lloyd has done it, and
she is amazing. Like I said, she's Chief Baking Officer
her title and CEO of Magnolia Bakery, and she comes
with un armed with a lot of experience. I knew
(03:14):
her before she was Magnolia Bakery and it's great to
have her back to share her story with you my
listeners on Fearless Fabulous You Bobby Lloyd, welcome.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Oh thank you. Melie's so good to see you again.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, I have known you for years and David and
I have interviewed you on the Connected Table when the
Magnelia Bakery cookbook came out. You have really done an
amazing job. I know it's a team. It takes a
village from the village. Let's take it first to share
your background. I know you were born and raised in Chicago.
(03:50):
What was the journey that got you to where you
are today?
Speaker 5 (03:56):
And you said it yourself that so many women start
out with the love of baking, and we'd bake in
the kitchen with our mothers, our grandmothers. I was lucky
enough to even bake with my great grandmother, and those
recipes got handed down generation to generation, and as.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
A young child, I would get set up on the
sit on the counter.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
My great grandmother would hand me while she was rolling
out the pie dough. She'd hand me a little pile
of dough and I'd rub it in my hands until
it was dirty and gray, and then she'd brush it,
you know, roll it out, brush it with a little
butter and cinnamon sugar.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
And that was my special pie. I think it was
three years old and four years old, and I have
a vivid memory of that.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
That's what really spurred my love of being in the
kitchen is working alongside the generational women in my family,
and I continue that tradition with my own family, as
does my sister and her children. That's the beginning the
origin story.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I used to cook with my mother and I used
to eat the dough.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, she liked.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
To bake, hated the cook. But I never got into
the business. I fell in love with food, but it
was because we used to go out to restaurants and
we were always happy. Mom was always happy not being
in the kitchen. You worked in the restaurant business. That's
how I came to know you first working in ops,
as they say, paying your dues at a time when
(05:15):
women still didn't have management roles in the industry. To
talk to me about that, because that was quite a
important pivotal time to shape who you are today in
terms of a business woman.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It is.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
And you know, I feel very lucky because I had
a lot of mentors in my life, and I started
my hospitality career in the kitchen. I went to culinary
school and I wanted to be a chef, and I
opened a restaurant, and then I recognized that the part
of the industry that I still did not have a
full grasp of was the front of the house and
actually make money doing this. So my mentors were people
(05:53):
like Danny Meyer at a Union Square hospitality group.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I knew him through just Union Square Cafe. I actually
knew Danny through another friend of mine who happened to
be one of his chefs at some point in the future.
Michael Romano and I went to Danny and I already
owned a restaurant in Boston.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
And I came to New York City as Calvin Klein's
private chef, which was like this limited gig for six months.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I don't know if you knew that about me. No,
that's interesting, right, It was really interesting. My gig ended.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
It was just for six months, but it got me
to New York City and I called Danny and I said, hey,
I want to learn from the best. You are the
best in hospitality. You're already well renowned for it. It
was nineteen eighty seven. It was only a few years
in to Union Squares. At that time they were two
star restaurant, and Danny said, you have to start as
a waiter.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
I was like, okay, bring it on, and.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
So I went in front of the house as a
waiter for a few months and then moved up in
the role as service manager and got three years under
my belt working side by side and I'm not kidding.
Literally side by side every single day with Danny, he
developed taught me what it meant for hospitality, because that's
such a big part of our business, is that we're
(07:05):
not just as my grandmother used to say it was,
we're setting the table.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
And I use this analogy a lot with my own teams.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Here is that my grandmother, no matter what the meal,
she dressed, she dressed herself and she dressed the table.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
And I'm sure your mother was like that too.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
There was never a paper plate, there was never a
paper napkin in the house.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Got down to a cheese sandwich and you.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Still had china, and she had her little homemade apron
on to go with that. So I understood the concept
of setting a great table because you're creating that environment
of hospitality.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
And then after leaving Union Square, I got.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Very lucky to work with some great operators and really
just they mentored me and took me in there under
their wing to show.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Me how to make money in this business.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, I wish my mother used paper plates, but David
and I used the David and I set the table
linens and silver, and we use it because what are
you going to do with that, just keep it in
the drawer. So we do that, and that's how David
grew up. It's interesting. So you worked at one of
my you worked with a Beanstalk Restaurant Group and of
(08:12):
course Union Square Hospitality Group, two great businesses, and how
amazing to work with Danny. You know what I as
you were talking, this is what I have to say.
This is a melanism. You make meals in the kitchen,
you make memories in the dining room, and you make
money mining your numbers, right, and really you have to
have that whole package. And a lot of people get
(08:34):
into the business with the romantic part of it. They
love food, they love people, and that's awesome for hospitality.
But to god, even if you hate numbers, you have
to you have to know them. You have to know
your numbers. And you really did learn from the best,
So kudos to you. Now. Then one day I woke
up and you were running Magnolia Bakery and I'm like,
(08:59):
that's the cupcake shop, you know, Like I didn't really
know much about you know, I knew the red velvet
cake and I used to go down there and blah
blah blah. But suddenly you were CEO of Magnolia Bakery,
and then suddenly Magnolia Bakery was doing all this stuff
that I'm like, wow, I had no idea. I had
no idea. How did you end up going to Magnolia Bakery?
(09:21):
First of all, what was the tipping point, the pivot
point that moved you there versus staying in, you know,
full service restaurants.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
So my prior business partner, Steve Abrams, we had owned
another two businesses together before Magnolia, and he had met
the original owner. Because I kind of call myself founder
two point zero.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
That's my latest way to because I didn't create Magnomy.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Someone else did, but they really created something quite beautiful.
I had owned a restaurant in Boston in the early
eighties that had a retail bakery at the front of
the restaurant. It was called American Accent, and the type
of desserts that we made were very much what Magnolia
Bakery does today. So I had my bakery in nineteen
eighty four. Magnolia Bakery opens in nineteen ninety six. I'm
(10:07):
introduced to it in like two thousand and four, and
I went, oh my god, they stole my menu because
it's that American style desserts that we make at home,
that are beloved recipes that are handed down generation to generation,
all very much the same. So when Steve Abrams met
the original owner at a party and they discussed buying
(10:27):
the bakery, he called me and said, Hey, I have
got this opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Would you want to come on board.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
I was a beanstalk at the time, and I was like, ooh, yes,
great opportunity. That takes me full circle back to my
love of not only baking, but by this point I
also had my business acumen down. I understood how to
run a profitable business, how to manage the numbers on
a day to day basis, how to build a culture
(10:54):
within the company, and how to maintain the hospitality. My
goal was for Magnoli is to take that hospitality and
fine dining where you've got a customer for two hours,
you have a lot of opportunities right to deliver great hospitality.
In retail food service like Magnolia Bakery, you've got two
to three minutes. And so the goal was how do
(11:15):
we continue that experience. The food is great, they love
the quality of the ingredients, they love what we're doing,
but we want them to walk out the door with.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
It's also this amazing connection to our brand.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And hope be a bag of goodies, uh, you know
and repeat. You know. It is an interesting move because
you work. I mean, I loved Redcat, that was my favorite,
one of my favorite restaurants in the city. And her,
especially Jimmy Brawdley, amazing. That's a bigger operation, much more complex,
a lot of moving parts. But the retail operation, and
(11:46):
particularly a bakery, you've got very specific products. It's you know,
you've got you know, You've got you know, different kinds
of pastries and desserts, and it's very focused and you
have you have a very target audience too, you know,
who likes to come in and buy. But what I
think is interesting what you've done is that you have
(12:07):
taken this brand around the world and I know that
this has included product product extensions amazingly impressive and creative
partnerships which I want to talk to because I'm big
on partnerships. And now you're franchising, which is a big
step to go from company owned to franchising.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So we've been doing international franchising since twenty ten, and
part of it feels like the international franchising is a
little bit easier than the domestic side. Internationally, we're teaching
people how to bake from scratch flour, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate,
some dairy. You know, we use three kinds of sugar,
two kinds of flour, cream, cheese with cream, butter. You
(12:52):
teach people how to bake from scratch, and you take
that ingredient. Listen, you do an algorithm, you could probably
create two billion different desserts, adding some fruit every now
and then. Right So, internationally we're in seven different countries.
We have thirty seven locations right now, and we're growing.
By the end of the year, we'll have over forty internationally.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Yeah, and by oh gosh, by twenty thirty, we'll probably
have seventy five.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Or more locations opened because.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Our existing franchises continue to open more and more, and
so domestically we have to actually create systems because we
want to make sure that the experience is very much
the same of what you're having in our home stores.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
We've made from scratch. We teach our people how to,
you know, work from technique.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
But internationally, I think it's really interesting too, because in
every country that we're in we do a little nod
to that country of the ingredients that they use.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
So maybe in the Middle East.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
It'll be pistachios and almonds, dates, things like that. Saffron
we have this beautiful saffron marine buttercream on top of
a date orange cupcake. And then in India it will
be more focused on mango or they also like pistachio
a lot.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
So we're always.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Working within the local flavor profile of the country, but
staying true to our product mix. So I might be
in the Middle East, but I'm not doing traditional Middle
Eastern desserts. We're doing ar cheese cake, but we're adding
their ingredients that are our favorite to the community.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think that's so interesting. I was wondering about that
because another one of my favorite people, and she was
my first client, believe it or not, Bobby, was Sarah
Beth Lavin. And Sarahbeth also Thank You. Her husband Bill
built a global brand. And I saw her at the
Fancy Food Show a couple of years ago and I said,
how's it going. She's like, oh, we're doing great, and
she said, I'm selling My pancakes are selling like hotcakes
(14:45):
in Japan. Japan loves my pancakes, and I'm really She said, yeah,
I can't make enough pancakes and you can't. So I said, wow, like,
I didn't know that pancakes were such a big deal
in Japan. But are you I love the fact that
you tailor and adapt per culture to embrace the natural
flavors and traditions. Are you finding as you go that
(15:08):
certain products sell better in certain You have a very
strong Middle Eastern Middle East, by the way, are you
finding certain products sell better in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
And that's why he loved that question, because it is
very true that in the Middle East they love sugar.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
In Southeast Asia they don't like as sweet. So in
Southeast Asia.
