November 6, 2023 • 47 mins
Be captivated by the heartfelt journey of bread maker and founder of Prairie Sky Breads Travis Gerjets, in this week's episode of the Bread For the People Podcast. Join host Jim Serpico as he delves into Travis's inspiring story of how a unique soup kitchen experience in Liverpool sparked a passion for baking bread like his beloved grandmother. Travis's desire to preserve family recipes and spend valuable time with his grandmother led him down an extraordinary path.
Discover how Travis's passion for bread-making brought him to the bustling farmers market scene in Minot, North Dakota, where he initially knew no one. Tune in as Travis shares how the farmers market became more than just a venue for selling bread; it became a lifeline, building connections and opening up a whole new world for him.
Follow along as Travis recounts the heartwarming tales of loyal customers who have journeyed with him since the beginning and how his bread became a genuine bridge into people's lives. Uncover the power of conversations around his homemade bread, forging meaningful connections with familiar faces, and transforming the new place into a welcoming home.
Immerse yourself in the enchanting routine of Prairie Sky Breads' early mornings along with bakers Zack Schueller and Ramanda Nash, the intoxicating aroma of freshly baked bread, and the joy of receiving positive customer feedback. Travis and his team's passion, resilience, and ability to find community through bread will leave you inspired and eager to savor the next chapter of his remarkable journey.
Don't miss this captivating episode of the Bread For the People Podcast, where Travis's extraordinary story will touch your heart and remind you of the incredible power of food and connection.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
Discover how Travis's passion for bread-making brought him to the bustling farmers market scene in Minot, North Dakota, where he initially knew no one. Tune in as Travis shares how the farmers market became more than just a venue for selling bread; it became a lifeline, building connections and opening up a whole new world for him.
Follow along as Travis recounts the heartwarming tales of loyal customers who have journeyed with him since the beginning and how his bread became a genuine bridge into people's lives. Uncover the power of conversations around his homemade bread, forging meaningful connections with familiar faces, and transforming the new place into a welcoming home.
Immerse yourself in the enchanting routine of Prairie Sky Breads' early mornings along with bakers Zack Schueller and Ramanda Nash, the intoxicating aroma of freshly baked bread, and the joy of receiving positive customer feedback. Travis and his team's passion, resilience, and ability to find community through bread will leave you inspired and eager to savor the next chapter of his remarkable journey.
Don't miss this captivating episode of the Bread For the People Podcast, where Travis's extraordinary story will touch your heart and remind you of the incredible power of food and connection.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My name is Jim Curpico, andthis should I start with my name?
What should I start with? Thisis bread for the people. Do you
like it like this? Welcome tobread? Or do you like it like
this? Welcome, ready, Welcometo bread for the people? Mine?
Is there a script for the people? Welcome to bread for the people.
(00:29):
I'm Jim Curproico. Today we havea special guest all the way from my
Not North Dakota. I was goingthrough my deep dives on Instagram and also
through a list on the Baker's Guildof America, which I think is where
(00:51):
I heard of Prairie Sky Breads,and I tracked down the owner, Travits
Travis Gurget's and he's here with metoday. He's the founder and co owner
of Prairie Skybreads from my not NorthDakota. Please welcome Travis. Hey,
thanks Jim for having me. Thisis great. Yeah, man, I
(01:11):
appreciate you taking the time after presumablya long morning, although today's Monday,
so I'm not quite sure of yourschedule. It's my day off and I
actually been doing yeah, I haven'tbeen doing even that much bakery work today,
so it maybe is actually a dayoff, which is great. It's
good to clear your head a littlebit, right, It's great. Yeah,
I mean, we all need it. And unfortunately, you know,
(01:34):
in this business, there's just somesome weeks you don't get it and you
feel that later on. But today'stoday's one of those good days where I
get to just take a break.So what I'm curious to hear about and
learn about today is the evolution ofhow you started at farmers' markets. I
know that you were inspired by,I believe your grandmother and that always stayed
(01:59):
with you. But you took thatpassion and I'm assuming what was a hobby
and started doing farmers markets alone.Is that right? Yeah? That was
the start. Is a farmer afarmer's market in may Not and it's kind
of grown from there. It's been. We started in twenty fourteen and now
here we are with the brick andmortar location and making a lot more bread
(02:21):
and then we started out making Sopaint the picture of a farmer's market in
may Not for me, I know, I'm in Long Island, New York.
I'm assuming it's way more populated thanmay Not, but maybe not.
The farmers market's located in the downtownarea, or in a more rural location.
(02:42):
We're we've got two farmers markets inmay Not and the one that we're
usually showing up at. We're ina park not far from the downtown area,
but not right downtown. Got agood number of vendors. What is
a good number of vendors. Oh, let's see, I'd say we got
(03:04):
you know, we're between twenty andforty depending on what time of the season
we're at. So we're pretty farnorth. So there's a lot of the
pro especially the produce people, thatwe might be pretty thin at the beginning
of the season. Some folks areonly bringing certain things, you know,
watermelons or sweet corn or something.So you know, when we hit that
late July August, then we mighthave forty vendors and things are really really
(03:29):
busy down at the park. Butso, yeah, and actually when we
moved so I'm originally from the TwinCities, Minnesota, and my wife's from
from up in this area. Sowhen we moved to mine Not in twenty
thirteen, I didn't know anybody.Let me ask you a question, was
did it go like this, let'sfind someplace even colder than the Twin Cities.
(03:53):
Yeah, I mean, we jokeabout it even Yeah, you know,
Minnesota, we're pretty far north.We got tough winters and we yeah,
we moved farther north. We arenot that far from the Canadian border.
And it's uh, it's just yeah, it's a different world out here
and the prairies, and that reallywas inspiring to me, coming from lakes
(04:15):
and woods and Minnesota prairie sky breads. It's where we got the name from.
And this place grows on you.You know, I have no no
reservations about moving to this part ofthe world. But when I moved here,
I didn't know anybody, and wehad some dreams about maybe, you
know, doing some produce stuff,and I wanted to get involved in farmers
market. And at that point whenwe had moved, it was too late
(04:38):
for us to get a garden inthe ground and do anything. Early with
farmers market, there was a marketmanager at the time. He was looking
for some more help. He hadme jump in. I was going to
help him for the season. Butearly on at the farmers' markets, everybody's
kind of got the same things.We've got some like early green some spring
onions, maybe some turnips, radishes, sorry, and so he He was
(05:00):
asking, is there anything that youcan do to kind of make our stand
pop out as produce growers. Isaid, wow, I can do a
little bit of baking. You know, up to that point, I was
mostly a bread eater. I lovedeating bread, and especially my grandmother's bread
Nana. There wasn't any family gatheringthat we had that, you know,
we didn't have Nana's rolls or dinnerrolls, you know, maybe some one
(05:23):
of her pies, just her breads. She was a great baker and it's
what my mom and her siblings grewup eating, was all this fresh homemade
stuff. And before we moved tomine, not my wife and I were
doing some traveling and we popped inWe're volunteering at this soup kitchen in Liverpool,
England, of all places. That'sa whole nother story of how we
(05:45):
got there, but one of thethings that they were doing at this soup
kitchen is having people come in beforethe meal and bake bread together as a
community. It was one part liketeaching and instruction, but one part like
getting all these different people from thecommunity, well to do people on home,
people, all kinds of folks togetherin one spot doing this thing together.
(06:08):
It was really really cool. Itwas really really cool. What a
great way to bring the community together. Yeah, it was really inspiring.
I think it's I mean, theytheir philosophy, their mission, even some
of their little taglines. They reallystuck with me, especially as we're kind
of getting the bakery off the ground. But the bread that they made there,
it reminded me so much of mygrandmother's bread. Was thread or was
(06:31):
it eased? It was. Theydid a white and a whole weet yeasted
sandwich loaf okay, and I thinkespecially fresh it's still a little warm,
just and the smell of it remindedme a lot of of the loaves that
my grandmother was making. And soI none of my my mom, her
siblings, none of them were pickingup any of Grahama's recipes. So I
(06:54):
thought, you know, when Iget back, I want to I want
to learn how to bake this stuff. So as my grandmother gets older and
knowl just having trouble needing the dough, everything's getting a little harder, then
we don't lose some of these recipesfor our family. So that's what I
did. And if nothing else,if that had been all that had happened
with this, that would have beenyou know, a treasure, unto itself,
is just to spend some afternoons withmy grandmother, baking with her and
(07:15):
learning how to make some of thesethese breads that she made. So let
me let me see if I havethis right. So you have this background
and this context for making bread betweenyour grandmother, and then when you went
to England you started to use thatand it brought a lot of people together,
and you ultimately move from the TwinCities to Mine not and you're working
(07:39):
for produce out of farmer's market andyou decide maybe me baking bread will make
this stand stand out. That's prettymuch where we're at, correct exactly now,
Before we even get to the breadpart, you say you move to
town without knowing anybody. I'm assumingyou're talking about you and your wife,
(08:01):
and the farmer's market was a waynot only to make some money and do
something on the weekends, but youactually probably ended up meeting people there.
Yeah. And for me, somy wife still had some family here and
growing she grew up here, soshe knew some folks. I didn't know
anybody, and this was a wayfor me to build those connections and maybe
(08:22):
even build some of those connections throughfood and through baking and through bread.
And that's exactly what happened. That'swhat I love about farmers markets. Without
even realizing that that was going tohappen to me because I was new to
food and farmers markets. When Istarted, I met a lot of people
that are friends of mine to thisday. And granted I'm only about three
and a half years in, butit's opened up a whole new world for
(08:46):
me. Yeah, it was.I mean the connections that we made that.
