Bread and Television: A Producer's Perspective with Jim Serpico

On this episode of Bread For the People, host Jim Serpico takes a break from his usual interview format and shares a personal reflection on the end of the Screen Actors Guild strike. As a successful television producer who has worked on hit shows such as Rescue Me and Maron, Jim offers unique insight into the physical and mental demands of both the entertainment and bread-making industries. He shares details about his career journey and future plans for his businesses. Tune in for this insightful and candid conversation about the intersection of art, commerce, and passion.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
My name's Jim Curpico. And thisshould I start with my name? What
should I start with? This isbread for the people. Do you like
it like this? Welcome to bread? Or do you like it like this?
Welcome, ready, Welcome to breadfor the people? Mine? Is
there a script for all the people? Welcome to Bread for the people.

(00:26):
I'm Jim Curproico. Today, episodeeighty one, we have a very special
guest from Long Island, New York. He's a bread baker. He's a
television producer, talent manager and comedyrecord label owner. Please welcome me.

(00:47):
That's right, I'm here alone today. I thought i'd do a solo podcast.
I did one recently. I hada good time. I don't know
if my audience liked it, althoughI did get some positive feedback, especially
from doctor Kukuza, which I reallyappreciate. He urged me to do some

(01:08):
more solos. And I think now'sthe time. The time to do a
solo podcast is now. Why isit now because the SAG strike is over?
What does that mean to a breadbaker? I thought I'd use this
opportunity to tell you all a littlebit more about myself. You know,

(01:34):
me as a bread baker. Iam the co founder of Side Hustle Artisanal
Bread here in Long Island, NewYork. I started this company with my
wife and three children at the beginningof the pandemic. We did it as
a joke. We did it asa creative outlet so that we could make

(01:56):
videos of us making bread on Instagram, and I personally got sucked into the
art of breadmaking. The Instagram accounttook off relatively, you know, it's
a relative term. It took off. We don't have millions of followers,
we don't even have ten thousand followers, but from zero to almost six thousand

(02:21):
making bread, it was kind ofblowing our mind. And we got asked
to do farmers' markets and we starteddoing them. Over the course of the
three years, some members of myfamily lost interest in certain parts, which
is maybe not even fair to say. You know, life moves on as

(02:42):
the pandemic ends and the world opensup, and one of my kids moves
back to finish his studies and pursuehis career in entertainment in Los Angeles.
One of my sons is in hissecond year of college in another state,
and my other son is also pursuinghis career, and he shoots video,

(03:10):
he edits. He works occasionally forMetallica, I think goes on the road
with them. He works occasionally onthe road more than occasionally with the comedian
Jim Brewer, and that leaves mywife and I running Side Hustle alone.
And things have been going well withthe bread company, but there are ups

(03:34):
and downs. Side Hustle is obviouslya very small company, and we specialize
in basically direct to consumer. Ourbread sells. I guess what the average
person in the country might sell aloaf of sourdough for. We sell a
thirty out sourdough for approximately ten dollars. If it's infused, we might sell

(03:57):
it for slightly more. I don'tthink, you know. People want me
to wholesale or ask if I wholesale, and I've tried it, and I
don't really love the nature of wholesalefor me because I'm so small, I
can only produce so much bread,and that ten dollars loaf I sell out
a farmer's market, I'd have tosell three dollars if even to a supermarket.

(04:19):
So I've tried it. It doesn'tappeal to me. So I'm at
a spot with the bread business nowwhere you know, I can only scale
so much at the size of thecompany where we're at, and you know,
it makes me think, why didI get into this? I think

(04:40):
it was circumstantial. I think itwas circumstantial. I by trade am a
television producer. I have produced moviesand documentaries as well. I've managed talent,
specifically comedians, and I do havea record label that specializes in comedy
albums. The record label that Iown is called Virtual Comedy Network, and

(05:03):
I've had everyone, not everyone,but I mean hundreds of comedians like Gary
Goleman. There's just so many comediansthat have been on our label. And
we were putting out four albums thisyear. And I'm still active in the
comedy business. I manage a comediannamed Jared Freed and we just had a