Speaker 5 (15:30):
Where we're in the Philippines, in India we used to
be in Japan as well, they wanted the butter cream
to be less sweet. And so we actually did this
little chart that is like a thermometer. We called it
the sweetometer, and we would name the butter cream so
it would be like classic American style butter cream being
the sweetest.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
But there were other options.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
You don't want it as sweet, go to meringe butter cream,
go to chocolate butter cream. And so the customer could
then assess what level of sweetness.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
They wanted to get. Isn't that great? It's really fun,
that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
But that takes a lot of trialing area. I mean,
you have to do you have a culture researcher on
your team who goes in to work with you to
understand the like I know, like I did a story
like dates are a very big deal in Muslim countries,
particularly Ramadan. They eat a lot of dates at the
end of to break fast because you get just enough
sugar without too much sugar. Do you have someone researching
(16:23):
the culture for every country you go into or is
that part of what the franchise e does.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
That's a great question too, because we do both.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
We want the franchise e to be the one to
determine if this brand is the right brand to go.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Into their country.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
But then we also look at things like how does
your culture celebrate.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Holidays, what type of sweets.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
You know you're in America, we celebrate with cake, we
celebrate with dessert, we celebrate with pie. But that's not
necessarily the case everywhere in the Middle East. It's gift
platters of dry fruits. So it's either that we have
to train the customer to order cakes in that because
maybe cake is not a popular thing. You know. Even
when we first opened in the Middle East, we hired
(17:06):
an executive international chef and international pastry chef. This guy's
remember those fifteen years. He has incredible experience. He's worked
in giant hotels, incredible beautiful cakes, you know, ten stories
high way more experienced than me. But he had never
made American style desserts. American style cakes. The way we
(17:29):
make things is a basic formula. Cookies and cakes are
very similar to cream the butter three to five minutes,
slowly add the sugar, add the eggs one at a time,
and then you add the dry and the wet alternately.
That's pretty much the basis for making most cakes. But
that's not the European way to make cakes. So we
had to kind of retrain him and teach him how
(17:50):
to work with our American style pastries. Then we had
to teach the staff.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Who's coming into work in these restaurants what these desserts are.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
You actually brought something up, so you know, I just
did the book about icebox.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Desserts, right, They didn't know. I remember when we first
went there to train the question was what's.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
An icebox exactly?
Speaker 5 (18:11):
We all know automatically what an icebox is. Icebox desserts
have been around in the US since the nineteen thirties
and completely understand it.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
In the Middle East said no idea what an icebox was.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
So we had to restructure our training and show them
a photograph of an old fashioned ice box with the
block of ice in it, and then the old fashioned
recipes to understand like, oh, it comes from the refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, you know, bombie. I looked up ice box desserts
because your first book is the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, and
you have this amazing new I don't have the book,
but it's called Magnolia Bakery ice box Desserts. I live
in New Orleans now it is so hot. It is
so hot, So icebox desserts is a great concept. You're cool,
refreshing desserts. I had to look up what an icebox
(18:56):
dessert is. Icebox where I grew up in the deep
set was what you used to call the refrigerator. I'm
going to go to the ice box now, and you
used to go buy ready ice. They still have ice
boxes in Florida, Louisiana as you drive around, you can
go to Ready Ice and you can go get your
ice in the ice box near a Goat gas station
(19:18):
and go buy Ready Ice. Used to I used to
have stock and Ready Ice at zero now, but anyway,
they still have these old ice boxes. So I was
fascinated about that, and I said to David. My asp
was like, I got to make one of these desserts because.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
You don't have you have to send this to you.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, yeah, well, well of course. And I went to
your store locator at Magnolia Bakery dot com to see
if I can find any of the frozen trees. I found.
I found one store maybe like it's called Go Puff
or something, I don't know. Its somewhere past Jackson Square.
Kind of a weird neighborhood for the frozen banana banana
(19:56):
pudding tree. Because banana pudding is a stable here. You
go to Tennessee or anywhere around the holidays and you
literally have an aisle end with all your ingredients to
make banana pudding.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Banana pudding has become our hero product.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
It is the massive and you know for many years,
so we're almost thirty years old that we just turned
twenty nine next year is going to be a big celebration.
When Steve Baberns and I bought the bakery from the
original owner in two thousand and six, banana pudding was
kind of this little sleeper dessert.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
They'd make some, it'd sell out and be gone for
the day.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
When we took over, it was like, hey, people really
like this, Let's start making more.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
And the more we made, the more we sold.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Then I started adding new flavors and some of them
are now banana lest So like last month in July,
we did blueberry crisp pudding. So it's the vanilla pudding
base with a blueberry pie filling with a crisp topping
layered into it. It is so insanely good. And then
I added lemon into the pudding to have a little
(21:01):
popa lemon flavor.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
It is amazing.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So you continue to add more and more flavors to
our profile.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
But three years ago I created a new, never been
done before product.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Which is a thaw and serve frozen banana pudding that
you thaw and serve as a pudding temperature. And the
way I explain it to people is think of like
cool whip. If I cool whip in the freezer section.
But you don't eat it frozen, you thaw it out
to refrigerated temperature.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Right, So this is like that kind of product. But
the cool thing is it comes in a fourteen ounce container.
You can go in and out of the freezer three times.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
So if for some reason you can't eat the whole
container in one sitting, you could eat a frozen if
you wanted to. You can thaw it out to refrigerated temperature,
eat some of it, put it back in the freezer,
and go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Oh, it just sounds divine.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
And the way I explained it to it people is, well,
is it the same as the fresh pudding? And the
answer is no, it's not because the fresh banana pudding
is actually, as you know of being from the South,
it's vanilla pudding with slices of bananas and vanilla wafers.
This one is actually a banana pudding. There's banana puree
in the pudding.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Oh that sounds good.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Yeah, so there's no sliced bananas. It's all mixed together.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And so I say it's different, but equally if good
as good, if not better.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Well, David loves bananas, eats him every day We've been
making homemade yogurt and I've been mashing the bananas in it,
and then I'll take almond butter and mash the bananas
and almond butter and mash it all over. It's actually
really good, yeah, because you know, you peanut butter and banana.
I like almond butter, but you can mash it all
in and you've got it's all mixed in together already,
and you could freeze it then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
So you know, I always said that the problem with
bananas bananas turned brown when they put them in a refrigerator.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
It's what they do, know.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
So there's always a challenge of how do you get
shelf life out of a banana pudding with ice bananas.
Within twenty four hours they will start to turn brown.
And so I was in my little test kitchen and
I said, you know, I have two things I need
to solve. One is the banana. How do I keep
it from turning brown? It's like, don't put slice banas
in it. So that was uzapuree. But the second one
(23:16):
was that the wafers, the longer that they sit in
a pudding, the softer they get.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So the next thing yes, how do I suspend that?
Freeze it? So I froze it. I was like, oh,
this is good.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
So I think we have a fick picture. I sent
one one my engineer. Do we have pictures of this treat?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's the banana pudding. What is that the banana putting bar?
Is that it? Or is this something else?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
That is something that we just launched. So I'm so
glad you guys have this photograph. So we just launched.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
And two of our stores in New York City and
now we're launching in LA and Chicago.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It is a little bar.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
You come in and we will scoop and build the
pudding in front of you. And there's four options of flavors.
There's the red velvet. That one is a brownie caramel,
just so instantly good. We also have a hazel nut
like an autella mix, and the one is cookies and cream.
Besides carrying our monthly flavor and our classic putting already
(24:14):
pre packed on our pudding bar, you can come and
if you want to customize it, you can also do that.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
It's really wild.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
That sounds amazing. And this is the ice Box Dessert
cook But okay, look how beautiful that lay that. I
think I may I think I may have sold my
cake my cake holder with the estate sale. But they're
all over the place. But that's beautiful. I love the
Nila Vanilla wafers. I like them when they get slightly mushy.
I love Nila Vanilla wafers. I also like those chocolate
(24:47):
refrigerator cookies that collum.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Those cookies. By the way, the Visco stopped making them,
the chocolate.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Food It's really interesting because they stopped them because they
used to come in this long, skinny box about I
don't know how many of them in the box, maybe twenty.
People have gone crazy because they stopped making them. But
then they launched last year the Oreo Thins. If you've
had the Oreo thins, they're really good. I've been using
the Oreo Thins to make some of the ice box
(25:16):
desserts and it works really well. Because there's cookies.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I got to try that. I do the baking, David
does the other cooking proteins, as they say, and I
do the South. But that looks just delicious and it's
very It's a big thing here. Desserts are a big
thing in the South. The bigger it's like your hair.
The bigger the hair, the bigger dessert, more you want it.
And you know, actually this.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Is something the original owner she wasn't from the South,
she was from.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
New York City. But the baser name Tori and Jennifer
Oppel to women. But the recipes are really very.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Southern style because it's a Southern style and magnolia it's
magnolia is.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
A Southern flower, right yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
And the desserts are sweet, so that that really is
sort of how this whole vikery evolved of sweet style
American Southern. You know, there's this one dessert it's a
coconut cake and that thing is massively huge with the
meringue icing all over the top of it, and people
crazy when they see it. And that recipe actually came
from a customer who is from the South.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Coconut cake. You're gonna have big toll cocona cake. The
big dessert down Well, there are a lot of desserts
down here, bread pudding, dough, berge cake, which is like
this wonderful cake with like twenty five thin layers. I
think it was Red Agambinos makes it. It's to die for.