I mean, some of these folks, for sure are friends. A
lot of them are longtime customers.I'm sure we've still got customers that were
coming and checking us out in twentyfourteen. We have some people that very
proudly, you know, they wereon the original bread subscription list and we
started going year round, and yeah, these folks have been with us for
(09:11):
a long time. So it's itwas a life saver for me, you
know, the way that this breadwas kind of a road in to some
people's lives. So when that firstFarmer's market we showed up, I had
six loves of bread and it tookme all farmers market to sell these six
loves of bread. But as Ilike to tell the story, prisk I
bred started the second market. Whensome of those people then came BACKO and
(09:35):
they were looking for more bread.But then they were telling me like here's
oh man, you know I madethis great sandwich. Here's what I did
with it, or like, oh, this bread. It reminded We've got
a big air force base just northof town. It reminded me of this
bread that I got in Germany whenI was stationed over there, and these
open air farmers' markets, and like, oh, can you tell me a
little bit more about that? Itsounds really interesting. What were they selling
over there? And and then wejust have these conversations, and yeah,
(09:56):
pretty soon I'm making some connections.There's some familiar faces in town, and
it doesn't feel like, you know, I'm such a stranger in this new
place. Yeah. So how longdid it take for it to catch on
at the produce stand so that itwould become its own thing? And maybe
I'm assuming your own bread booth?Yeah, I think, you know,
(10:22):
even by week two or three,I was hooked. I mean, I
was loving the morning routine of gettingup early you know, having that be
the first thing that you're smelling,the first thing that you're seeing and working
with in the morning, and thenyou know, just the social component of
it and getting some of that feedbacktoo that people are really enjoying the bread.
I knew that the next year Iwas going to have a bread stand.
(10:43):
I was done with the produce thing. Things kicked, you know,
we started having bigger harvest, wehad to do more work on the fields
and on the gardens, and soI had to drop the bread after maybe
the first month that we were there, and then it was just produce.
But for me, I was hooked. And the next year that's what I
I got a rental kitchen space.Instead of bringing you know, twelve eighteen
(11:05):
loaves of bread, now it's youknow, we're trying to get to seventy
eighty ninety one hundred loaves of breadand uh, and that's that's all I
was doing. That's great. Whatare the laws to be a cottage baker
in my not North Dakota at afarmer's market, Yeah, I think,
I mean the big one is labelingif you're if you're baking out of a
(11:26):
home kitchen or i'd have to goback and look how it's worth it.
But even when I was in rentalkitchen spaces, just making sure that everybody
knows that this is not an inspectedproduct that's coming out of a home environment.
And so you're you're passing maybe thatchoice and that responsibility onto the customer.
(11:46):
If they enjoy what you're doing,they know that this isn't coming from
an inspected a commercial kitchen, youknow, then they might they might choose
to go another direction. But uh, did you have any file for a
permit to be a home baker?And did you have to beg your bread?
(12:07):
No? And no we could.We could have an open air when
we showed up to market. Andas far as registering, I think with
liability and insurance stuff, that's allgoing to fall on the farmer's market.
So we register with the market andmarkets taking care of any of the sort
(12:28):
of legal insurance state issues. It'sdifferent here. Yeah, I think I've
heard some stories from some other bakerfriends from other states. And you know,
the ingredients that you can use,storage, transportation, there's a lot
of things. North Dakota feels prettywide open in a lot of which maybe
isn't isn't surprising. But yeah,for for your listeners, yeah, it's
(12:52):
it's a it's a different game outhere for farmers market. Right did it
did it change? I'm going tojump ahead for a second, then we'll
go back with COVID. Did theychange? Because I think we were allowed
to before I got into it.I started during the pandemic. I think
before that we could sell our breadloose, which means not necessarily wrapped or
begged. But technically you're not supposedto do that. Now it's supposed to
(13:15):
be begged and labeled with all theingredients, whether a home baker or a
commercial processor. Yeah. I thinkas a market, we've tried to I'm
currently on the market board, andwe've tried to encourage people to maintain some
of those health and safety practices thatyou know, sometimes we like they should
(13:37):
have been around probably some of thesethings before COVID, but certainly yeah,
once once COVID kicked off, thingskind of changed. Yeah, it Zach
rolling in here, but yeah,so we we don't I don't think there
(13:58):
our health and specter is going tobe watching for that. But as a
market, we've changed our policy tobe a little bit more diligent about how
people are handling and labeling some oftheir products. So what were some of
the challenges as you went from adozen loaves of bread to seventy Because at
that point when you went to theseventy, you went to a new place
(14:20):
to bake, or were you bakingat the same it did. So when
I started, it was just outof my We had moved in with my
mother in law. We were tryingto find a place, so it was
in their kitchen using you know,my mother in law mixer and you know,
making these just micro batches of breadand so you know, so then
you're starting to become aware of equipment, what equipment works, what doesn't,
(14:45):
and the size of things, youknow, and where the bottlenecks are.
So like I remember that first kitchen. You know, the mixer, we
could maybe make twelve to sixteen loadsof bread. It's pretty good. Yeah,
I mean it's a twenty court mixerprobably, yeah, yeah, exactly.
But then depending on the dough asyou were making, you know,
(15:09):
I was learning that, Okay,you know, this mixer can handle if
we're making you know, any kindof sandwich breads. Great, if we're
trying to mix things up for oursubscriptions and getting people different kinds of breads
every week, a pretzel dough orsomething like oof. You know that we
were making it. It was veryvery low hydration and and it was not
you know, it was burning outthe motor. So just the equipment was
(15:37):
one thing. And then just youknow, the time of everything. I
still bake with a twenty court mixer. Oh man, They're great, and
I'm putting out well over hundreds loaves. It's the only thing I know.
I would be really interested in goingto a fifty, but then I need
the oven space to match it.Yeah, And that's I mean, the
(15:58):
you know in baking. And I'veheard you talk too about just you know,
your process and converting recipes. AndI think for both of us,
the science is not it's it's I'llspeak for myself now where I'm at,
I'm trying to catch up to thescience and teaching classes. Yeah, it's
it's just a little above where mybrain's at. I I like the art
(16:22):
of it. I like, youknow, the feeling of it. I
like what it does in bringing peopletogether around a table. I love in
our baking room right now, we'vegot windows, so we can see people
that are enjoying that bread or thatsandwich, those soups. That's the best.
It's the best. It's my dreamis to design a bakery where it's
open in the way a pizza placemay have an open kitchen and you see
(16:45):
the pizza oven, because that's sucha part of the experience, to see
the baking. It's it's to me, they're kind of the same. I
would love to have an open bakery. Yeah, it's it was the best
thing I ever asked for, iswe When we were the first it was
a retrofitted building downtown that we endedup jumping ahead in the story getting into.
(17:07):
But yeah, having those windows onthe baker room so that we can
see everybody out in the dining room, but then they can see what we're
doing, and it's it's so muchfun to have little kids coming up and
just like peeking over the window andwatching us shape rolls or make cinnamon rolls.
Now, I looked online and Isaw some pictures. You're in a
corner space. Yeah, we're right. We're on a corner space on Central
(17:32):
Avenue and First Street, so justone block off Main Street in downtown min
Not so what Is it like athree or four story building like a downtown
Yeah, it's a weird it's aweird building. The one that we're in.
There's the main level and then there'sa basement level, which we're actually
looking at maybe getting some space inbecause we've kind of outgrown our space a
(17:52):
little bit already by a little bit, maybe a lot of it. And
then there's an attached building that usedto be a three story hotel and that
was a restaurant is now going tobe a new restaurant with with a bar
and event space and all kinds ofstuff. But we're just in one level.
There's a few different spaces in thatin that in that building, and
(18:15):
we're one of them. That's awesome. So the second year that you're in
mine, not you have your ownbread stand at the same market and you're
coming with about seventy loaves of bread. Mm hmm. Is it is it
one day a week? It's oneday a week the farmers' markets Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday. We were justdoing Saturday. That's all. For some
(18:37):
of the other life responsibilities I had, I had, you know, I
dreamed about like maybe someday have abakery or this is this is a little
bit more of a gig than itis now. But but I knew that
it was going to take me awhile to get not only my baking legs
under me, because this was especiallyat this scale, it's all still very
new, but figuring out if Iwas going to do that, you know,
(19:00):
how did the finances work, whata staffing look like, equipment,
all that stuff. So this waslike a five to ten year plan from
the get go, if it waseven going to be a thing. It
was kind of a dream something mymy wife and I would talk about.
And but yeah, so we werewe were bringing seven do you do one
hundred loaves? Uh? I havea question here? You talk about we,
(19:21):
So you're talking about you and yourwife. She's helping. She she
is helping a little bit. Kidswould come in once in a while,
maybe help bag bread, but evenat this point, maybe just some friends
occasionally coming in too to help bagbread or maybe help me clean the kitchen
because I'm just spent from an allnight baking. And then you know Farmer's
Market, and I want to tounderstand what your prep to do to show
(19:48):
up with seventy loaves of bread ona Saturday. What had to happen during
the week to get to that point. I mean, I feel like I
think at that point you we werestarting to do some pre orders. So
we had some semblage of a websitethat people could go and put in some
pre orders so that we we couldhave some maybe starting number for like you
(20:10):
know where and what people wanted.So maybe we'd make one or two different
maybe a white bread, white sandwichbread and a multi grain sandwich bread,
and they would do some yeast andrustic loaves or baking them. And I
think I think that first or evenI committed and bought sixteen Dutch ovens so
(20:30):
that we could take them, becausethat was just I tried to steam in
the oven and the ice cubes andall, and so now I'm moving when
it's time to set up. Soduring the week, there's there's pre orders,
there's prepping, packaging, stamping,putting the ingredient labels on, but
nothing no prepping drys, no advancingyour mixes. No. I mean I
should have been smarter and scaled stuffout and got some stuff ready to go,
(20:52):
But then I would just haul everythingmaybe at you know, as soon
as they would let me get in, so maybe it'd be five in the
afternoon and I'm bringing in cooling racksand sixteen Dutch ovens and bags of flour
and all this stuff there's in everyrental kitchen we've been and there's always been
very little storage that we've been ableto utilize, So it's mostly me hauling
(21:14):
stuff in, getting everything set up, getting the ovens turned on. Sometimes
I've come and I've mixed some kindof preferment to get going earlier in the
day, but sometimes you need toget that going and then and then it's
leading up. The prep is likesetting up the schedule and trying to block
off on a spreadsheet all these differentdose them and to try to be mixing
(21:37):
and their schedules. How long it'sgoing to take me to shape them baked
time I got to preheat Dutch ovens. It's just this like, you know,
crazy multicolored spreadsheet. And I meanit was to the point chin where
like I'm not drinking water because Idon't have time to go use the bathroom,
Like it's not you know, itwas just it was ridiculous. But
(21:59):
the funny thing is that first year, you know, we did get up
to selling like one hundred loaves ofbread. And now we're starting to play
around at this going year round wherewe're gonna do subscriptions, which, in
my not in North Dakota, isa terrible idea. I don't recommend any
place there's a lot of snow,you don't want to do a year round
deliveries. But I just remember thatfirst year. You know, at that
point we're selling them for like fivedollars a loaf, and I'm selling up
(22:21):
maybe one hundred loaves at a farmer'smarket. I'm thinking that I am just
I'm just king of the castle.This is so great, and I'm gonna
end the summer right with this amountof money that our family could use for
like a little vacation or like something. And I feel like this is where
like the realities of being an entrepreneurand a bakery owner kind of hit home.