(05:28):
Netflix special that came out in August, and that's still on Netflix if you
want to check it out. Butyou know, in March twenty twenty,
by and large, the business thatI was in for thirty years shut down.
There were no more live appearances asa television producer, writer director.
I'm a member of the Writers Guild. I'm in the director's guild. I

(05:51):
produced the series. I was theexecutive producer, one of three executive producers
of Rescue Me, which was anFX series starring Tennis Leary, and we
produced one hundred episodes of that.I helped an executive produced and was one
of the onset producers of the showMaren with Mark Maren. I approached Mark

(06:15):
and said, I have to listento his podcast, and he was one
of the first podcasters around, andI loved this podcast, and I hit
him up early on and said,let's try to develop a Larry Sanders type
show around your podcast. And weultimately did that, and that show was
on the air for four seasons ona network called IFC, the Independent Film

(06:40):
Channel, and then went to Netflix. Blah blah blah. Telling you that
to set the context when the businessshut down and I found this hobby that
was giving me joy, I didn'treally think about a plan. I just
went forward and kept trying to whatcould I do with this next? What

(07:03):
could I Where could I take this? Okay, we're going to try a
farmer's market. I personally before thatnever had time to even attend the farmer's
market. But I brought we broughtforty loaves of bread. We sold forty
loaves of bread. So the nextstep is, let's make seventy loaves of
bread out of a home. Andwe did that. Bah blah blah.

(07:27):
So what are we three and ahalf years later. You know, I
wanted to take it to the nextlevel, but I also wanted to keep
it small, and by small Imean personnel. I still don't necessarily want
to take the risk of big overhead. Uh So I went into the mobile

(07:47):
cafe business right because if I ifI were to take the deep dive into
bread, I would go and tryto emulate something like my friend Bob Oswax,
who I know from the television businesswhen he was a marketing executive at
Sony opened up a bakery slash cafecalled Bob's Well Bread and he's doing great

(08:11):
and essentially it's a cafe and abakery. So I thought in my head
rather than actually take the plunge herein Long Island, because you know,
if you don't know, the priceseverywhere are crazy, but in Long Island,
the retail rent space is just nuts. And I still can't put my

(08:31):
head around how people pull it off, you know, and what I mean
by pull it off is how dothey pay the rent, pay all the
other things you need to pay forfrom attorneys to insurance, to payroll,
and sell enough bread and sandwiches tohave anything left. You know, the

(08:52):
minimum rent out here for something verysmall will be five thousand a month.
Thing a lot of people are payingtwenty thousand a month. I can't get
my head right now. So anyway, we do the food truck, and
in my mind it's a mobile cafe. It's a much smaller version of Bob's
well Bred that primarily functions on theweekends. You know. We book private

(09:16):
events, we book street fairs,farmers markets, and we go through the
season. This is the first season. We launched the truck in June.
It took a while to get thepermits and there were a lot of ups
and downs. And also I nowhave the context in comparison, when I
go to an event and just havea bread table and we have a following

(09:39):
for bread, we sell a lotof bread. We make X amount of
money, and the prep is different, the amount of employees you need on
hand at the time of the eventis different. It's less versus taking the
food truck out. I would say, in some ways the prep is easier,
but not always. But you definitelyneed more people with you because it's

(10:00):
not possible to make the food fastenough for the line that's outside and take
orders and package everything. And whenyou do the math, to make any
real money, you have to sellx amount of units per minute on the
food truck. You know, onthe bread table, you don't, I
guess you could think of it thatway on the bread table. But if

(10:22):
I bring one hundred and twenty loavesof bread, whether I have a three
hour market, four hour farmers market, or a six hour farm market,
if I sell every loaf of onehundred and twenty, I know how much
I'm going to make or did make, you know, whereas the food truck
you could only make as much asyou could produce. And then you have
to also estimate how much food you'rebringing to prepare the sandwiches or the pizza.