And there's a there's a bakery down here called Debi
(26:44):
does dough berge and a lot of little It's interesting
here in New Orleans bakings and big traditions. You have
a lot of independent bakers doing things. I think only
one of them has had fun and Nola's success getting
her product into whole foods Chia buy Water Bakery, She's
(27:06):
done well, But a lot of my other ones are
just you know, single and they ship shipping, you know,
go belly whatever. Is great. But for anyone who's thinking
about taking their stepping up their business and wanting to
take it, what are some things that you would advise
them to be prepared to address if they are seeking
(27:29):
like funding for example, or strategic partnerships. And here you
can give examples of some of the amazing wines you're doing.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
So one of my greatest joys in life is actually
mentoring women, good, especially young women.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
I didn't when I was growing up in this business.
There weren't women to mention me.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I mostly had to deal with men mentioning you, which
was great. But one thing I always ask, because entering
the big world is pretty easy. You buy a table,
a mixer in an oven, and you're open for business.
You know, don't have to have a ton of skill.
You got to be creative and create a product that
tastes good. First question I asked is why do you
want to open the bakery, And if the answer is
(28:06):
I love to bake, it's okay. Let's sit down and
talk about this because you won't bake anymore. Maybe it'll
bake for the first few months, but you're going to
be paying the village. You're going to paying the electric bill,
You're going to be paying for the employees. You're going
to deal with a lawsuit because someone fell in front
of your store. You're going to be a business owner now,
and so understanding all of the responsibilities that come with
(28:28):
being a business owner means you are not going to
be a baker anymore.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
If you love to bake, get a partner.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Get a partner who will be the business owner, and
figure out how the two of you can work together.
My first business I ever opened, I had a partner,
a restaurant, a cafe, American Accident in Booklin Village in Boston.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
It was the only way to really have the two.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Things that both of us could bring us our expertise
to the table.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Because you've got to be.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
In two different areas at the same time, and it's
really hard to.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Do on other people.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
As CEO of this company, I have two major advisors.
My advisors are someone who's been a CEO and two
other big companies that did consumer product goods. We launched
a cookie at Magnolia Bakery on grocery store shelf.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I never did that before.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
I didn't have that experience, and so we brought in
an advisor to I can call them on the phone
anytime I need help with franchising. It was the same
thing I had not done domestic franchising, So I want
help from an expert. I want someone who's done it,
someone I can reach out to and ask.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
You.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
The Queen of dumb questions I always call myself is
I'm not afraid to ask any question, and so use
those resources that are out there. Women as friends, put
it on Facebook, put it on LinkedIn, reach out to
people because everyone really and you do it too.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
People like to help.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You know, is international franchising different from domestic franchising, because
I know you did international first and now you into
the national and I went on to see your You
can go on Magnolia Bakery dot com. And there's a
section about that, and the first thing it says is
do you have retail operation experience? So yes, don't say
I'd like to bake.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Internationally, it's usually much bigger deals.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
They're going to buy the rights to ten to fifteen
locations over a period of time.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Because you have a really big upfront cost.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
You've got to hire a chef, you've got to get
the ingredients there, you've got to do the training, which
takes a really long time. Internationally, because we're starting from zero. Domestically,
there's in some ways it's a little bit easier once
you have your system set up because we have a
supply chain here in the US, so it's easier for
our US franchises and our own locations to get.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
A product, whereas internationally.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
Like something as simple as as vanilla wafers, they're not
available in almost every single country, so we even have
to import them, which is expensive especially.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Now, or you know, or we have to find a
local manufacturer.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
We've created a recipe that is willing to take on
making a lot of vanilla wafers. We did that in Japan,
we're doing that in Turkey right now. Because you don't
want to have to import those things. And so one
of the things our chef does is as we sign
a new country, he goes into that market and works
with the franchise to find the local ingredients that are
(31:29):
available at a good cost so they don't have to import.
And if it means adjusting recipes, we will recreate a
recipe to use their local ingredients. Sweeting condensed milk is
another one. It's not available in most countries, and if
it is, it's slightly different.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Than what we have here, so it might be more.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Bucus or less viscous, which means we have to change
the putting ratios a little bit.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
We want the same end flavor. We want there to be.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
No discernible difference, but it might mean that we have
to change the ratio of the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Also, interestingly, David bakes here and it's very humid in
the summer, and so you have to adjust to humidity
and altitude and sea level and all of that. Because
we were he was lamenting that one of his English
muffin bread, the James Beard recipe, just wasn't the same
in the recent batch. And I said, well, it's awful
humid and hot right now. Maybe that had something to
do with it, and.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
That's been one of my favorite recipes my entire life.
That's so great.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Loves that recipe, he loves that book, Beard on Bread
and I'll talked to Sandy Wand whose family owns Leidenheimer's
Steve Big and he said, we have to adjust are
baking for the hot season and the uber hot season,
which is like right now, and it's the same when
you're baking. So there's so many deals. I would think
(32:50):
with the tea for tariffs happening that you may have
some products that you're gonna have to Are you having
to resource certain things? I mean, aren't nill of the
Nillaway first Maid of the United States? But what about Yeah?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Yeah, so all of our vanilla wafers are here.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
That's why we're kind of working on resources internationally for
vanilla wa for US chocolate, yes.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
It's imported. So that is going up in price.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Vanilla going up in price, some of the packaging is
going up in the price. But we're working very closely
with all of our distributors and the and even the
manufacturers that we work with. I went to a chocolate
tasting yesterday at the Chocolate Academy here in New York
City and looked at new ingredients that they're they have available,
new forms of vanilla that maybe you know in the
(33:36):
Middle East, we can't use vanilla with alcohol in it.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I found this really cool product. Actually literally have
been sitting here on my desk a little tiny.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Jar that it's a pure vanilla extract like a paste.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
But it's really cool.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
You can use so much less of it than liquid
vanilla with the extract with alcohol in it, and it
adds no color.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
So these are the kind of things we continually look.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
For, is how do we improve help our costs and
our bottom line, but also get better ingredients.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So what part of your time? First of all, I
read in an article that you walk to work it's
about an hour and use that time to think. And
as I was taking my morning walk, I was thinking
about you, because I use that time whether I'm walking
or we have a pool and I swim, and that's
when I literally gather my thoughts and literally write articles
in my head and prepare scripts. So I'm on the
(34:28):
same page with you about that. What percentage of your
time now is spent dealing with recipe development and research?
R and R and development, And mean, you have two
cookbooks under your belt, the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook and the
Magnolia Bakery Ice Box Dessert. What percentage of your time
is still doing that part of the business versus the business?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Not enough my answer, because I think that's my happy place.
If I turned my around, I would show you.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
I have a test kids, and literally I'm looking at
it right here. And so when I do have an idea,
I've got my convection of and commercial kitchen that I
can pop into the kitchen and throw a few things together.
So today, this moment i'm in right now, I'm not
doing as much as.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
I normally do.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
I need a little more time to get our franchise
division fully launched. We just hired a bunch of new people.
But the wheels are always turning. So even though I
physically have done two books, I've got the third book
in here.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I know what it's going to be.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
I'm thinking, Yes, Breakfast from Magnolia is what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Well, breakfast is a good one, right.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
So it's you know, luff and stones, coffee cakes, pancakes.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
French toes, French toes, those kinds of things.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
But it is also like I had a meeting this
morning with my operation services team, and for the first
time in the history of Magnolia Baker, I actually have
a culinary person that reports to me. I can and
this is an interesting thing about chefs and the way
we think. I know in my head what I want
(36:04):
something to I know what it's going to taste like,
but I can't necessarily explain it to you.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
I have to actually make it first. So I will do.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
The first round so I can say this is what
I'm looking for, and then I give it to my
culinary person who commercializes it in a way that we
can make it at Magnolia Bakery.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
What format are we turning it into. How wo do
we do this in scale?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
How do we build it up to a larger recipe
and we sit in a table and we literally taste things.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
We sit around the table and talk about it. What
ingredients would I.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
Incorporate this Sometimes I don't want us to have to
buy another ingredient, so I'm trying to figure out to
create a new item using what we already.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Have in the house.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
But from doing this for so many years, it literally
I do know what things are going to taste like
before I make them.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
I do that. I've been making a homemaker renola. That's
my thing right now, and I'm so in to it, Bobby.
And first of all, I'm saving money because granola is expensive.
I'm saving on sugar and making sure that I know
what's going into it. And it's like a little creative
thing for me. It's so much fun. I think about
the products, and you know, I think it's great because
you're creating and then you have someone to standardize the recipes.
(37:17):
You've got to have your standard and then when you're
doing franchises, you've got to have it like systemized. When
I was first working in public relations, i worked with
them I can't believe it's yogurt and they were franchising,
so I learned about the whole Yeah, the whole franchising concept.
And for anyone who is not ready to have their
own business, buying into the right franchise could be a
(37:39):
great option. I've actually, i've actually looked at it because
I never want to have another business, but it's a
great option because the systems are in place and you've
got the guidelines. But you have to, you know, love
what you're doing and follow the rules. You can't just
go out and suddenly like take it on your own.
It's a system, but it's a great way to build.
And many successful people multiple franchises, right.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
One of the things I look about, especially in the
US for domestic franchising, is that we've been doing this
for a really long time. Our New York City stores
are very very busy in really tiny little spaces.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And I'm not kidding. I got a Bleaker Street the
original location. There's only six hundred square feet, and we
see thousands of tiny we.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
See thousands customers, and we baked from scratch everything in
that location. So we have a formulate way of usually
the way I describe it as I start with our
vanilla cake. So I created the vanilla cake recipe. It's
been updated over the years so that it's kind of
like a base recipe. If I want to turn that
(38:44):
into a caramel cake, I replace the white sugar with
brown sugar. If I want to make a strawberry cake,
I replace the milk or buttermilk with strawberry puree. And
so I've got about fifteen recipes. An Earl Gray cake
sniffer do a little cakes literally so many recipes that
use the exact same based formula.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
So when I teach people how.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
To make that one recipe, they now have a lexicon
of recipes that they can make.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
And so for.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Franchisees, it's not as difficult as it might they might
think it would be because it's based on formulas.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, and it's it's it makes sense and actually makes
things sound easier when you realize you start with the
base and then you you adapt as you go. It's
like when I do my granola, I know I'm going
to have oats, and then after that it's whatever I
feel like putting in it. So I have to say
I love I. First of all, I went gaga over
your promotion with kids Sneakers because Ken should just hire me.