Is we got to the end ofthe season, I'm paying out some
(22:45):
of my friends that have come into help. I'm getting hit with that
rent bill which came at the endof the season. I'm some of the
market fees. I purchased some equipment, and when I get to the end
of the season, there's no moneyleft. There's no I didn't make any
money doing this for that first season. This is where I'm at with my
food truck right now. You're exactlywhere I'm at. I feel for you,
(23:07):
I feel for all of us thatI mean, it's just I mean,
I mean, for first of all, it's it's not an industry where
it's it's hard to make a livingno matter what, and that's usually not
why you're doing it. I knowI've heard you talk about that on the
podcast before, but it was itwas if we were going to grow this
thing, and if it was goingto be ever something that was going to
pay me to do it. Iknew that at that point, you know,
(23:30):
I needed to I need to learna lot about what it was going
to take to get this thing tothe next level, if that was something
that we even wanted to pursue.And even at that point we got to
this, you know, we're inthis middle space where if we were smaller,
if it was just me maybe bakingout of my home, there was
a chance to make some amount ofmoney. And if we were larger and
could could bake in in bigger batches, and you know, I didn't know
(23:55):
all the expenses that would come withthat. But that seemed like a way
to make money. But we're inthis middle space where making more just meant
that you had to stay there longer. Maybe I had to pay more people
to come and help you, andyou couldn't ever get ahead of that.
You were never seeing off at marginwasn't changing. When I first reached out
to you, you were like,are you sure you want to talk to
me? But I still I amwhere you were. I am in the
(24:22):
middle space, and not that Iknew that when I reached out to you,
but I'm telling you, like,this is fascinating to me because I
haven't made a decision on what todo, where to go should I make
the move? But I am exactlywhere you are describing. Yeah, And
it's it's a because then it's youknow, you got to make a choice,
(24:45):
and it's do I am I doingthis for the love of baking,
and maybe I want to just staysmall, have this community around this product
that I'm making. There. Bythe way, if you were headaches for
some that's a great choice. There'snothing wrong with that choice, nothing wrong
with that choice. There's there's somany advantages to that choice. And it's
(25:07):
it's just a it's a preference.It's what you are doing it for and
what you want to get out ofit. And there's a lot of days
where you know that's an appealing choice. There's a lot of headaches that come
with scaling up. But but wheredo you even go to learn this next
part because it's even less about maybeit is the baking and the scaling and
(25:30):
the scheduling of how to produce atthat level, because obviously things have to
change to the most efficient manner.But I don't know outfitting the bakery,
designing the bakery, scheduling employees,how many employees like that, all that
stuff I have no idea about,and I'm not sure where to go to
(25:52):
even learn it. Yeah, well, I know it sounds like you've got
some friends for sure in the inthe restaurant industry, so they're going to
be super helpful to talk to.It was weird too, because I when
I got to that point, Iwas in Minett, North Dakota, and
if I was still back in theTwin Cities, there are more bakeries doing
the kind of thing that we're tryingto do, and you know, so
(26:15):
far and my experiences. Bakers areso generous with with recipes, with knowledge,
with you know, tips on equipment, with little tricks about how they
get you know, their does todo whatever and so, so you know,
to start that, I went outto the San Francisco Baking Institute for
one week doing like a sour doughbread's class because that was something that I
(26:36):
knew I wanted to do more withand just didn't know enough about got it.
So I did that and while Iwas out there, they were super
generously. I'm sure they get askedthis all the time. I know they
do. They've got a list ofbakeries that if you want to go in
just you know, like before class, to go in for a few hours,
talk to the bakers, maybe hitup the bakery owner, see if
they'll spend a little time with you. This is a list of bakeries that
(26:59):
have said sure you can send studentsour away. Cool and Josie Miller,
I know, is the one thatstands out to me as the play I
think I went there twice once justto eat and experience and talk to the
staff a little bit. But hewas he was generous. How there's like
three students that we went over thereand he sat down with us for like
(27:19):
an hour and talked about his story, equipment, staffing, all kinds of
stuff. And it was somebody whoI followed up with as we were planning
our our own bakery build for somesome follow up questions and was so generous
and and you know, the knowledgethat he was willing to share coming back
to mine. Not then there thereweren't a lot of artists and bakeries around
(27:41):
us, and so actually just lookingon the map. Besides going back to
the Twin Cities, which I didone time, I actually went north to
Canada to a few bakeries up there, and uh yeah, same thing.
Just just talk to owners, talkto staff, talk to everybody that would,
you know, give me a littlebit of their time. And tried
(28:02):
to crack into what what does ittake to to do this thing that I'm
hoping to do, But feel sooverwhelmed by the amount of decisions that have
to happen. And if you getone or two of them wrong, if
the size of your oven isn't rightand you've got this big mixer but this
tiny oven or something like, it'shard to recover from that. Did you
(28:25):
plan this out in paper. Yeah, there's It's funny because cleaning out our
house and moving a couple of times, I'll find pieces of paper from those
those years of planning where I'm youknow, literally making a list of every
piece of equipment that we're gonna need, right and you know, the number
of proofing baskets or you know,bread pans, the size of the oven,
(28:45):
remember our last rental kitchen, andhaving conversation with oven reps just putting
you know, like taping off andputting how many what size we needed for
the sized loaves that we make,you know, and then using that to
kind of figure out what deck sizewe were going to have, and then
ultimately the size of the oven thatwe were going to get. And we
(29:07):
had the good fortune or challenge ofthe space that we moved into was had
just been made available. The exteriorof the building had all been redone,
the interior was kind of framed outor whatever. But we got to build
out it's our own space, whichwas great because all of our equipment fits
just the right way, so wedid we didn't have to figure out some
(29:30):
of our equipment size around some ofthe pre existing maybe obstacles that would be
in a different space. But yeah, it was. It was just a
lot of spreadsheets and pen and paperand all that kind of stuff, figuring
out what we're going to do.That's great. So at this point,
Prairie Sky Breads is open. Howmany days a week? Oh, we're
(29:51):
open six days a week, sixdays a week. Today, Monday's a
day off. Monday's the day off. All right. So for a few
people who are in prepping right now, we've got some uh some colleagues,
some bakers here with us. Let'sbring them in, all right. So
we've got the team. We've addedRomanda Nash and Zach Schuler. Welcome guys.
(30:15):
How are you doing? Fantastic?So Ramanda, tell us what you
do at Prairie Sky. Oh goodness, I'm responsible for the good tunes.
Hey, that's important. That's oneof the reasons I love bacon. No,
(30:36):
So I do whatever needs to bedone. So just if i'm howld
you, I love to do thecinnamon rolls, caramel rolls, shaping of
bread. I just yeah, anythingthat needs to be done, just if
you need it done. So howdid this even happen to? They just
(31:00):
pull you off the street and sayget in here. Or do you have
an interest in a background in baking. Well, I've always had an interest
and a background. I grew upbaking, but I originally was upfront making
coffee, being a barista and justworking for the first time after years and
(31:22):
years of being home with children.So I thought, oh, this would
be a perfect job to get in. So I was making coffee. But
as someone who has like never drankcoffee before, I just it was fun
and I loved being with the peopleand just learning about coffee and making it.
(31:42):
But I was super jealous and hadsome fomo being upfront and watching them
make amazing things back in the bakroomand me going like I might be underutilized
up here making coffee. So Iwould bug Travis all the time, like
anytime he was up in the lobbyin the front of house, I was
(32:04):
asking him baking questions, asking himwhere he got started with it. So
it just has always been something sinceI was a little kid. I'm one
of the oldest of five and Ijust was raised in my I was a
kid of the eighties and nineties,so I spent a lot of time with
my grandparents in their home and dida lot of baking for my family since
(32:28):
I was the oldest girl, SoI about twelve is when I started making
bread on my own and I justloved it. So got taught by my
grandma and I surpassed her so quickshe got so mad at me. But
so yeah, that's great. Zach. Tell us about what do you do
(32:50):
with the bakery as I do alot of the same things. Remand and
I share a lot of responsibilities.So we'll take the breads after they've been
mixed and kind of take care ofthem on their way to the ovens,
will shape them, fold them,just keeping track of the numbers of what
we have and how we're doing onour production schedule, make sure we're on
track for that. But a lotof it is just that same, like
(33:14):
whatever the plan tells me I'm goingto do with the plan made by Travis
is what I'm going to do.And that's covering in the mixer sometimes,
that's running things up front. It'sit's very much a fill in where you're
needed. Is there a consistency interms of how breads are are shaped or
(33:37):
even I mean, do you guysuse as everyone have to use a slap
and fold method. Is there likeone way that you must make the bread
or does everyone come to it withsomething they know? I would say that
Travis Trains is pretty well to doit the way that it is supposed to,
because I think something that's important toall of us is a consistent product
(33:58):
when people come and get a loafof bread and they get a pastry,
wanting them to know what they're goingto get and be able to look forward
to having the thing that they loveand that they're used to. So I
think it is important to us todo things a certain way. Of course,
everyone has their own little Yeah,got our little spin on it.