(10:50):
That's another thing. I'm now intothe pizza making. I make pizza
on the food truck, which issomething I didn't do as recently as a
month and a half ago. Inever made peace it's on the food truck,
but now I do. And atthe end of the season. When
I look at the side by side, I say, Wow, I don't
know if I make more money withthis food truck than I do just having
a bread table, But that remainsto be seen. But standing where I'm

(11:13):
standing now, that's certainly the case. And I tell you all this because
it brings up thoughts of Hey,the pandemic's over, and I know it's
been over for a long time,but trust me, it was a big
hit in the business I was in. So that ends and all these studios

(11:33):
I'm back to entertainment now, allthe TV and movie studios are hurt from
the pandemic. They were all sittingfat before the pandemic. But the pandemic
really made everyone when everyone, Imean by the corporations evolved in Hollywood entertainment

(11:54):
have to analyze their books because theyreally didn't have the funds to survive to
pandemic. Right, These are bigcorporations borrowing money or taking from another division
to run these things. So theyall start to scale back, and the
industry condenses. The companies merge,staffs are halfed, and it starts to

(12:20):
change. It becomes harder, itbecomes harder to penetrate. Hollywood still doable.
But you know, between the pandemicand the consolidation and the fact that
I have this hobby that wakes meup in the morning with a gusto and
a thirst to get out there andbuild a brand, I honestly lose interest

(12:43):
on the side of developing television becauseboth breadmaking and Hollywood producing are physical and
they take a lot of energy.And what I mean by physical in Hollywood,
I'm not lifting bags of flour,but I am getting on planes and
getting on planes often to go toLos Angeles so that I could take meetings

(13:05):
to sell ideas or package, meaningtake meetings with writers. I have to
do general meetings with writers. Ihave to do general meetings with studio executives.
And they did that for thirty years. But at fifty five years old,
a guy who found his passion forbread and now pizza, I'm not

(13:28):
so interested in getting on these planesand being away from home. Right.
I could only do so many things, so I have to make choices,
and I needed a break. Youknow. COVID forced me to take a
break, and then when it ended, it wasn't so easy to just say,
Okay, the break's over, I'mready to go again, and other

(13:48):
things change. You know, asyou get older, the people you come
up within the business are maybe nolonger in the business. The network that
you had has been five to haveforced out or quit. And I still
have a network, but the networkat the time has you know, changed,

(14:09):
and then you need the energy,the mental energy to go and keep
that network up. And so nowthe strike ends, first the writers striking,
now the actors strike, and everyone'sstarting to position themselves so that in
January the business will be back andshows will be back in production. And

(14:30):
my producing partner, who I've beenwith for twenty five to thirty years,
he's my producing partner and my writingpartners actually in Los Angeles as we speak,
taking no less than fifteen meetings withproduction companies, and there does seem
to be interest in us, andthat the products and projects that we were

(14:52):
working on these last three years,maybe not as aggressively in terms of shopping
them as you couldn't shop them,but there seems to be a lot of
interest in what we have to offer. And then I'm looking at the truck
and we've had, like I said, we've had a lot of losses and

(15:13):
bad days with the truck due tothe rain on the weekends, and then
we had some wins and some bigwins. It's kind of like golf,
you know, you hit that oneright down the middle and your bogie the
hall and it brings you back.But it's an interesting time, and it's
an interesting time for me, andI plan to continue to pursue all avenues,

(15:39):
but I do want to make lifea little easier or even more successful,
and maybe I put too much pressureon myself. I'll give you an
example of a tough day on themobile cafe slash bread truck. We discovered

(16:02):
about two months ago that because ourbread tables is so successful, if our
mobile unit is booked out to servesandwiches and pizza when we're doing let's say
a street fair, that if wealso bring one hundred loaves of bread and
set up a tent connected to thetruck, we can do both and we

(16:23):
end up making a lot more moneybecause the bread always sells. So it's
a model we've been using since we'vediscovered that. So you know, we'll
do the bake the night before,We've got the food truck already prepped,
and we set up essentially two businessesin one a bread bakery tent and then

(16:47):
a truck that's serving sandwiches and pizza. So that's been working out for us.
But now we get a call todo a farm stand out east the
weekend before Halloween. And again,it's been raining here in New York for
much of the summer. I thinkthere was seven saturdays in a row,
and obviously Saturdays are the biggest dayand biggest opportunities for us to make money.