(39:42):
Now I'm a cad I have like six pairs of cats.
I love ket I bought the pink ones. I bought
the pink ones and they're so cute. And now you're
doing with a lip gloss, the banana putting gliplus those
are creative? Why? Because you're taking your product into fast
or consumer products beauty goods, what personal care product? How
(40:05):
did that come about? And can you share anything else
you're working on.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Well, sure, So these collaborations first are off are phenomenal.
We have a person that runs that division. Her name
is Sarah Grammley. She's been in the company fifteen years.
She does an amazing job, and a lot of it
has to do with relationships, you know, and most of
these are incoming. We don't go out and necessarily seek
the relationships. So the most recent one we did was
(40:30):
the banana putting lip gloss with Glossier that was global.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
They sold out in three days.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Amazing, amazing, It's incredible, and the way Sarah put this
whole launch together really, I mean, she did such an
amazing job for our brand.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
But what it does actually, when I tried it.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Put the lip gloss on, it's this little tube of
these hanging bananas on.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
I have to get some, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Sold out, It's gone. Can you even get them?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You're kidding much so.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
Fast because a limited time offer. But I put it
on my lips and I went.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
Oh my god, I want to eat my lips because
so many times those things that are banana flavored had
that really nasty taste to it.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
This actually tasted like our banana pudding was really good cool. Yeah,
sold out so fast. I think it's completely gone in
the market.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (41:22):
We love those kind of collaborations because it opens up
the brand to it could be another generation, a different
group of consumers. So when it may not have heard
of us, I mean about five or five, four or
five years ago, we did one with Tula, which is
Alta you know, the makeup company.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Strolling aside for it.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
They did a banana putting body scrub and it was
in twenty five hundred stores across the country.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
And who would have thought a banana putting body scrub.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
And it also sold out really fast, and it had
again that same like this smells and tastes like real bananas.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
How did they do it?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Wow? I could think of some other things that I
would do with that banana putting, but we'll take it
off screen for those anyway. But there's a lot of
good options there. I've interviewed a few women I'll can
introduce you to for women at the fifty.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
But I actually have to add one more.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
I don't know if you know it, but we do
have an edible chocolate with a company called Edibles out
of really Yeah, it's ten milligrams of THC in chocolate.
The piece that they do and it's we can't sell it,
but they did a banana pudding chocolate bar and a
red velvet chocolate bar.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
There's big down here in New Orleans. I mean the
Weekly Gambit uh news magazine or whatever it's called. Monthly
Gambit has a whole section delted canvas cannabis and t
HC beverages and bars. It is big, big business. I'd
like to break into it. I mean, I have friends
who cannot drink alcohol. They can't for medical reasons, but
(42:56):
they will be gladly embracing a THHD or Delta nine product.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Chocolate.
Speaker 5 (43:04):
So I don't I don't invite myself. I can't do it,
but people have told me it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
So yeah, and you know, yeah, it's you know, I
have people that that's I was just the tails of
the cocktail, and they had a certain number still a
small amount, but of THHC products and the they're selling
like gangbusters. So that whole area is a whole other
(43:31):
way to go. Interestingly, yeah, we had the time I
read an interesting article in the New York Times this week.
I was telling David about it on our morning walk,
and I'm wondering how you would handle this. I read
that in I think it's Martha's Vineyard there is a tick,
a deer tick called the alpha gal. Like alpha gal
sounds trendy, right, but it's it's sure for something really
(43:54):
long I can't pronounce. But that tick, if it bites you,
makes you violently allergic to anaphylacic levels to dairy and meat.
And there was a baker, Yes, you read this article.
It's actually shocking, and there was a baker who has
been impacted and is trying to create vegan crulers in
(44:15):
Martha's like like a huge percentage of people in Martha's
Vineyard are now vegans in this week's New York Times.
But I'm wondering how you, as Magnelia Baker, with everybody
seemingly having food allergies, now, are you thinking about creating
line extensions hear to that. I mean they're literally having
to create that in Martha's Vineyard menus that are vegan
(44:39):
for people who could die if they had butter.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
You know, you just wanted to look that up.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
So yeah, I like this question because it's something we
have addressed for many years.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
So the gluone free question was the first one.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
My sister is a Celiac, a very severe celiac, so
I'm very fully aware and understand of the people who
suffer from these things. We launched a gluten free banana
pudding a number of years ago. I had to source
a gluten free cookie that was the only thing that
wasn't gluten free, and what we found was that people
ask for it, but then it doesn't sell, and so
(45:16):
we were constantly.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Throwing away gluten free banana putting everything because it has
a very short shelf life.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
So we ended up transitioning to that to the only
way to get it now is you have to order
it in advance, and then we have to be able
to get the wafers because they're not readily available. They
only come in a retail box. You can't buy them
in a food service size container, so we don't stock
and store them on a regular basis. The next one
was the request for vegan banana pudding, mostly coming from
(45:45):
our LA customer base. So a couple of beers ago,
he said, you know what, let's launch a limited time
offering for this vegan banana pudding. And it was very
complicated for two reasons. One, finding a vegan wafer was
not to do, and it was very expensive and it
was only available in retail packaging. So we did find some,
(46:06):
and then we had to do vegan sweet and condensed
milk and vegan cream. Now, the difference with vegan cream
is regular heavy whipping cream when you whip it doubles
in volume.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Vegan cream does not.
Speaker 5 (46:20):
It thickens, but it doesn't double in volume, so you
have to use almost twice the amount of cream to
get the volume that you need of that whipped texture.
It ended up being outrageously expensive for us to produce,
and so we had to sell it for every It
was like twelve ninety nine for a twelve ounce container,
and kind of the same thing happened is that people
(46:42):
asked for it, they wanted it, but then they didn't
really buy it. So we did a limited time offer
to just test the waters, and then we said, now
I'm not going to work. Having said all of that,
we are in India and in the Middle East where
they don't want eggs, So we have created a lot
of eggless recipes for art cakes.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Do you use aqua faba or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (47:05):
And they're happy that they're used to it, they know it,
they love it, but we have to create recipes specifically
for that audience.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And I think it's in Japan. There's a lot of
issues with dairy products in certain agient countries. Yeah, so
you have to be careful there. I mean the dietary
changes and then you know you've got the nun allergy
use people. And you know, I thought David's like, oh,
take your granola and turn into a business. I'm like, Na,
that's the nut thing, you know, like I don't want
to get into because the business said you've got to
(47:33):
be prepared for lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
And one thing. You know, there's so many people that
are on.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
You JLP one and someone asked me the other day
how it's affecting our business, and I said, we're busier
than ever. So I look at our product base as
I had sugar every day. I do love my cookie
or something, a bite of something.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
We're meant to be an indulgence.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
It's not meant to be eating a big compass cake
and a big banana pudding every single day. But it's
an indulgence and people have choices. So you're going to
eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
Every day you're.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Going to eat a meal, you're going to go to
a restaurant, you're going to come. The restaurants compete because
you're trying to decide where you're going.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
To go for dinner.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
But in the sweeth world, the competition is that you
might want ice cream today and you might want a
cookie tomorrow, and the next day you're going to have
banana pudding or maybe only two times a week. So
people are still shopping, they're still indulging, and our business
is better than ever.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
So well, I'm glad to hear that because there was
another New York Times article about that and how restaurants
are downsizing their portions, and I'm like, oh my god,
it's just getting so complicated in the world. Well, I
think we're at the end of our show. I want
to briefly before we leave, quickly quickly, one flash up
the books and I just want to let everybody know
(48:55):
we've been talking with Bobby Lloyd, who's CEO and Chief
baking Officer at Magnolia Bakery. The flagship is on the
corner of Greenwich Village and what's the street.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
It's West Village. It's on eleventh baker right on the.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
It's behind me in my photo and uh, if you
go to the website, you can find out where you
can order products and gold Billy and all those things
and where the locations are and learn more about the company.
I've literally enjoyed catching up with you. I had talked
to you really since I kind of ran into you
at a Lo dom D'scoffi event in New York a
few years ago, and then we interviewed you on the
(49:32):
Connected table for the first book, The Benola Bakery Cookbook.
The new book is The Magnolia Bakery Ice Box Desserts.
I love the concept of icebox because it's hot down.
Speaker 5 (49:42):
Here too, right, It's really like nowt icebox.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Well, hopefully you'll have a Magnolia Bakery somewhere in Louisiana.
You never know.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
I would be self franchised there. That would be wonderful. Now,
I've always been so supportive. I really appreciate the time,
and thank you so much for your love Magnelia Bakery.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Thank you so much. You've been listening to Fearless Fabulous
You with Melanie Young. I love spotlighting inspiring women entrepreneurs
because I want everyone to know that you have a
choice in life on how you want to live your life.
Always choose that on your terms, and always choose fearless
and fabulous. Thank you so much and have a great day.
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(00:20):
be directed to those show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host,
Melanie Young, and I welcome all of you into my
studio today. I'm taking you to my old hometown, New
York City, where I lived for over thirty years and
missed terribly. And we're taking to a very beloved spot
(01:02):
to talk to the CEO and Chief Baking Officer of
Magnolia Bakery. Why because she is a kick ass woman entrepreneur.
Her name is Bobby Lloyd, and I so love her
story and I'm so inspired by what she's done with
Magnolia Bakery. This bakery is in Greenwich Village. A little history.
It started as a little retail operation back in nineteen
(01:26):
ninety six in a quaint cobblestone corner of the West Village, which,
if you ever go to New York is one of
the most beautiful places to hang out. It was immortalized
in Sex and the City when Sarah Jessica Parker, Carrie
Bradshaw and her palace to go get the amazing red
velvet cupcakes lines formed and it became a hit. I
(01:48):
mean it was always a hit Magnolia Bakery, but then
became a television celebrity hit and people wanted to go
and see where Carrie Bradshaw had her cupcakes. But this
storied baker is so much more than cupcakes. It's ice
box desserts, it's cookies, it's this amazing world famous banana pudding.