You can tell. I think wecan tell, like who's shaped like?
(34:22):
I can look and be like tryto shape that loaf? Zach shape that
loaf? I shaped that love likeyou can kind of tell and just like
having a conversation about what that lookslike and how we might push each other
in directions that make sure that we'restill accomplishing the vision of praise. Guy
So who comes up with the thestructure for the week and and lays out
(34:46):
the schedule. So I usually comeup with the plan for the week.
And that's that's sometimes based on specialorders pre orders. Maybe they're special events
coming up. We know we're gonnado a pop up up at the park
in the summer that we're gonna needan extra you know, a dozen loaves
for sandwiches or whatever it is.We've got a pretty consistent plan based on
(35:09):
some wholesale orders that we've got andkeeping our sandwich station stocked with certain products,
you know, never running out ofcinnamon rolls, whatever it is.
I'm kind of a rotation of youknow, this is what a Tuesday almost
always looks like. This is whata Wednesday almost always looks like. So
it's just playing with the numbers.Usually we'll throw in some different stuff every
(35:30):
once in a while, and thenusually every week I will put up the
schedule. Here's kind of the planfor the week, and then Zach Armanda
will say what about this. I'llsay, that's a really good point.
I should add that back to thebaking schedule because I forgot to add that.
So it's been really helpful, especiallyas we've grown and some of my
(35:51):
own responsibilities outside of baking have grown, to have a lot of really skilled
guys on every part of the process. Because we all all forget to set
timers we all forget to change theoven tamp when we're going from you know,
dinner rolls to sourdough or like whateverit is. It sounds like,
(36:12):
yeah, have the same challenges.So so, but what's so great about
our team right now is that everybody'sreally invested in the quality of the product.
And so it's not you know,neither of these none of us are
here and just you know, we'reI don't know, here for the paycheck
or whatever it is we're we're youknow, looking around the bak room and
(36:34):
have we forgot anything, as youknow, our oventempts where we want them?
Are you know, does the schedulelook right? Or is that number
even if we've got the right product, you know, doesn't that number doesn't
look right? And so we've avoideda lot of big mistakes by having just
a really good team. Right now, it sounds out you do have a
lot of consistency and set accounts wholesaleaccounts, But do you ever miss your
(37:01):
estimate and end up with way toomuch left over at the end of a
given day. Does it ever happen? Oh? Yeah, it still happens,
because it happens to me. Yeah, especially at farmers markets when you
don't know you've been told it justhappened. I tried one for the first
time and it was recommended highly tome, and they're like, you're going
(37:22):
to sell so much. So Ibacked baked aggressively and I didn't sell.
Oh yeah, it's it's crushing,you know. We I think just last
week we made a bunch of pretzels, which usually sell really well. It
was kind of the retail game,and some of it's just you know,
you don't know why that particular dayit didn't sell. Well. Sometimes it's
(37:43):
you can point to something like,well, we sold the first few bags
and then nobody restocked. We justforgot to ever bring them back up and
nobody saw them and it was busyenough nobody came back to check and so
they never made it upfront and theyjust sat in the back, and yeah,
they didn't sell. But then there'syeah, there's days too where a
lot of our special events where wedo pop up somewhere you know, we're
(38:06):
just over prep. You don't wantto run out of stuff when you're out
there at an event, but ifyou had too much, then you know,
what do you do with it?And it's that's hard. You know.
I was on your website this morning, and I wish I was on
there before this weekend because I endedup. One of my specialties is a
projutto bread. It's infused with prejutoand provolone and black pepper, and it
(38:30):
usually sells very well. I hadquite a bit left over, and I
noticed you're doing bags of crouton poundbags of croutons for Thanksgiving. Mh.
That would have been a good wayfor me to repurpose things. Yeah,
that has been amazing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, so, and we don't
(38:52):
normally, we don't always do croutons, but you know, Thanksgiving coming up
at this point, if we're youknow, certain brands, maybe we wouldn't
turn into routimes. But we'll justthrow stuff in the freezer as long as
we've got room, and then whenwe get closer to Thanksgiving, we'll pull
them out and yeah. Yeah,or we've done that with like a bread
pudding, you know, you savebreads that don't sell them and then make
(39:15):
an amazing bread pudding out of it. Yeah. And that's the thing I
love about Prairie's guys, that we'revery on top of, like doing donations
to local organizations with their excess food. So just donating the warming centers around
town and things like that makes mefeel good, even when like we do
have that access at the end ofthe day, which definitely feels a little
(39:36):
bad to see your hard work kindof just sitting there, But it happens.
It happens. M zach. Whatis your favorite type of bread to
bake and why. I think it'sgot to be this sour dough. I
think it being Traves's grandmother's starter makesit feel very personal. Whenever I'm doing
(40:00):
loaf of sourdough, I think thepersonality of the bread really comes through.
I don't have a lot of backgroundin baking in general. I'm a science
background as a student at the universityhere and kind of just wanted in praise
Sky breads and loved the environment there. But getting to work with the breads
and learning the language of like whatthe bread is trying to tell you when
(40:22):
it's too tight, when it's tooloose. The sourdough is very good for
that. It's very open about communicationabout what's going on with it, So
I really love it for that.It's just fun to work with. That's
great Remanda, I'm going to hityou with a tough one. Okay,
what don't you all bake that youwish you did? No, because they
(40:49):
have like PROD, like project addlike ADHD, like I just I want
to do it all, but Iknow we can't. But I would love
probably to do something like a croissantor something that challenges me as a baker,
because that's kind of outside of mywheelhouse, just to push creativity a
(41:13):
little bit more because we do getinto that little a bit of a you
know, we have a schedule,we have a thing that we need to
stay on, so I miss beinga little bit more creative in the breadmaking
part. So I just I don'tknow, I feel like, yeah,
just the creative aspect, there's thingslike I could relate to that. I'll
(41:36):
tell you why. And I'm sureI know where you're all coming from on
it. Everyone probably wants to dothat, you know. With me,
I don't have many people working forme. I do bring in and they're
not experienced. So I'll have someonefrom the high school come help me this
day and someone so I have tobe on top of them. And I'm
hitting consistent markets every week and itjust feels like there's no time. So
(42:00):
I'm making the same six seven typesof breads and it's taken all the energy
out of the world and all mytime. And you know, I'm you're
talking about croissants. I'm trying togo deep into pizza, which is outside
my wheelhouse, but I'm trying tobecome really good at it, and there's
just no time, like I justwant to, but I do think,
(42:22):
uh, it's you know, everyonce in a while, the car out
time to do that, which iswhy I'm happy that my Farmer's market season
just ended. I'm going to gotake a class in Florida and you know,
learn some new things. That's great. Yeah, it's it's been interesting
to see in our own baking schedule, you know, the seasonality of things
(42:45):
and getting through farmers Market is ahuge thing. And when that when just
the difference in the baking schedule andfor sure our weekend schedule. When that
last market is over, then itdoes feel until we get to the holidays,
we've got a little bit of timeto play and do some new things.
Exactly, Travis, where do youthink Prairie Sky is going to be
(43:07):
five years from now? You know, I think so far we've done a
pretty good job of basically opening anentirely new business every year that we've been
open. We opened we opened twobusinesses our first year, because we opened
in February of twenty twenty, immediatelygot hit by the pandemic and had to
(43:27):
kind of throw our business plan outand almost open kind of what felt like
a new business. For the remainderof that year, We've grown a lot.
We jumped into the state Fair.There's another big it's called Hustfest.
It's a Scandinavian heritage festival that drawsso many people to our town doing doing
pastries and coffee for that. Andthen we just got an airstream trailer that
(43:50):
was retrofitted as a coffee shop thatwas running this summer and that was huge.
I mean that that really changed theirnumbers and added a lot of work
to our plates. So I wouldn'tmind if at least this next year we
kind of just like did a normalyear and see what that felt like.
I'm with you. I saw thatairstream and it intrigues me. Is it
is? It is the insight forservice only? Uh yeah, and it's
(44:15):
really we wanted to maybe try todo some some sandwiches out of there,
like some hot sandwiches, have alittle panini press, but both just the
the electricity demand of the coffee stuffthat's in there and just the space itself.
It's really like we just do coffeestuff out of there. We can
send some cold sandwiches and stuff,but it's it. Uh but it's it's
(44:37):
beautiful. People love it. Peoplecome out when they see it. So
that's been really fun. But buta lot of work. I do the
sandwiches on my my trailer with propanepizza oven. Yeah. I was actually
inspired by some of the folks thatyou've you've been visiting with on the podcast.
I'm just sort of like percolating onwhat would it look like like to
(45:00):
get an outdoor pizza set up kindof a little mobile you and it rolling.
So I don't think for next summermaybe, but maybe down the road
that would be something that would bebe really fun. But you know,
in five years, I hope thatwe're really just doing a lot of what
we're doing now, which is it'sthe same reason I got into it,
which is is you know, connectingto the community. I hope that we're
(45:22):
continuing to find ways to to befed by our community and the people that
come in and really inspire us andcheerlead for us and keep us going.
But you know, find those thoseavenues that we can get back to the
community and and be you know,one of the many places in mine.