(17:11):
So we got a call to dothis farm that is a pumpkin farm,
and they have playgrounds, they havecorn mazes, they have lots of
stuff for the families. And thefirst Saturday that hasn't rained in seven weeks,
and it's the weekend fourth Halloween,and we're like, it's going to

(17:33):
be well attended. We got todo this one, you know, and
this is an opportunity to make somemoney. So we decide not to bring
the mobile truck. Let's just focuson the bread table. But let's go
for this and let's bake aggressively.And what I mean by that is we

(17:53):
probably bring two hundred and fifty tothree hundred levels of bread and we get
to this farm stand early in themorning, like I don't know, seven
am to set up, and there'sother vendors there. There's maybe eight other
vendors, And logistically we could pullour car up to right where our bread

(18:15):
table intent we're going to be.But there was a little fence in between
where I could put the car andand so I couldn't walk straight through,
but I could pull up. Butwe had to lift our crates of bread.
And you're listening to this like,oh, I had to lift a
loaf of bread. I don't knowif you know what it's like to pack
three hundred loaves of bread and carrythe crates of bread. It's heavy,

(18:41):
Okay, it's heavy. So we'relifting them over the fence. We're trying
to slide it under the bottom slideif we can. And people come and
they do the corn mags, theypick their pumpkins, but what they don't
do is they don't buy bread.I can't exactly tell you why. We

(19:02):
certainly didn't have our customers come outthere because it was like a different town.
But we've been in those situations beforeand we still sell a lot of
bread. I would say if wehad three hundred loaves of bread, we'd
be lucky. If we sold fiftyAnd now throughout the day, my wife
is saying, I have a painin my stomach. Feel this. She's

(19:26):
got a bump in her stomach.It's not a baby bump, guys,
We're well beyond that. And youknow, she goes that night. We
first of all, we have topack everything back up, and we have
to figure out what we're going todo with all this bread. And we
made no money. And it wasa long day because this market was either
nine to five or ten to five. And I gotta tell you, it

(19:48):
fucked with my head. And thenshe's in pain. I'm physically exhausted.
She's physically exhausted. She goes tourgent care and they send her to the
hospital. She's got a hernia.She's got a hernia from lifting all this
fucking bread with me. It's unbelievable. That day took a lot out of

(20:10):
me because it just was the It'sthe end of the season, and it
says, what the fuck am Idoing? So what is the point of
me telling this story? What isthe point of this episode. I'm in
a good place. I'm in agood place with the bread business. I'm
a good place with the bread company. My wife is in a good place

(20:32):
with her hernia, and she hasa surgery scheduled for January. She will
be one good, is new andable to carry bread again. But I
do wonder what I do with allthis? What do I do with the
bread company? Uh? And here'shere's what I'm doing and where this ends

(20:56):
up? I don't know. Ihave applied for pizza school in Miami at
the beginning of December. Unfortunately,I waited a little too long to send
the application and the class is soldout. However, they are considering taking
me in. If I get intothis class, I come out of the

(21:17):
class with a certificate from Tony Geminianni, David Sittaviello, and four other major
pizza makers from around the country aswell as Naples, Italy, and I
would graduate with a certificate in beingable to teach pizza making, Neapolitan pizza

(21:41):
making, many styles of pizza making. I am going to the Pizza Expo
with my good friend Anthony from Phil'sPizza and our wives in March. I'm
going to go there to learn things. I'm going there to network with suppliers.
I'm going there to find guests formy podcast. And I'm going to

(22:04):
continue promoting my mobile cafe for privateparties, private events, school events,
fundraisers. I may do less streetfaars. I'm going to continue to break
bread, and I am going tostart aggressively pitching television again. And that's

(22:26):
where you have it, guys.I hope this was somewhat entertaining and not
just a ramble. But I gota lot out of my system. There's
a short one, but hopefully itwas a good one. I'll talk to
you all soon. This episode ofBread for the People was brought to you
by Side Hustle Bread, Long Island'shandcrafted, artisanal bread company. Side Hustle

(22:48):
Bread is a family run business that'sbringing the neighborhood feel back to Long Island,
one loaf at a time. Ifyou like what you're hearing, don't
forget to head on over t iTunesand rate and review this episode. Reviewing
and rating is the most effective wayto help us grow our audience. This
episode was produced by Milestone TV andFilm. I'm your host, Jim Serpico.

(23:08):
Less it be the bread, Everyone