And the best part is if you don't live in
(02:10):
New York City and you're not visiting New York City.
Magnolia Bakery is now a global brand and has locations
around the world like around the world, and has amazing
frozen products such as the banana putting chocolate chocolate dessert.
I think it's now banana put chocolate dessert. I'm looking
for it here in New Orleans right now and other treats.
(02:32):
So how did that happen? Because a lot of women
love cook make cupcakes, and they love to make cookies,
and they start a little business out of their kitchen
and they sell maybe to their school friends, and they
create a little local baking business. Maybe they go to
the local farmers market. You probably have a good friend
doing that. We do here in New Orleans, the school bakery.
(02:53):
She's doing a great job. But how do you go
from that your home kitchen to a retail outlet to
a global brand. Well, Bobby Lloyd has done it, and
she is amazing. Like I said, she's Chief Baking Officer
her title and CEO of Magnolia Bakery, and she comes
with un armed with a lot of experience. I knew
(03:14):
her before she was Magnolia Bakery and it's great to
have her back to share her story with you my
listeners on Fearless Fabulous You Bobby Lloyd, welcome.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Oh thank you. Melie's so good to see you again.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, I have known you for years and David and
I have interviewed you on the Connected Table when the
Magnelia Bakery cookbook came out. You have really done an
amazing job. I know it's a team. It takes a
village from the village. Let's take it first to share
your background. I know you were born and raised in Chicago.
(03:50):
What was the journey that got you to where you
are today?
Speaker 5 (03:56):
And you said it yourself that so many women start
out with the love of baking, and we'd bake in
the kitchen with our mothers, our grandmothers. I was lucky
enough to even bake with my great grandmother, and those
recipes got handed down generation to generation, and as.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
A young child, I would get set up on the
sit on the counter.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
My great grandmother would hand me while she was rolling
out the pie dough. She'd hand me a little pile
of dough and I'd rub it in my hands until
it was dirty and gray, and then she'd brush it,
you know, roll it out, brush it with a little
butter and cinnamon sugar.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
And that was my special pie. I think it was
three years old and four years old, and I have
a vivid memory of that.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
That's what really spurred my love of being in the
kitchen is working alongside the generational women in my family,
and I continue that tradition with my own family, as
does my sister and her children. That's the beginning the
origin story.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I used to cook with my mother and I used
to eat the dough.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, she liked.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
To bake, hated the cook. But I never got into
the business. I fell in love with food, but it
was because we used to go out to restaurants and
we were always happy. Mom was always happy not being
in the kitchen. You worked in the restaurant business. That's
how I came to know you first working in ops,
as they say, paying your dues at a time when
(05:15):
women still didn't have management roles in the industry. To
talk to me about that, because that was quite a
important pivotal time to shape who you are today in
terms of a business woman.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It is.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
And you know, I feel very lucky because I had
a lot of mentors in my life, and I started
my hospitality career in the kitchen. I went to culinary
school and I wanted to be a chef, and I
opened a restaurant, and then I recognized that the part
of the industry that I still did not have a
full grasp of was the front of the house and
actually make money doing this. So my mentors were people
(05:53):
like Danny Meyer at a Union Square hospitality group.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I knew him through just Union Square Cafe. I actually
knew Danny through another friend of mine who happened to
be one of his chefs at some point in the future.
Michael Romano and I went to Danny and I already
owned a restaurant in Boston.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
And I came to New York City as Calvin Klein's
private chef, which was like this limited gig for six months.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I don't know if you knew that about me. No,
that's interesting, right, It was really interesting. My gig ended.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
It was just for six months, but it got me
to New York City and I called Danny and I said, hey,
I want to learn from the best. You are the
best in hospitality. You're already well renowned for it. It
was nineteen eighty seven. It was only a few years
in to Union Squares. At that time they were two
star restaurant, and Danny said, you have to start as
a waiter.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
I was like, okay, bring it on, and.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
So I went in front of the house as a
waiter for a few months and then moved up in
the role as service manager and got three years under
my belt working side by side and I'm not kidding.
Literally side by side every single day with Danny, he
developed taught me what it meant for hospitality, because that's
such a big part of our business, is that we're
(07:05):
not just as my grandmother used to say it was,
we're setting the table.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
And I use this analogy a lot with my own teams.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Here is that my grandmother, no matter what the meal,
she dressed, she dressed herself and she dressed the table.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
And I'm sure your mother was like that too.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
There was never a paper plate, there was never a
paper napkin in the house.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Got down to a cheese sandwich and you.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
Still had china, and she had her little homemade apron
on to go with that. So I understood the concept
of setting a great table because you're creating that environment
of hospitality.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
And then after leaving Union Square, I got.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
Very lucky to work with some great operators and really
just they mentored me and took me in there under
their wing to show.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Me how to make money in this business.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, I wish my mother used paper plates, but David
and I used the David and I set the table
linens and silver, and we use it because what are
you going to do with that, just keep it in
the drawer. So we do that, and that's how David
grew up. It's interesting. So you worked at one of
my you worked with a Beanstalk Restaurant Group and of
(08:12):
course Union Square Hospitality Group, two great businesses, and how
amazing to work with Danny. You know what I as
you were talking, this is what I have to say.
This is a melanism. You make meals in the kitchen,
you make memories in the dining room, and you make
money mining your numbers, right, and really you have to
have that whole package. And a lot of people get
(08:34):
into the business with the romantic part of it. They
love food, they love people, and that's awesome for hospitality.
But to god, even if you hate numbers, you have
to you have to know them. You have to know
your numbers. And you really did learn from the best,
So kudos to you. Now. Then one day I woke
up and you were running Magnolia Bakery and I'm like,
(08:59):
that's the cupcake shop, you know, Like I didn't really
know much about you know, I knew the red velvet
cake and I used to go down there and blah
blah blah. But suddenly you were CEO of Magnolia Bakery,
and then suddenly Magnolia Bakery was doing all this stuff
that I'm like, wow, I had no idea. I had
no idea. How did you end up going to Magnolia Bakery?
(09:21):
First of all, what was the tipping point, the pivot
point that moved you there versus staying in, you know,
full service restaurants.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
So my prior business partner, Steve Abrams, we had owned
another two businesses together before Magnolia, and he had met
the original owner. Because I kind of call myself founder
two point zero.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
That's my latest way to because I didn't create Magnomy.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Someone else did, but they really created something quite beautiful.
I had owned a restaurant in Boston in the early
eighties that had a retail bakery at the front of
the restaurant. It was called American Accent, and the type
of desserts that we made were very much what Magnolia
Bakery does today. So I had my bakery in nineteen
eighty four. Magnolia Bakery opens in nineteen ninety six. I'm
(10:07):
introduced to it in like two thousand and four, and
I went, oh my god, they stole my menu because
it's that American style desserts that we make at home,
that are beloved recipes that are handed down generation to generation,
all very much the same. So when Steve Abrams met
the original owner at a party and they discussed buying
(10:27):
the bakery, he called me and said, Hey, I have
got this opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Would you want to come on board.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
I was a beanstalk at the time, and I was like, ooh, yes,
great opportunity. That takes me full circle back to my
love of not only baking, but by this point I
also had my business acumen down. I understood how to
run a profitable business, how to manage the numbers on
a day to day basis, how to build a culture
(10:54):
within the company, and how to maintain the hospitality. My
goal was for Magnoli is to take that hospitality and
fine dining where you've got a customer for two hours,
you have a lot of opportunities right to deliver great hospitality.
In retail food service like Magnolia Bakery, you've got two
to three minutes. And so the goal was how do
(11:15):
we continue that experience. The food is great, they love
the quality of the ingredients, they love what we're doing,
but we want them to walk out the door with.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
It's also this amazing connection to our brand.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And hope be a bag of goodies, uh, you know
and repeat. You know. It is an interesting move because
you work. I mean, I loved Redcat, that was my favorite,
one of my favorite restaurants in the city. And her,
especially Jimmy Brawdley, amazing. That's a bigger operation, much more complex,
a lot of moving parts. But the retail operation, and
(11:46):
particularly a bakery, you've got very specific products. It's you know,
you've got you know, You've got you know, different kinds
of pastries and desserts, and it's very focused and you
have you have a very target audience too, you know,
who likes to come in and buy. But what I
think is interesting what you've done is that you have
(12:07):
taken this brand around the world and I know that
this has included product product extensions amazingly impressive and creative
partnerships which I want to talk to because I'm big
on partnerships. And now you're franchising, which is a big
step to go from company owned to franchising.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So we've been doing international franchising since twenty ten, and
part of it feels like the international franchising is a
little bit easier than the domestic side. Internationally, we're teaching
people how to bake from scratch flour, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate,
some dairy. You know, we use three kinds of sugar,
two kinds of flour, cream, cheese with cream, butter. You
(12:52):
teach people how to bake from scratch, and you take
that ingredient. Listen, you do an algorithm, you could probably
create two billion different desserts, adding some fruit every now
and then. Right So, internationally we're in seven different countries.
We have thirty seven locations right now, and we're growing.