Not I know, nobody's heard ofmine, not in North Dakota. But
you know, like so many townsaround the country, we you know,
(45:45):
just great people, and there aresome amazing businesses and artists and leaders that
are here that just feels really feelreally privle. Tould just kind of be
a part of the you know,the downtown and community conversation, and we
hope that in five years that's stillwhere we're at. That sounds great,
It sounds like a beautiful thing.I love what you're doing. I love
talking with all three of you.I am disappointed that the accents don't match
(46:10):
Francis McDermott Fargo. I think we'reall transplants. Every so often we've got
somebody that comes on staff. Thisguy kind of like the Fargo accent and
fantastic, beautiful. All Right,this has been a great conversation. I
want to thank Travis, Romanda andZach and you've been listening to Bread for
(46:34):
the People. Thanks Jim. Thisepisode of Bread for the People was brought
to you by Side Hustle Bread,Long Island's handcrafted, artisanal bread company.
Side Hustle Bread is a family runbusiness that's bringing the neighborhood feel back to
Long Island, one loaf at atime. If you like what you're hearing,
don't forget to head on over tytunes and rate and review this episode.
(46:57):
Reviewing and rating is the most effectiveway to help us grow up our
audience. This episode was produced byMilestone TV and Film. I'm your host
Jim Surperco. Less it be theBread, Everyone,
My name is Jim Curpico, andthis should I start with my name?
What should I start with? Thisis bread for the people. Do you
like it like this? Welcome tobread? Or do you like it like
this? Welcome, ready, Welcometo bread for the people? Mine?
Is there a script for the people? Welcome to bread for the people.
(00:29):
I'm Jim Curproico. Today we havea special guest all the way from my
Not North Dakota. I was goingthrough my deep dives on Instagram and also
through a list on the Baker's Guildof America, which I think is where
(00:51):
I heard of Prairie Sky Breads,and I tracked down the owner, Travits
Travis Gurget's and he's here with metoday. He's the founder and co owner
of Prairie Skybreads from my not NorthDakota. Please welcome Travis. Hey,
thanks Jim for having me. Thisis great. Yeah, man, I
(01:11):
appreciate you taking the time after presumablya long morning, although today's Monday,
so I'm not quite sure of yourschedule. It's my day off and I
actually been doing yeah, I haven'tbeen doing even that much bakery work today,
so it maybe is actually a dayoff, which is great. It's
good to clear your head a littlebit, right, It's great. Yeah,
I mean, we all need it. And unfortunately, you know,
(01:34):
in this business, there's just somesome weeks you don't get it and you
feel that later on. But today'stoday's one of those good days where I
get to just take a break.So what I'm curious to hear about and
learn about today is the evolution ofhow you started at farmers' markets. I
know that you were inspired by,I believe your grandmother and that always stayed
(01:59):
with you. But you took thatpassion and I'm assuming what was a hobby
and started doing farmers markets alone.Is that right? Yeah? That was
the start. Is a farmer afarmer's market in may Not and it's kind
of grown from there. It's been. We started in twenty fourteen and now
here we are with the brick andmortar location and making a lot more bread
(02:21):
and then we started out making Sopaint the picture of a farmer's market in
may Not for me, I know, I'm in Long Island, New York.
I'm assuming it's way more populated thanmay Not, but maybe not.
The farmers market's located in the downtownarea, or in a more rural location.
(02:42):
We're we've got two farmers markets inmay Not and the one that we're
usually showing up at. We're ina park not far from the downtown area,
but not right downtown. Got agood number of vendors. What is
a good number of vendors. Oh, let's see, I'd say we got
(03:04):
you know, we're between twenty andforty depending on what time of the season
we're at. So we're pretty farnorth. So there's a lot of the
pro especially the produce people, thatwe might be pretty thin at the beginning
of the season. Some folks areonly bringing certain things, you know,
watermelons or sweet corn or something.So you know, when we hit that
late July August, then we mighthave forty vendors and things are really really
(03:29):
busy down at the park. Butso, yeah, and actually when we
moved so I'm originally from the TwinCities, Minnesota, and my wife's from
from up in this area. Sowhen we moved to mine Not in twenty
thirteen, I didn't know anybody.Let me ask you a question, was
did it go like this, let'sfind someplace even colder than the Twin Cities.
(03:53):
Yeah, I mean, we jokeabout it even Yeah, you know,
Minnesota, we're pretty far north.We got tough winters and we yeah,
we moved farther north. We arenot that far from the Canadian border.
And it's uh, it's just yeah, it's a different world out here
and the prairies, and that reallywas inspiring to me, coming from lakes
(04:15):
and woods and Minnesota prairie sky breads. It's where we got the name from.
And this place grows on you.You know, I have no no
reservations about moving to this part ofthe world. But when I moved here,
I didn't know anybody, and wehad some dreams about maybe, you
know, doing some produce stuff,and I wanted to get involved in farmers
market. And at that point whenwe had moved, it was too late
(04:38):
for us to get a garden inthe ground and do anything. Early with
farmers market, there was a marketmanager at the time. He was looking
for some more help. He hadme jump in. I was going to
help him for the season. Butearly on at the farmers' markets, everybody's
kind of got the same things.We've got some like early green some spring
onions, maybe some turnips, radishes, sorry, and so he He was
(05:00):
asking, is there anything that youcan do to kind of make our stand
pop out as produce growers. Isaid, wow, I can do a
little bit of baking. You know, up to that point, I was
mostly a bread eater. I lovedeating bread, and especially my grandmother's bread
Nana. There wasn't any family gatheringthat we had that, you know,
we didn't have Nana's rolls or dinnerrolls, you know, maybe some one
(05:23):
of her pies, just her breads. She was a great baker and it's
what my mom and her siblings grewup eating, was all this fresh homemade
stuff. And before we moved tomine, not my wife and I were
doing some traveling and we popped inWe're volunteering at this soup kitchen in Liverpool,
England, of all places. That'sa whole nother story of how we
(05:45):
got there, but one of thethings that they were doing at this soup
kitchen is having people come in beforethe meal and bake bread together as a
community. It was one part liketeaching and instruction, but one part like
getting all these different people from thecommunity, well to do people on home,
people, all kinds of folks togetherin one spot doing this thing together.
(06:08):
It was really really cool. Itwas really really cool. What a
great way to bring the community together. Yeah, it was really inspiring.
I think it's I mean, theytheir philosophy, their mission, even some
of their little taglines. They reallystuck with me, especially as we're kind
of getting the bakery off the ground. But the bread that they made there,
it reminded me so much of mygrandmother's bread. Was thread or was
(06:31):
it eased? It was. Theydid a white and a whole weet yeasted
sandwich loaf okay, and I thinkespecially fresh it's still a little warm,
just and the smell of it remindedme a lot of of the loaves that
my grandmother was making. And soI none of my my mom, her
siblings, none of them were pickingup any of Grahama's recipes. So I
(06:54):
thought, you know, when Iget back, I want to I want
to learn how to bake this stuff. So as my grandmother gets older and
knowl just having trouble needing the dough, everything's getting a little harder, then
we don't lose some of these recipesfor our family. So that's what I
did. And if nothing else,if that had been all that had happened
with this, that would have beenyou know, a treasure, unto itself,
is just to spend some afternoons withmy grandmother, baking with her and
(07:15):
learning how to make some of thesethese breads that she made. So let
me let me see if I havethis right. So you have this background
and this context for making bread betweenyour grandmother, and then when you went
to England you started to use thatand it brought a lot of people together,
and you ultimately move from the TwinCities to Mine not and you're working
(07:39):
for produce out of farmer's market andyou decide maybe me baking bread will make
this stand stand out. That's prettymuch where we're at, correct exactly now,
Before we even get to the breadpart, you say you move to
town without knowing anybody. I'm assumingyou're talking about you and your wife,
(08:01):
and the farmer's market was a waynot only to make some money and do
something on the weekends, but youactually probably ended up meeting people there.
Yeah. And for me, somy wife still had some family here and
growing she grew up here, soshe knew some folks. I didn't know
anybody, and this was a wayfor me to build those connections and maybe
(08:22):
even build some of those connections throughfood and through baking and through bread.
And that's exactly what happened. That'swhat I love about farmers markets. Without
even realizing that that was going tohappen to me because I was new to
food and farmers markets. When Istarted, I met a lot of people
that are friends of mine to thisday. And granted I'm only about three
and a half years in, butit's opened up a whole new world for
(08:46):
me. Yeah, it was.I mean the connections that we made that.
I mean, some of these folks, for sure are friends. A
lot of them are longtime customers.I'm sure we've still got customers that were
coming and checking us out in twentyfourteen. We have some people that very
proudly, you know, they wereon the original bread subscription list and we
started going year round, and yeah, these folks have been with us for
(09:11):
a long time. So it's itwas a life saver for me, you
know, the way that this breadwas kind of a road in to some
people's lives. So when that firstFarmer's market we showed up, I had
six loves of bread and it tookme all farmers market to sell these six
loves of bread. But as Ilike to tell the story, prisk I
bred started the second market. Whensome of those people then came BACKO and
(09:35):
they were looking for more bread.But then they were telling me like here's
oh man, you know I madethis great sandwich. Here's what I did
with it, or like, oh, this bread. It reminded We've got
a big air force base just northof town. It reminded me of this
bread that I got in Germany whenI was stationed over there, and these
open air farmers' markets, and like, oh, can you tell me a
little bit more about that? Itsounds really interesting. What were they selling
over there? And and then wejust have these conversations, and yeah,
(09:56):
pretty soon I'm making some connections.There's some familiar faces in town, and
it doesn't feel like, you know, I'm such a stranger in this new
place. Yeah. So how longdid it take for it to catch on
at the produce stand so that itwould become its own thing? And maybe
I'm assuming your own bread booth?Yeah, I think, you know,
(10:22):
even by week two or three,I was hooked. I mean, I
was loving the morning routine of gettingup early you know, having that be
the first thing that you're smelling,the first thing that you're seeing and working
with in the morning, and thenyou know, just the social component of
it and getting some of that feedbacktoo that people are really enjoying the bread.
I knew that the next year Iwas going to have a bread stand.
(10:43):
I was done with the produce thing. Things kicked, you know,
we started having bigger harvest, wehad to do more work on the fields
and on the gardens, and soI had to drop the bread after maybe
the first month that we were there, and then it was just produce.
But for me, I was hooked. And the next year that's what I
I got a rental kitchen space.Instead of bringing you know, twelve eighteen
(11:05):
loaves of bread, now it's youknow, we're trying to get to seventy
eighty ninety one hundred loaves of breadand uh, and that's that's all I
was doing. That's great. Whatare the laws to be a cottage baker
in my not North Dakota at afarmer's market, Yeah, I think,
I mean the big one is labelingif you're if you're baking out of a
(11:26):
home kitchen or i'd have to goback and look how it's worth it.
But even when I was in rentalkitchen spaces, just making sure that everybody
knows that this is not an inspectedproduct that's coming out of a home environment.
And so you're you're passing maybe thatchoice and that responsibility onto the customer.
(11:46):
If they enjoy what you're doing,they know that this isn't coming from
an inspected a commercial kitchen, youknow, then they might they might choose
to go another direction. But uh, did you have any file for a
permit to be a home baker?And did you have to beg your bread?
(12:07):
No? And no we could.We could have an open air when
we showed up to market. Andas far as registering, I think with
liability and insurance stuff, that's allgoing to fall on the farmer's market.
So we register with the market andmarkets taking care of any of the sort
(12:28):
of legal insurance state issues. It'sdifferent here. Yeah, I think I've
heard some stories from some other bakerfriends from other states. And you know,
the ingredients that you can use,storage, transportation, there's a lot
of things. North Dakota feels prettywide open in a lot of which maybe
isn't isn't surprising. But yeah,for for your listeners, yeah, it's
(12:52):
it's a it's a different game outhere for farmers market. Right did it
did it change? I'm going tojump ahead for a second, then we'll
go back with COVID. Did theychange? Because I think we were allowed
to before I got into it.I started during the pandemic. I think
before that we could sell our breadloose, which means not necessarily wrapped or
begged. But technically you're not supposedto do that. Now it's supposed to
(13:15):
be begged and labeled with all theingredients, whether a home baker or a
commercial processor. Yeah. I thinkas a market, we've tried to I'm
currently on the market board, andwe've tried to encourage people to maintain some
of those health and safety practices thatyou know, sometimes we like they should
(13:37):
have been around probably some of thesethings before COVID, but certainly yeah,
once once COVID kicked off, thingskind of changed. Yeah, it Zach
rolling in here, but yeah,so we we don't I don't think there
(13:58):
our health and specter is going tobe watching for that. But as a
market, we've changed our policy tobe a little bit more diligent about how
people are handling and labeling some oftheir products. So what were some of
the challenges as you went from adozen loaves of bread to seventy Because at
that point when you went to theseventy, you went to a new place
(14:20):
to bake, or were you bakingat the same it did. So when
I started, it was just outof my We had moved in with my
mother in law. We were tryingto find a place, so it was
in their kitchen using you know,my mother in law mixer and you know,
making these just micro batches of breadand so you know, so then
you're starting to become aware of equipment, what equipment works, what doesn't,
(14:45):
and the size of things, youknow, and where the bottlenecks are.
So like I remember that first kitchen. You know, the mixer, we
could maybe make twelve to sixteen loadsof bread. It's pretty good. Yeah,
I mean it's a twenty court mixerprobably, yeah, yeah, exactly.
But then depending on the dough asyou were making, you know,
(15:09):
I was learning that, Okay,you know, this mixer can handle if
we're making you know, any kindof sandwich breads. Great, if we're
trying to mix things up for oursubscriptions and getting people different kinds of breads
every week, a pretzel dough orsomething like oof. You know that we
were making it. It was veryvery low hydration and and it was not
you know, it was burning outthe motor. So just the equipment was
(15:37):
one thing. And then just youknow, the time of everything. I
still bake with a twenty court mixer. Oh man, They're great, and
I'm putting out well over hundreds loaves. It's the only thing I know.
I would be really interested in goingto a fifty, but then I need
the oven space to match it.Yeah, And that's I mean, the
(15:58):
you know in baking. And I'veheard you talk too about just you know,
your process and converting recipes. AndI think for both of us,
the science is not it's it's I'llspeak for myself now where I'm at,
I'm trying to catch up to thescience and teaching classes. Yeah, it's
it's just a little above where mybrain's at. I I like the art
(16:22):
of it. I like, youknow, the feeling of it. I
like what it does in bringing peopletogether around a table. I love in
our baking room right now, we'vegot windows, so we can see people
that are enjoying that bread or thatsandwich, those soups. That's the best.
It's the best. It's my dreamis to design a bakery where it's
open in the way a pizza placemay have an open kitchen and you see
(16:45):
the pizza oven, because that's sucha part of the experience, to see
the baking. It's it's to me, they're kind of the same. I
would love to have an open bakery. Yeah, it's it was the best
thing I ever asked for, iswe When we were the first it was
a retrofitted building downtown that we endedup jumping ahead in the story getting into.
(17:07):
But yeah, having those windows onthe baker room so that we can
see everybody out in the dining room, but then they can see what we're
doing, and it's it's so muchfun to have little kids coming up and
just like peeking over the window andwatching us shape rolls or make cinnamon rolls.
Now, I looked online and Isaw some pictures. You're in a
corner space. Yeah, we're right. We're on a corner space on Central
(17:32):
Avenue and First Street, so justone block off Main Street in downtown min
Not so what Is it like athree or four story building like a downtown
Yeah, it's a weird it's aweird building. The one that we're in.
There's the main level and then there'sa basement level, which we're actually
looking at maybe getting some space inbecause we've kind of outgrown our space a
(17:52):
little bit already by a little bit, maybe a lot of it. And
then there's an attached building that usedto be a three story hotel and that
was a restaurant is now going tobe a new restaurant with with a bar
and event space and all kinds ofstuff. But we're just in one level.
There's a few different spaces in thatin that in that building, and
(18:15):
we're one of them. That's awesome. So the second year that you're in
mine, not you have your ownbread stand at the same market and you're
coming with about seventy loaves of bread. Mm hmm. Is it is it
one day a week? It's oneday a week the farmers' markets Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday. We were justdoing Saturday. That's all. For some
(18:37):
of the other life responsibilities I had, I had, you know, I
dreamed about like maybe someday have abakery or this is this is a little
bit more of a gig than itis now. But but I knew that
it was going to take me awhile to get not only my baking legs
under me, because this was especiallyat this scale, it's all still very
new, but figuring out if Iwas going to do that, you know,
(19:00):
how did the finances work, whata staffing look like, equipment,
all that stuff. So this waslike a five to ten year plan from
the get go, if it waseven going to be a thing. It
was kind of a dream something mymy wife and I would talk about.
And but yeah, so we werewe were bringing seven do you do one
hundred loaves? Uh? I havea question here? You talk about we,
(19:21):
So you're talking about you and yourwife. She's helping. She she
is helping a little bit. Kidswould come in once in a while,
maybe help bag bread, but evenat this point, maybe just some friends
occasionally coming in too to help bagbread or maybe help me clean the kitchen
because I'm just spent from an allnight baking. And then you know Farmer's
Market, and I want to tounderstand what your prep to do to show
(19:48):
up with seventy loaves of bread ona Saturday. What had to happen during
the week to get to that point. I mean, I feel like I
think at that point you we werestarting to do some pre orders. So
we had some semblage of a websitethat people could go and put in some
pre orders so that we we couldhave some maybe starting number for like you
(20:10):
know where and what people wanted.So maybe we'd make one or two different
maybe a white bread, white sandwichbread and a multi grain sandwich bread,
and they would do some yeast andrustic loaves or baking them. And I
think I think that first or evenI committed and bought sixteen Dutch ovens so
(20:30):
that we could take them, becausethat was just I tried to steam in
the oven and the ice cubes andall, and so now I'm moving when
it's time to set up. Soduring the week, there's there's pre orders,
there's prepping, packaging, stamping,putting the ingredient labels on, but
nothing no prepping drys, no advancingyour mixes. No. I mean I
should have been smarter and scaled stuffout and got some stuff ready to go,
(20:52):
But then I would just haul everythingmaybe at you know, as soon
as they would let me get in, so maybe it'd be five in the
afternoon and I'm bringing in cooling racksand sixteen Dutch ovens and bags of flour
and all this stuff there's in everyrental kitchen we've been and there's always been
very little storage that we've been ableto utilize, So it's mostly me hauling
(21:14):
stuff in, getting everything set up, getting the ovens turned on. Sometimes
I've come and I've mixed some kindof preferment to get going earlier in the
day, but sometimes you need toget that going and then and then it's
leading up. The prep is likesetting up the schedule and trying to block
off on a spreadsheet all these differentdose them and to try to be mixing
(21:37):
and their schedules. How long it'sgoing to take me to shape them baked
time I got to preheat Dutch ovens. It's just this like, you know,
crazy multicolored spreadsheet. And I meanit was to the point chin where
like I'm not drinking water because Idon't have time to go use the bathroom,
Like it's not you know, itwas just it was ridiculous. But
(21:59):
the funny thing is that first year, you know, we did get up
to selling like one hundred loaves ofbread. And now we're starting to play
around at this going year round wherewe're gonna do subscriptions, which, in
my not in North Dakota, isa terrible idea. I don't recommend any
place there's a lot of snow,you don't want to do a year round
deliveries. But I just remember thatfirst year. You know, at that
point we're selling them for like fivedollars a loaf, and I'm selling up
(22:21):
maybe one hundred loaves at a farmer'smarket. I'm thinking that I am just
I'm just king of the castle.This is so great, and I'm gonna
end the summer right with this amountof money that our family could use for
like a little vacation or like something. And I feel like this is where
like the realities of being an entrepreneurand a bakery owner kind of hit home.