By the end of the year, we'll have over forty internationally.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Yeah, and by oh gosh, by twenty thirty, we'll probably
have seventy five.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Or more locations opened because.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Our existing franchises continue to open more and more, and
so domestically we have to actually create systems because we
want to make sure that the experience is very much
the same of what you're having in our home stores.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
We've made from scratch. We teach our people how to,
you know, work from technique.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
But internationally, I think it's really interesting too, because in
every country that we're in we do a little nod
to that country of the ingredients that they use.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
So maybe in the Middle East.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
It'll be pistachios and almonds, dates, things like that. Saffron
we have this beautiful saffron marine buttercream on top of
a date orange cupcake. And then in India it will
be more focused on mango or they also like pistachio
a lot.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
So we're always.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Working within the local flavor profile of the country, but
staying true to our product mix. So I might be
in the Middle East, but I'm not doing traditional Middle
Eastern desserts. We're doing ar cheese cake, but we're adding
their ingredients that are our favorite to the community.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think that's so interesting. I was wondering about that
because another one of my favorite people, and she was
my first client, believe it or not, Bobby, was Sarah
Beth Lavin. And Sarahbeth also Thank You. Her husband Bill
built a global brand. And I saw her at the
Fancy Food Show a couple of years ago and I said,
how's it going. She's like, oh, we're doing great, and
she said, I'm selling My pancakes are selling like hotcakes
(14:45):
in Japan. Japan loves my pancakes, and I'm really She said, yeah,
I can't make enough pancakes and you can't. So I said, wow, like,
I didn't know that pancakes were such a big deal
in Japan. But are you I love the fact that
you tailor and adapt per culture to embrace the natural
flavors and traditions. Are you finding as you go that
(15:08):
certain products sell better in certain You have a very
strong Middle Eastern Middle East, by the way, are you
finding certain products sell better in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
And that's why he loved that question, because it is
very true that in the Middle East they love sugar.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
In Southeast Asia they don't like as sweet. So in
Southeast Asia.
Speaker 5 (15:30):
Where we're in the Philippines, in India we used to
be in Japan as well, they wanted the butter cream
to be less sweet. And so we actually did this
little chart that is like a thermometer. We called it
the sweetometer, and we would name the butter cream so
it would be like classic American style butter cream being
the sweetest.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
But there were other options.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
You don't want it as sweet, go to meringe butter cream,
go to chocolate butter cream. And so the customer could
then assess what level of sweetness.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
They wanted to get. Isn't that great? It's really fun,
that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
But that takes a lot of trialing area. I mean,
you have to do you have a culture researcher on
your team who goes in to work with you to
understand the like I know, like I did a story
like dates are a very big deal in Muslim countries,
particularly Ramadan. They eat a lot of dates at the
end of to break fast because you get just enough
sugar without too much sugar. Do you have someone researching
(16:23):
the culture for every country you go into or is
that part of what the franchise e does.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
That's a great question too, because we do both.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
We want the franchise e to be the one to
determine if this brand is the right brand to go.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Into their country.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
But then we also look at things like how does
your culture celebrate.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Holidays, what type of sweets.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
You know you're in America, we celebrate with cake, we
celebrate with dessert, we celebrate with pie. But that's not
necessarily the case everywhere in the Middle East. It's gift
platters of dry fruits. So it's either that we have
to train the customer to order cakes in that because
maybe cake is not a popular thing. You know. Even
when we first opened in the Middle East, we hired
(17:06):
an executive international chef and international pastry chef. This guy's
remember those fifteen years. He has incredible experience. He's worked
in giant hotels, incredible beautiful cakes, you know, ten stories
high way more experienced than me. But he had never
made American style desserts. American style cakes. The way we
(17:29):
make things is a basic formula. Cookies and cakes are
very similar to cream the butter three to five minutes,
slowly add the sugar, add the eggs one at a time,
and then you add the dry and the wet alternately.
That's pretty much the basis for making most cakes. But
that's not the European way to make cakes. So we
had to kind of retrain him and teach him how
(17:50):
to work with our American style pastries. Then we had
to teach the staff.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Who's coming into work in these restaurants what these desserts are.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
You actually brought something up, so you know, I just
did the book about icebox.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Desserts, right, They didn't know. I remember when we first
went there to train the question was what's.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
An icebox exactly?
Speaker 5 (18:11):
We all know automatically what an icebox is. Icebox desserts
have been around in the US since the nineteen thirties
and completely understand it.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
In the Middle East said no idea what an icebox was.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
So we had to restructure our training and show them
a photograph of an old fashioned ice box with the
block of ice in it, and then the old fashioned
recipes to understand like, oh, it comes from the refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Well, you know, bombie. I looked up ice box desserts
because your first book is the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, and
you have this amazing new I don't have the book,
but it's called Magnolia Bakery ice box Desserts. I live
in New Orleans now it is so hot. It is
so hot, So icebox desserts is a great concept. You're cool,
refreshing desserts. I had to look up what an icebox
(18:56):
dessert is. Icebox where I grew up in the deep
set was what you used to call the refrigerator. I'm
going to go to the ice box now, and you
used to go buy ready ice. They still have ice
boxes in Florida, Louisiana as you drive around, you can
go to Ready Ice and you can go get your
ice in the ice box near a Goat gas station
(19:18):
and go buy Ready Ice. Used to I used to
have stock and Ready Ice at zero now, but anyway,
they still have these old ice boxes. So I was
fascinated about that, and I said to David. My asp
was like, I got to make one of these desserts because.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
You don't have you have to send this to you.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, yeah, well, well of course. And I went to
your store locator at Magnolia Bakery dot com to see
if I can find any of the frozen trees. I found.
I found one store maybe like it's called Go Puff
or something, I don't know. Its somewhere past Jackson Square.
Kind of a weird neighborhood for the frozen banana banana
(19:56):
pudding tree. Because banana pudding is a stable here. You
go to Tennessee or anywhere around the holidays and you
literally have an aisle end with all your ingredients to
make banana pudding.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Banana pudding has become our hero product.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
It is the massive and you know for many years,
so we're almost thirty years old that we just turned
twenty nine next year is going to be a big celebration.
When Steve Baberns and I bought the bakery from the
original owner in two thousand and six, banana pudding was
kind of this little sleeper dessert.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
They'd make some, it'd sell out and be gone for
the day.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
When we took over, it was like, hey, people really
like this, Let's start making more.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
And the more we made, the more we sold.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Then I started adding new flavors and some of them
are now banana lest So like last month in July,
we did blueberry crisp pudding. So it's the vanilla pudding
base with a blueberry pie filling with a crisp topping
layered into it. It is so insanely good. And then
I added lemon into the pudding to have a little
(21:01):
popa lemon flavor.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
It is amazing.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So you continue to add more and more flavors to
our profile.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
But three years ago I created a new, never been
done before product.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Which is a thaw and serve frozen banana pudding that
you thaw and serve as a pudding temperature. And the
way I explain it to people is think of like
cool whip. If I cool whip in the freezer section.
But you don't eat it frozen, you thaw it out
to refrigerated temperature.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Right, So this is like that kind of product. But
the cool thing is it comes in a fourteen ounce container.
You can go in and out of the freezer three times.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
So if for some reason you can't eat the whole
container in one sitting, you could eat a frozen if
you wanted to. You can thaw it out to refrigerated temperature,
eat some of it, put it back in the freezer,
and go back and forth.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Oh, it just sounds divine.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
And the way I explained it to it people is, well,
is it the same as the fresh pudding? And the
answer is no, it's not because the fresh banana pudding
is actually, as you know of being from the South,
it's vanilla pudding with slices of bananas and vanilla wafers.
This one is actually a banana pudding. There's banana puree
in the pudding.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Oh that sounds good.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Yeah, so there's no sliced bananas. It's all mixed together.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And so I say it's different, but equally if good
as good, if not better.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Well, David loves bananas, eats him every day We've been
making homemade yogurt and I've been mashing the bananas in it,
and then I'll take almond butter and mash the bananas
and almond butter and mash it all over. It's actually
really good, yeah, because you know, you peanut butter and banana.
I like almond butter, but you can mash it all
in and you've got it's all mixed in together already,
and you could freeze it then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
So you know, I always said that the problem with
bananas bananas turned brown when they put them in a refrigerator.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
It's what they do, know.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
So there's always a challenge of how do you get
shelf life out of a banana pudding with ice bananas.
Within twenty four hours they will start to turn brown.
And so I was in my little test kitchen and
I said, you know, I have two things I need
to solve. One is the banana. How do I keep
it from turning brown? It's like, don't put slice banas
in it. So that was uzapuree. But the second one
(23:16):
was that the wafers, the longer that they sit in
a pudding, the softer they get.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So the next thing yes, how do I suspend that?
Freeze it? So I froze it. I was like, oh,
this is good.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
So I think we have a fick picture. I sent
one one my engineer. Do we have pictures of this treat?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's the banana pudding. What is that the banana putting bar?
Is that it? Or is this something else?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
That is something that we just launched. So I'm so
glad you guys have this photograph. So we just launched.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
And two of our stores in New York City and
now we're launching in LA and Chicago.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It is a little bar.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
You come in and we will scoop and build the
pudding in front of you. And there's four options of flavors.
There's the red velvet. That one is a brownie caramel,
just so instantly good. We also have a hazel nut
like an autella mix, and the one is cookies and cream.
Besides carrying our monthly flavor and our classic putting already
(24:14):
pre packed on our pudding bar, you can come and
if you want to customize it, you can also do that.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
It's really wild.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
That sounds amazing. And this is the ice Box Dessert
cook But okay, look how beautiful that lay that. I
think I may I think I may have sold my
cake my cake holder with the estate sale. But they're
all over the place. But that's beautiful. I love the
Nila Vanilla wafers. I like them when they get slightly mushy.
I love Nila Vanilla wafers. I also like those chocolate
(24:47):
refrigerator cookies that collum.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Those cookies. By the way, the Visco stopped making them,
the chocolate.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Food It's really interesting because they stopped them because they
used to come in this long, skinny box about I
don't know how many of them in the box, maybe twenty.
People have gone crazy because they stopped making them. But
then they launched last year the Oreo Thins. If you've
had the Oreo thins, they're really good. I've been using
the Oreo Thins to make some of the ice box
(25:16):
desserts and it works really well. Because there's cookies.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I got to try that. I do the baking, David
does the other cooking proteins, as they say, and I
do the South. But that looks just delicious and it's
very It's a big thing here. Desserts are a big
thing in the South. The bigger it's like your hair.
The bigger the hair, the bigger dessert, more you want it.