Is we got to the end ofthe season, I'm paying out some
(22:45):
of my friends that have come into help. I'm getting hit with that
rent bill which came at the endof the season. I'm some of the
market fees. I purchased some equipment, and when I get to the end
of the season, there's no moneyleft. There's no I didn't make any
money doing this for that first season. This is where I'm at with my
food truck right now. You're exactlywhere I'm at. I feel for you,
(23:07):
I feel for all of us thatI mean, it's just I mean,
I mean, for first of all, it's it's not an industry where
it's it's hard to make a livingno matter what, and that's usually not
why you're doing it. I knowI've heard you talk about that on the
podcast before, but it was itwas if we were going to grow this
thing, and if it was goingto be ever something that was going to
pay me to do it. Iknew that at that point, you know,
(23:30):
I needed to I need to learna lot about what it was going
to take to get this thing tothe next level, if that was something
that we even wanted to pursue.And even at that point we got to
this, you know, we're inthis middle space where if we were smaller,
if it was just me maybe bakingout of my home, there was
a chance to make some amount ofmoney. And if we were larger and
could could bake in in bigger batches, and you know, I didn't know
(23:55):
all the expenses that would come withthat. But that seemed like a way
to make money. But we're inthis middle space where making more just meant
that you had to stay there longer. Maybe I had to pay more people
to come and help you, andyou couldn't ever get ahead of that.
You were never seeing off at marginwasn't changing. When I first reached out
to you, you were like,are you sure you want to talk to
me? But I still I amwhere you were. I am in the
(24:22):
middle space, and not that Iknew that when I reached out to you,
but I'm telling you, like,this is fascinating to me because I
haven't made a decision on what todo, where to go should I make
the move? But I am exactlywhere you are describing. Yeah, And
it's it's a because then it's youknow, you got to make a choice,
(24:45):
and it's do I am I doingthis for the love of baking,
and maybe I want to just staysmall, have this community around this product
that I'm making. There. Bythe way, if you were headaches for
some that's a great choice. There'snothing wrong with that choice, nothing wrong
with that choice. There's there's somany advantages to that choice. And it's
(25:07):
it's just a it's a preference.It's what you are doing it for and
what you want to get out ofit. And there's a lot of days
where you know that's an appealing choice. There's a lot of headaches that come
with scaling up. But but wheredo you even go to learn this next
part because it's even less about maybeit is the baking and the scaling and
(25:30):
the scheduling of how to produce atthat level, because obviously things have to
change to the most efficient manner.But I don't know outfitting the bakery,
designing the bakery, scheduling employees,how many employees like that, all that
stuff I have no idea about,and I'm not sure where to go to
(25:52):
even learn it. Yeah, well, I know it sounds like you've got
some friends for sure in the inthe restaurant industry, so they're going to
be super helpful to talk to.It was weird too, because I when
I got to that point, Iwas in Minett, North Dakota, and
if I was still back in theTwin Cities, there are more bakeries doing
the kind of thing that we're tryingto do, and you know, so
(26:15):
far and my experiences. Bakers areso generous with with recipes, with knowledge,
with you know, tips on equipment, with little tricks about how they
get you know, their does todo whatever and so, so you know,
to start that, I went outto the San Francisco Baking Institute for
one week doing like a sour doughbread's class because that was something that I
(26:36):
knew I wanted to do more withand just didn't know enough about got it.
So I did that and while Iwas out there, they were super
generously. I'm sure they get askedthis all the time. I know they
do. They've got a list ofbakeries that if you want to go in
just you know, like before class, to go in for a few hours,
talk to the bakers, maybe hitup the bakery owner, see if
they'll spend a little time with you. This is a list of bakeries that
(26:59):
have said sure you can send studentsour away. Cool and Josie Miller,
I know, is the one thatstands out to me as the play I
think I went there twice once justto eat and experience and talk to the
staff a little bit. But hewas he was generous. How there's like
three students that we went over thereand he sat down with us for like
(27:19):
an hour and talked about his story, equipment, staffing, all kinds of
stuff. And it was somebody whoI followed up with as we were planning
our our own bakery build for somesome follow up questions and was so generous
and and you know, the knowledgethat he was willing to share coming back
to mine. Not then there thereweren't a lot of artists and bakeries around
(27:41):
us, and so actually just lookingon the map. Besides going back to
the Twin Cities, which I didone time, I actually went north to
Canada to a few bakeries up there, and uh yeah, same thing.
Just just talk to owners, talkto staff, talk to everybody that would,
you know, give me a littlebit of their time. And tried
(28:02):
to crack into what what does ittake to to do this thing that I'm
hoping to do, But feel sooverwhelmed by the amount of decisions that have
to happen. And if you getone or two of them wrong, if
the size of your oven isn't rightand you've got this big mixer but this
tiny oven or something like, it'shard to recover from that. Did you
(28:25):
plan this out in paper. Yeah, there's It's funny because cleaning out our
house and moving a couple of times, I'll find pieces of paper from those
those years of planning where I'm youknow, literally making a list of every
piece of equipment that we're gonna need, right and you know, the number
of proofing baskets or you know,bread pans, the size of the oven,
(28:45):
remember our last rental kitchen, andhaving conversation with oven reps just putting
you know, like taping off andputting how many what size we needed for
the sized loaves that we make,you know, and then using that to
kind of figure out what deck sizewe were going to have, and then
ultimately the size of the oven thatwe were going to get. And we
(29:07):
had the good fortune or challenge ofthe space that we moved into was had
just been made available. The exteriorof the building had all been redone,
the interior was kind of framed outor whatever. But we got to build
out it's our own space, whichwas great because all of our equipment fits
just the right way, so wedid we didn't have to figure out some
(29:30):
of our equipment size around some ofthe pre existing maybe obstacles that would be
in a different space. But yeah, it was. It was just a
lot of spreadsheets and pen and paperand all that kind of stuff, figuring
out what we're going to do.That's great. So at this point,
Prairie Sky Breads is open. Howmany days a week? Oh, we're
(29:51):
open six days a week, sixdays a week. Today, Monday's a
day off. Monday's the day off. All right. So for a few
people who are in prepping right now, we've got some uh some colleagues,
some bakers here with us. Let'sbring them in, all right. So
we've got the team. We've addedRomanda Nash and Zach Schuler. Welcome guys.
(30:15):
How are you doing? Fantastic?So Ramanda, tell us what you
do at Prairie Sky. Oh goodness, I'm responsible for the good tunes.
Hey, that's important. That's oneof the reasons I love bacon. No,
(30:36):
So I do whatever needs to bedone. So just if i'm howld
you, I love to do thecinnamon rolls, caramel rolls, shaping of
bread. I just yeah, anythingthat needs to be done, just if
you need it done. So howdid this even happen to? They just
(31:00):
pull you off the street and sayget in here. Or do you have
an interest in a background in baking. Well, I've always had an interest
and a background. I grew upbaking, but I originally was upfront making
coffee, being a barista and justworking for the first time after years and
(31:22):
years of being home with children.So I thought, oh, this would
be a perfect job to get in. So I was making coffee. But
as someone who has like never drankcoffee before, I just it was fun
and I loved being with the peopleand just learning about coffee and making it.
(31:42):
But I was super jealous and hadsome fomo being upfront and watching them
make amazing things back in the bakroomand me going like I might be underutilized
up here making coffee. So Iwould bug Travis all the time, like
anytime he was up in the lobbyin the front of house, I was
(32:04):
asking him baking questions, asking himwhere he got started with it. So
it just has always been something sinceI was a little kid. I'm one
of the oldest of five and Ijust was raised in my I was a
kid of the eighties and nineties,so I spent a lot of time with
my grandparents in their home and dida lot of baking for my family since
(32:28):
I was the oldest girl, SoI about twelve is when I started making
bread on my own and I justloved it. So got taught by my
grandma and I surpassed her so quickshe got so mad at me. But
so yeah, that's great. Zach. Tell us about what do you do
(32:50):
with the bakery as I do alot of the same things. Remand and
I share a lot of responsibilities.So we'll take the breads after they've been
mixed and kind of take care ofthem on their way to the ovens,
will shape them, fold them,just keeping track of the numbers of what
we have and how we're doing onour production schedule, make sure we're on
track for that. But a lotof it is just that same, like
(33:14):
whatever the plan tells me I'm goingto do with the plan made by Travis
is what I'm going to do.And that's covering in the mixer sometimes,
that's running things up front. It'sit's very much a fill in where you're
needed. Is there a consistency interms of how breads are are shaped or
(33:37):
even I mean, do you guysuse as everyone have to use a slap
and fold method. Is there likeone way that you must make the bread
or does everyone come to it withsomething they know? I would say that
Travis Trains is pretty well to doit the way that it is supposed to,
because I think something that's important toall of us is a consistent product
(33:58):
when people come and get a loafof bread and they get a pastry,
wanting them to know what they're goingto get and be able to look forward
to having the thing that they loveand that they're used to. So I
think it is important to us todo things a certain way. Of course,
everyone has their own little Yeah,got our little spin on it.
You can tell. I think wecan tell, like who's shaped like?
(34:22):
I can look and be like tryto shape that loaf? Zach shape that
loaf? I shaped that love likeyou can kind of tell and just like
having a conversation about what that lookslike and how we might push each other
in directions that make sure that we'restill accomplishing the vision of praise. Guy
So who comes up with the thestructure for the week and and lays out
(34:46):
the schedule. So I usually comeup with the plan for the week.