And you know, actually this.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Is something the original owner she wasn't from the South,
she was from.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
New York City. But the baser name Tori and Jennifer
Oppel to women. But the recipes are really very.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Southern style because it's a Southern style and magnolia it's
magnolia is.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
A Southern flower, right yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
And the desserts are sweet, so that that really is
sort of how this whole vikery evolved of sweet style
American Southern. You know, there's this one dessert it's a
coconut cake and that thing is massively huge with the
meringue icing all over the top of it, and people
crazy when they see it. And that recipe actually came
from a customer who is from the South.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Coconut cake. You're gonna have big toll cocona cake. The
big dessert down Well, there are a lot of desserts
down here, bread pudding, dough, berge cake, which is like
this wonderful cake with like twenty five thin layers. I
think it was Red Agambinos makes it. It's to die for.
And there's a there's a bakery down here called Debi
(26:44):
does dough berge and a lot of little It's interesting
here in New Orleans bakings and big traditions. You have
a lot of independent bakers doing things. I think only
one of them has had fun and Nola's success getting
her product into whole foods Chia buy Water Bakery, She's
(27:06):
done well, But a lot of my other ones are
just you know, single and they ship shipping, you know,
go belly whatever. Is great. But for anyone who's thinking
about taking their stepping up their business and wanting to
take it, what are some things that you would advise
them to be prepared to address if they are seeking
(27:29):
like funding for example, or strategic partnerships. And here you
can give examples of some of the amazing wines you're doing.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
So one of my greatest joys in life is actually
mentoring women, good, especially young women.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
I didn't when I was growing up in this business.
There weren't women to mention me.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I mostly had to deal with men mentioning you, which
was great. But one thing I always ask, because entering
the big world is pretty easy. You buy a table,
a mixer in an oven, and you're open for business.
You know, don't have to have a ton of skill.
You got to be creative and create a product that
tastes good. First question I asked is why do you
want to open the bakery, And if the answer is
(28:06):
I love to bake, it's okay. Let's sit down and
talk about this because you won't bake anymore. Maybe it'll
bake for the first few months, but you're going to
be paying the village. You're going to paying the electric bill,
You're going to be paying for the employees. You're going
to deal with a lawsuit because someone fell in front
of your store. You're going to be a business owner now,
and so understanding all of the responsibilities that come with
(28:28):
being a business owner means you are not going to
be a baker anymore.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
If you love to bake, get a partner.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Get a partner who will be the business owner, and
figure out how the two of you can work together.
My first business I ever opened, I had a partner,
a restaurant, a cafe, American Accident in Booklin Village in Boston.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
It was the only way to really have the two.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Things that both of us could bring us our expertise
to the table.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Because you've got to be.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
In two different areas at the same time, and it's
really hard to.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Do on other people.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
As CEO of this company, I have two major advisors.
My advisors are someone who's been a CEO and two
other big companies that did consumer product goods. We launched
a cookie at Magnolia Bakery on grocery store shelf.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
I never did that before.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
I didn't have that experience, and so we brought in
an advisor to I can call them on the phone
anytime I need help with franchising. It was the same
thing I had not done domestic franchising, So I want
help from an expert. I want someone who's done it,
someone I can reach out to and ask.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
You.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
The Queen of dumb questions I always call myself is
I'm not afraid to ask any question, and so use
those resources that are out there. Women as friends, put
it on Facebook, put it on LinkedIn, reach out to
people because everyone really and you do it too.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
People like to help.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You know, is international franchising different from domestic franchising, because
I know you did international first and now you into
the national and I went on to see your You
can go on Magnolia Bakery dot com. And there's a
section about that, and the first thing it says is
do you have retail operation experience? So yes, don't say
I'd like to bake.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Internationally, it's usually much bigger deals.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
They're going to buy the rights to ten to fifteen
locations over a period of time.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Because you have a really big upfront cost.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
You've got to hire a chef, you've got to get
the ingredients there, you've got to do the training, which
takes a really long time. Internationally, because we're starting from zero. Domestically,
there's in some ways it's a little bit easier once
you have your system set up because we have a
supply chain here in the US, so it's easier for
our US franchises and our own locations to get.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
A product, whereas internationally.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
Like something as simple as as vanilla wafers, they're not
available in almost every single country, so we even have
to import them, which is expensive especially.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Now, or you know, or we have to find a
local manufacturer.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
We've created a recipe that is willing to take on
making a lot of vanilla wafers. We did that in Japan,
we're doing that in Turkey right now. Because you don't
want to have to import those things. And so one
of the things our chef does is as we sign
a new country, he goes into that market and works
with the franchise to find the local ingredients that are
(31:29):
available at a good cost so they don't have to import.
And if it means adjusting recipes, we will recreate a
recipe to use their local ingredients. Sweeting condensed milk is
another one. It's not available in most countries, and if
it is, it's slightly different.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Than what we have here, so it might be more.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Bucus or less viscous, which means we have to change
the putting ratios a little bit.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
We want the same end flavor. We want there to be.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
No discernible difference, but it might mean that we have
to change the ratio of the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Also, interestingly, David bakes here and it's very humid in
the summer, and so you have to adjust to humidity
and altitude and sea level and all of that. Because
we were he was lamenting that one of his English
muffin bread, the James Beard recipe, just wasn't the same
in the recent batch. And I said, well, it's awful
humid and hot right now. Maybe that had something to
do with it, and.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
That's been one of my favorite recipes my entire life.
That's so great.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Loves that recipe, he loves that book, Beard on Bread
and I'll talked to Sandy Wand whose family owns Leidenheimer's
Steve Big and he said, we have to adjust are
baking for the hot season and the uber hot season,
which is like right now, and it's the same when
you're baking. So there's so many deals. I would think
(32:50):
with the tea for tariffs happening that you may have
some products that you're gonna have to Are you having
to resource certain things? I mean, aren't nill of the
Nillaway first Maid of the United States? But what about Yeah?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Yeah, so all of our vanilla wafers are here.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
That's why we're kind of working on resources internationally for
vanilla wa for US chocolate, yes.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
It's imported. So that is going up in price.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Vanilla going up in price, some of the packaging is
going up in the price. But we're working very closely
with all of our distributors and the and even the
manufacturers that we work with. I went to a chocolate
tasting yesterday at the Chocolate Academy here in New York
City and looked at new ingredients that they're they have available,
new forms of vanilla that maybe you know in the
(33:36):
Middle East, we can't use vanilla with alcohol in it.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I found this really cool product. Actually literally have
been sitting here on my desk a little tiny.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Jar that it's a pure vanilla extract like a paste.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
But it's really cool.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
You can use so much less of it than liquid
vanilla with the extract with alcohol in it, and it
adds no color.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
So these are the kind of things we continually look.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
For, is how do we improve help our costs and
our bottom line, but also get better ingredients.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So what part of your time? First of all, I
read in an article that you walk to work it's
about an hour and use that time to think. And
as I was taking my morning walk, I was thinking
about you, because I use that time whether I'm walking
or we have a pool and I swim, and that's
when I literally gather my thoughts and literally write articles
in my head and prepare scripts. So I'm on the
(34:28):
same page with you about that. What percentage of your
time now is spent dealing with recipe development and research?
R and R and development, And mean, you have two
cookbooks under your belt, the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook and the
Magnolia Bakery Ice Box Dessert. What percentage of your time
is still doing that part of the business versus the business?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Not enough my answer, because I think that's my happy place.
If I turned my around, I would show you.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
I have a test kids, and literally I'm looking at
it right here. And so when I do have an idea,
I've got my convection of and commercial kitchen that I
can pop into the kitchen and throw a few things together.
So today, this moment i'm in right now, I'm not
doing as much as.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
I normally do.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
I need a little more time to get our franchise
division fully launched. We just hired a bunch of new people.
But the wheels are always turning. So even though I
physically have done two books, I've got the third book
in here.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I know what it's going to be.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
I'm thinking, Yes, Breakfast from Magnolia is what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Well, breakfast is a good one, right.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
So it's you know, luff and stones, coffee cakes, pancakes.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
French toes, French toes, those kinds of things.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
But it is also like I had a meeting this
morning with my operation services team, and for the first
time in the history of Magnolia Baker, I actually have
a culinary person that reports to me. I can and
this is an interesting thing about chefs and the way
we think. I know in my head what I want
(36:04):
something to I know what it's going to taste like,
but I can't necessarily explain it to you.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
I have to actually make it first. So I will do.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
The first round so I can say this is what
I'm looking for, and then I give it to my
culinary person who commercializes it in a way that we
can make it at Magnolia Bakery.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
What format are we turning it into. How wo do
we do this in scale?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
How do we build it up to a larger recipe
and we sit in a table and we literally taste things.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
We sit around the table and talk about it. What
ingredients would I.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
Incorporate this Sometimes I don't want us to have to
buy another ingredient, so I'm trying to figure out to
create a new item using what we already.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Have in the house.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
But from doing this for so many years, it literally
I do know what things are going to taste like
before I make them.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
I do that. I've been making a homemaker renola. That's
my thing right now, and I'm so in to it, Bobby.
And first of all, I'm saving money because granola is expensive.
I'm saving on sugar and making sure that I know
what's going into it. And it's like a little creative
thing for me. It's so much fun. I think about
the products, and you know, I think it's great because
you're creating and then you have someone to standardize the recipes.
(37:17):
You've got to have your standard and then when you're
doing franchises, you've got to have it like systemized. When
I was first working in public relations, i worked with
them I can't believe it's yogurt and they were franchising,
so I learned about the whole Yeah, the whole franchising concept.
And for anyone who is not ready to have their
own business, buying into the right franchise could be a
(37:39):
great option. I've actually, i've actually looked at it because
I never want to have another business, but it's a
great option because the systems are in place and you've
got the guidelines. But you have to, you know, love
what you're doing and follow the rules. You can't just
go out and suddenly like take it on your own.
It's a system, but it's a great way to build.