And that's that's sometimes based on specialorders pre orders. Maybe they're special events
coming up. We know we're gonnado a pop up up at the park
in the summer that we're gonna needan extra you know, a dozen loaves
for sandwiches or whatever it is.We've got a pretty consistent plan based on
(35:09):
some wholesale orders that we've got andkeeping our sandwich station stocked with certain products,
you know, never running out ofcinnamon rolls, whatever it is.
I'm kind of a rotation of youknow, this is what a Tuesday almost
always looks like. This is whata Wednesday almost always looks like. So
it's just playing with the numbers.Usually we'll throw in some different stuff every
(35:30):
once in a while, and thenusually every week I will put up the
schedule. Here's kind of the planfor the week, and then Zach Armanda
will say what about this. I'llsay, that's a really good point.
I should add that back to thebaking schedule because I forgot to add that.
So it's been really helpful, especiallyas we've grown and some of my
(35:51):
own responsibilities outside of baking have grown, to have a lot of really skilled
guys on every part of the process. Because we all all forget to set
timers we all forget to change theoven tamp when we're going from you know,
dinner rolls to sourdough or like whateverit is. It sounds like,
(36:12):
yeah, have the same challenges.So so, but what's so great about
our team right now is that everybody'sreally invested in the quality of the product.
And so it's not you know,neither of these none of us are
here and just you know, we'reI don't know, here for the paycheck
or whatever it is we're we're youknow, looking around the bak room and
(36:34):
have we forgot anything, as youknow, our oventempts where we want them?
Are you know, does the schedulelook right? Or is that number
even if we've got the right product, you know, doesn't that number doesn't
look right? And so we've avoideda lot of big mistakes by having just
a really good team. Right now, it sounds out you do have a
lot of consistency and set accounts wholesaleaccounts, But do you ever miss your
(37:01):
estimate and end up with way toomuch left over at the end of a
given day. Does it ever happen? Oh? Yeah, it still happens,
because it happens to me. Yeah, especially at farmers markets when you
don't know you've been told it justhappened. I tried one for the first
time and it was recommended highly tome, and they're like, you're going
(37:22):
to sell so much. So Ibacked baked aggressively and I didn't sell.
Oh yeah, it's it's crushing,you know. We I think just last
week we made a bunch of pretzels, which usually sell really well. It
was kind of the retail game,and some of it's just you know,
you don't know why that particular dayit didn't sell. Well. Sometimes it's
(37:43):
you can point to something like,well, we sold the first few bags
and then nobody restocked. We justforgot to ever bring them back up and
nobody saw them and it was busyenough nobody came back to check and so
they never made it upfront and theyjust sat in the back, and yeah,
they didn't sell. But then there'syeah, there's days too where a
lot of our special events where wedo pop up somewhere you know, we're
(38:06):
just over prep. You don't wantto run out of stuff when you're out
there at an event, but ifyou had too much, then you know,
what do you do with it?And it's that's hard. You know.
I was on your website this morning, and I wish I was on
there before this weekend because I endedup. One of my specialties is a
projutto bread. It's infused with prejutoand provolone and black pepper, and it
(38:30):
usually sells very well. I hadquite a bit left over, and I
noticed you're doing bags of crouton poundbags of croutons for Thanksgiving. Mh.
That would have been a good wayfor me to repurpose things. Yeah,
that has been amazing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, so, and we don't
(38:52):
normally, we don't always do croutons, but you know, Thanksgiving coming up
at this point, if we're youknow, certain brands, maybe we wouldn't
turn into routimes. But we'll justthrow stuff in the freezer as long as
we've got room, and then whenwe get closer to Thanksgiving, we'll pull
them out and yeah. Yeah,or we've done that with like a bread
pudding, you know, you savebreads that don't sell them and then make
(39:15):
an amazing bread pudding out of it. Yeah. And that's the thing I
love about Prairie's guys, that we'revery on top of, like doing donations
to local organizations with their excess food. So just donating the warming centers around
town and things like that makes mefeel good, even when like we do
have that access at the end ofthe day, which definitely feels a little
(39:36):
bad to see your hard work kindof just sitting there, But it happens.
It happens. M zach. Whatis your favorite type of bread to
bake and why. I think it'sgot to be this sour dough. I
think it being Traves's grandmother's starter makesit feel very personal. Whenever I'm doing
(40:00):
loaf of sourdough, I think thepersonality of the bread really comes through.
I don't have a lot of backgroundin baking in general. I'm a science
background as a student at the universityhere and kind of just wanted in praise
Sky breads and loved the environment there. But getting to work with the breads
and learning the language of like whatthe bread is trying to tell you when
(40:22):
it's too tight, when it's tooloose. The sourdough is very good for
that. It's very open about communicationabout what's going on with it, So
I really love it for that.It's just fun to work with. That's
great Remanda, I'm going to hityou with a tough one. Okay,
what don't you all bake that youwish you did? No, because they
(40:49):
have like PROD, like project addlike ADHD, like I just I want
to do it all, but Iknow we can't. But I would love
probably to do something like a croissantor something that challenges me as a baker,
because that's kind of outside of mywheelhouse, just to push creativity a
(41:13):
little bit more because we do getinto that little a bit of a you
know, we have a schedule,we have a thing that we need to
stay on, so I miss beinga little bit more creative in the breadmaking
part. So I just I don'tknow, I feel like, yeah,
just the creative aspect, there's thingslike I could relate to that. I'll
(41:36):
tell you why. And I'm sureI know where you're all coming from on
it. Everyone probably wants to dothat, you know. With me,
I don't have many people working forme. I do bring in and they're
not experienced. So I'll have someonefrom the high school come help me this
day and someone so I have tobe on top of them. And I'm
hitting consistent markets every week and itjust feels like there's no time. So
(42:00):
I'm making the same six seven typesof breads and it's taken all the energy
out of the world and all mytime. And you know, I'm you're
talking about croissants. I'm trying togo deep into pizza, which is outside
my wheelhouse, but I'm trying tobecome really good at it, and there's
just no time, like I justwant to, but I do think,
(42:22):
uh, it's you know, everyonce in a while, the car out
time to do that, which iswhy I'm happy that my Farmer's market season
just ended. I'm going to gotake a class in Florida and you know,
learn some new things. That's great. Yeah, it's it's been interesting
to see in our own baking schedule, you know, the seasonality of things
(42:45):
and getting through farmers Market is ahuge thing. And when that when just
the difference in the baking schedule andfor sure our weekend schedule. When that
last market is over, then itdoes feel until we get to the holidays,
we've got a little bit of timeto play and do some new things.
Exactly, Travis, where do youthink Prairie Sky is going to be
(43:07):
five years from now? You know, I think so far we've done a
pretty good job of basically opening anentirely new business every year that we've been
open. We opened we opened twobusinesses our first year, because we opened
in February of twenty twenty, immediatelygot hit by the pandemic and had to
(43:27):
kind of throw our business plan outand almost open kind of what felt like
a new business. For the remainderof that year, We've grown a lot.
We jumped into the state Fair.There's another big it's called Hustfest.
It's a Scandinavian heritage festival that drawsso many people to our town doing doing
pastries and coffee for that. Andthen we just got an airstream trailer that
(43:50):
was retrofitted as a coffee shop thatwas running this summer and that was huge.
I mean that that really changed theirnumbers and added a lot of work
to our plates. So I wouldn'tmind if at least this next year we
kind of just like did a normalyear and see what that felt like.
I'm with you. I saw thatairstream and it intrigues me. Is it
is? It is the insight forservice only? Uh yeah, and it's
(44:15):
really we wanted to maybe try todo some some sandwiches out of there,
like some hot sandwiches, have alittle panini press, but both just the
the electricity demand of the coffee stuffthat's in there and just the space itself.
It's really like we just do coffeestuff out of there. We can
send some cold sandwiches and stuff,but it's it. Uh but it's it's
(44:37):
beautiful. People love it. Peoplecome out when they see it. So
that's been really fun. But buta lot of work. I do the
sandwiches on my my trailer with propanepizza oven. Yeah. I was actually
inspired by some of the folks thatyou've you've been visiting with on the podcast.
I'm just sort of like percolating onwhat would it look like like to
(45:00):
get an outdoor pizza set up kindof a little mobile you and it rolling.
So I don't think for next summermaybe, but maybe down the road
that would be something that would bebe really fun. But you know,
in five years, I hope thatwe're really just doing a lot of what
we're doing now, which is it'sthe same reason I got into it,
which is is you know, connectingto the community. I hope that we're
(45:22):
continuing to find ways to to befed by our community and the people that
come in and really inspire us andcheerlead for us and keep us going.
But you know, find those thoseavenues that we can get back to the
community and and be you know,one of the many places in mine.
Not I know, nobody's heard ofmine, not in North Dakota. But
you know, like so many townsaround the country, we you know,
(45:45):
just great people, and there aresome amazing businesses and artists and leaders that
are here that just feels really feelreally privle. Tould just kind of be
a part of the you know,the downtown and community conversation, and we
hope that in five years that's stillwhere we're at. That sounds great,
It sounds like a beautiful thing.I love what you're doing. I love
talking with all three of you.I am disappointed that the accents don't match
(46:10):
Francis McDermott Fargo. I think we'reall transplants. Every so often we've got
somebody that comes on staff. Thisguy kind of like the Fargo accent and
fantastic, beautiful. All Right,this has been a great conversation. I
want to thank Travis, Romanda andZach and you've been listening to Bread for
(46:34):
the People. Thanks Jim. Thisepisode of Bread for the People was brought
to you by Side Hustle Bread,Long Island's handcrafted, artisanal bread company.
Side Hustle Bread is a family runbusiness that's bringing the neighborhood feel back to
Long Island, one loaf at atime. If you like what you're hearing,
don't forget to head on over tytunes and rate and review this episode.
(46:57):
Reviewing and rating is the most effectiveway to help us grow up our
audience. This episode was produced byMilestone TV and Film. I'm your host
Jim Surperco. Less it be theBread, Everyone,
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