And many successful people multiple franchises, right.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
One of the things I look about, especially in the
US for domestic franchising, is that we've been doing this
for a really long time. Our New York City stores
are very very busy in really tiny little spaces.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And I'm not kidding. I got a Bleaker Street the
original location. There's only six hundred square feet, and we
see thousands of tiny we.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
See thousands customers, and we baked from scratch everything in
that location. So we have a formulate way of usually
the way I describe it as I start with our
vanilla cake. So I created the vanilla cake recipe. It's
been updated over the years so that it's kind of
like a base recipe. If I want to turn that
(38:44):
into a caramel cake, I replace the white sugar with
brown sugar. If I want to make a strawberry cake,
I replace the milk or buttermilk with strawberry puree. And
so I've got about fifteen recipes. An Earl Gray cake
sniffer do a little cakes literally so many recipes that
use the exact same based formula.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
So when I teach people how.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
To make that one recipe, they now have a lexicon
of recipes that they can make.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
And so for.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Franchisees, it's not as difficult as it might they might
think it would be because it's based on formulas.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, and it's it's it makes sense and actually makes
things sound easier when you realize you start with the
base and then you you adapt as you go. It's
like when I do my granola, I know I'm going
to have oats, and then after that it's whatever I
feel like putting in it. So I have to say
I love I. First of all, I went gaga over
your promotion with kids Sneakers because Ken should just hire me.
(39:42):
Now I'm a cad I have like six pairs of cats.
I love ket I bought the pink ones. I bought
the pink ones and they're so cute. And now you're
doing with a lip gloss, the banana putting gliplus those
are creative? Why? Because you're taking your product into fast
or consumer products beauty goods, what personal care product? How
(40:05):
did that come about? And can you share anything else
you're working on.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Well, sure, So these collaborations first are off are phenomenal.
We have a person that runs that division. Her name
is Sarah Grammley. She's been in the company fifteen years.
She does an amazing job, and a lot of it
has to do with relationships, you know, and most of
these are incoming. We don't go out and necessarily seek
the relationships. So the most recent one we did was
(40:30):
the banana putting lip gloss with Glossier that was global.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
They sold out in three days.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Amazing, amazing, It's incredible, and the way Sarah put this
whole launch together really, I mean, she did such an
amazing job for our brand.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
But what it does actually, when I tried it.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
Put the lip gloss on, it's this little tube of
these hanging bananas on.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
I have to get some, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Sold out, It's gone. Can you even get them?
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You're kidding much so.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
Fast because a limited time offer. But I put it
on my lips and I went.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
Oh my god, I want to eat my lips because
so many times those things that are banana flavored had
that really nasty taste to it.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
This actually tasted like our banana pudding was really good cool. Yeah,
sold out so fast. I think it's completely gone in
the market.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (41:22):
We love those kind of collaborations because it opens up
the brand to it could be another generation, a different
group of consumers. So when it may not have heard
of us, I mean about five or five, four or
five years ago, we did one with Tula, which is
Alta you know, the makeup company.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Strolling aside for it.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
They did a banana putting body scrub and it was
in twenty five hundred stores across the country.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
And who would have thought a banana putting body scrub.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
And it also sold out really fast, and it had
again that same like this smells and tastes like real bananas.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
How did they do it?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Wow? I could think of some other things that I
would do with that banana putting, but we'll take it
off screen for those anyway. But there's a lot of
good options there. I've interviewed a few women I'll can
introduce you to for women at the fifty.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
But I actually have to add one more.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
I don't know if you know it, but we do
have an edible chocolate with a company called Edibles out
of really Yeah, it's ten milligrams of THC in chocolate.
The piece that they do and it's we can't sell it,
but they did a banana pudding chocolate bar and a
red velvet chocolate bar.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
There's big down here in New Orleans. I mean the
Weekly Gambit uh news magazine or whatever it's called. Monthly
Gambit has a whole section delted canvas cannabis and t
HC beverages and bars. It is big, big business. I'd
like to break into it. I mean, I have friends
who cannot drink alcohol. They can't for medical reasons, but
(42:56):
they will be gladly embracing a THHD or Delta nine product.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Chocolate.
Speaker 5 (43:04):
So I don't I don't invite myself. I can't do it,
but people have told me it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
So yeah, and you know, yeah, it's you know, I
have people that that's I was just the tails of
the cocktail, and they had a certain number still a
small amount, but of THHC products and the they're selling
like gangbusters. So that whole area is a whole other
(43:31):
way to go. Interestingly, yeah, we had the time I
read an interesting article in the New York Times this week.
I was telling David about it on our morning walk,
and I'm wondering how you would handle this. I read
that in I think it's Martha's Vineyard there is a tick,
a deer tick called the alpha gal. Like alpha gal
sounds trendy, right, but it's it's sure for something really
(43:54):
long I can't pronounce. But that tick, if it bites you,
makes you violently allergic to anaphylacic levels to dairy and meat.
And there was a baker, Yes, you read this article.
It's actually shocking, and there was a baker who has
been impacted and is trying to create vegan crulers in
(44:15):
Martha's like like a huge percentage of people in Martha's
Vineyard are now vegans in this week's New York Times.
But I'm wondering how you, as Magnelia Baker, with everybody
seemingly having food allergies, now, are you thinking about creating
line extensions hear to that. I mean they're literally having
to create that in Martha's Vineyard menus that are vegan
(44:39):
for people who could die if they had butter.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
You know, you just wanted to look that up.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
So yeah, I like this question because it's something we
have addressed for many years.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
So the gluone free question was the first one.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
My sister is a Celiac, a very severe celiac, so
I'm very fully aware and understand of the people who
suffer from these things. We launched a gluten free banana
pudding a number of years ago. I had to source
a gluten free cookie that was the only thing that
wasn't gluten free, and what we found was that people
ask for it, but then it doesn't sell, and so
(45:16):
we were constantly.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Throwing away gluten free banana putting everything because it has
a very short shelf life.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
So we ended up transitioning to that to the only
way to get it now is you have to order
it in advance, and then we have to be able
to get the wafers because they're not readily available. They
only come in a retail box. You can't buy them
in a food service size container, so we don't stock
and store them on a regular basis. The next one
was the request for vegan banana pudding, mostly coming from
(45:45):
our LA customer base. So a couple of beers ago,
he said, you know what, let's launch a limited time
offering for this vegan banana pudding. And it was very
complicated for two reasons. One, finding a vegan wafer was
not to do, and it was very expensive and it
was only available in retail packaging. So we did find some,
(46:06):
and then we had to do vegan sweet and condensed
milk and vegan cream. Now, the difference with vegan cream
is regular heavy whipping cream when you whip it doubles
in volume.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Vegan cream does not.
Speaker 5 (46:20):
It thickens, but it doesn't double in volume, so you
have to use almost twice the amount of cream to
get the volume that you need of that whipped texture.
It ended up being outrageously expensive for us to produce,
and so we had to sell it for every It
was like twelve ninety nine for a twelve ounce container,
and kind of the same thing happened is that people
(46:42):
asked for it, they wanted it, but then they didn't
really buy it. So we did a limited time offer
to just test the waters, and then we said, now
I'm not going to work. Having said all of that,
we are in India and in the Middle East where
they don't want eggs, So we have created a lot
of eggless recipes for art cakes.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Do you use aqua faba or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (47:05):
And they're happy that they're used to it, they know it,
they love it, but we have to create recipes specifically
for that audience.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And I think it's in Japan. There's a lot of
issues with dairy products in certain agient countries. Yeah, so
you have to be careful there. I mean the dietary
changes and then you know you've got the nun allergy
use people. And you know, I thought David's like, oh,
take your granola and turn into a business. I'm like, Na,
that's the nut thing, you know, like I don't want
to get into because the business said you've got to
(47:33):
be prepared for lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
And one thing. You know, there's so many people that
are on.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
You JLP one and someone asked me the other day
how it's affecting our business, and I said, we're busier
than ever. So I look at our product base as
I had sugar every day. I do love my cookie
or something, a bite of something.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
We're meant to be an indulgence.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
It's not meant to be eating a big compass cake
and a big banana pudding every single day. But it's
an indulgence and people have choices. So you're going to
eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
Every day you're.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Going to eat a meal, you're going to go to
a restaurant, you're going to come. The restaurants compete because
you're trying to decide where you're going.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
To go for dinner.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
But in the sweeth world, the competition is that you
might want ice cream today and you might want a
cookie tomorrow, and the next day you're going to have
banana pudding or maybe only two times a week. So
people are still shopping, they're still indulging, and our business
is better than ever.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
So well, I'm glad to hear that because there was
another New York Times article about that and how restaurants
are downsizing their portions, and I'm like, oh my god,
it's just getting so complicated in the world. Well, I
think we're at the end of our show. I want
to briefly before we leave, quickly quickly, one flash up
the books and I just want to let everybody know
(48:55):
we've been talking with Bobby Lloyd, who's CEO and Chief
baking Officer at Magnolia Bakery. The flagship is on the
corner of Greenwich Village and what's the street.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
It's West Village. It's on eleventh baker right on the.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
It's behind me in my photo and uh, if you
go to the website, you can find out where you
can order products and gold Billy and all those things
and where the locations are and learn more about the company.
I've literally enjoyed catching up with you. I had talked
to you really since I kind of ran into you
at a Lo dom D'scoffi event in New York a
few years ago, and then we interviewed you on the
(49:32):
Connected table for the first book, The Benola Bakery Cookbook.
The new book is The Magnolia Bakery Ice Box Desserts.
I love the concept of icebox because it's hot down.
Speaker 5 (49:42):
Here too, right, It's really like nowt icebox.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Well, hopefully you'll have a Magnolia Bakery somewhere in Louisiana.
You never know.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
I would be self franchised there. That would be wonderful. Now,
I've always been so supportive. I really appreciate the time,
and thank you so much for your love Magnelia Bakery.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Thank you so much. You've been listening to Fearless Fabulous
You with Melanie Young. I love spotlighting inspiring women entrepreneurs
because I want everyone to know that you have a
choice in life on how you want to live your life.
Always choose that on your terms, and always choose fearless
and fabulous. Thank you so much and have a great day.
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