September 16, 2024 • 48 mins
In this episode of 'Bread for the People,' host Jim Serpico features an in-depth interview with Amy Emberling, managing partner at Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, MI. Amy discusses the origins, ethos, and community-focused business model of Zingerman's, which includes 11 different businesses within the Ann Arbor area. She elaborates on Zingerman's commitment to service excellence, open-book management, and community giving. They delve into various baking topics, including the complexities of working with spelt and rye, product development, and sourcing local ingredients. Amy also shares her personal journey from Harvard graduate to leading Zingerman's Bakehouse, offering insights into organizational design and work culture. The episode wraps up with practical advice for young people on career and life choices, emphasizing the importance of aligning one's job with their personal lifestyle and preferences.
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 Introduction and New Sponsor Announcement
00:07 Meet Farmer Ground Flour0
1:09 Welcome to Bread for the People
01:35 Interview with Amy Emberling from Zingerman's Bakehouse
04:09 The Zingerman's Community of Businesses
09:55 Amy's Journey and Influences
20:48 Jim's Baking Journey and Future Plans
22:54 Envisioning a Playful Future
23:35 Harvard Experience and Perceptions
26:58 Role in Organizational Design
29:00 Challenges and Success in Baking
31:29 Local Sourcing and Community Impact
32:30 Inspiration from France
35:49 Diving into Rye Bread
43:57 Technology and Innovation at Zingerman's
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 Introduction and New Sponsor Announcement
00:07 Meet Farmer Ground Flour0
1:09 Welcome to Bread for the People
01:35 Interview with Amy Emberling from Zingerman's Bakehouse
04:09 The Zingerman's Community of Businesses
09:55 Amy's Journey and Influences
20:48 Jim's Baking Journey and Future Plans
22:54 Envisioning a Playful Future
23:35 Harvard Experience and Perceptions
26:58 Role in Organizational Design
29:00 Challenges and Success in Baking
31:29 Local Sourcing and Community Impact
32:30 Inspiration from France
35:49 Diving into Rye Bread
43:57 Technology and Innovation at Zingerman's
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm happy to say Bread for the People has a
new sponsor. The Farmer Ground Flower was nice enough the
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(00:27):
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and focus on supporting local communities. They're committed to leading
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(00:49):
extraction bread flour. It's an eighty five percent extraction flower
that is sifted to remove a large portion of the
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andri Go to Farmer Groundflower dot com to learn more.
I highly recommend Farmer Ground and I like to thank
them for sponsoring Bread for the People. My name's Jim Serpico.
(01:11):
And this should I start with?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
My name?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
What should I start with? This is bread for the people.
Do you like it like this? Welcome to bread? Or
do you like it like this? Welcome ready, Welcome to
bread for the people? Mine? Is there a script for
the people? We're here with Amy Emberling, a managing partner
(01:38):
at Zingerman's Bakehouse. Zingerman's Bakehouses mission is the relentless pursuit
of being the best bakery that can be. They're true
Arson bakers, which means they use traditional recipes, time honored processes,
and their hands. They bake fresh every day and in fact,
if I have my information correct, today we have a
(02:00):
grain three seed bread, Detroit Street, sour dough bread, dnkle Brought,
which I believe is spelt bread, French bagetts, and a
lot more. Amy, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thank you for having me. It was a nice surprise
to get your email.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Oh that's so cool. Now am I correct in that
Dinkle brought is spelt spelled?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Is spelt? Absolutely, it's spelt. It's just dinkle is spelt
in German.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Okay, very cool. And that's a tough bread to work with,
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, it's it's kind of messy. It's a little sloppy,
as is rye, so it's a little stickier than using wheat.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah. My understanding on those two in the combination of
rye and spelt, and I hope this is not getting
too much into the weeds for our listeners, is that
there's not a lot of gluten structure and spelt, so
for the beginning baker, it makes it a lot harder
to work with.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Absolutely, it does have protein, which gluten is a couple
of different proteins, but it's a different combination, so it's
doesn't actually give the structure that we does.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
All right, So you're a managing partner at Zingerman's Bakehouse.
Zingerman's is world renowned. I first heard of it from
friends of ours who had children that went to University
of Michigan. And if anyone's ever gone to the University
of Michigan or you're about to go, the first question
they ask is have you been to Zingermann's Bakehouse? Actually delicatessen?
(03:40):
I'm sorry, yeah, delicate, and that's something I want to
get into also, but I have actually tried to in
my trip in the spring to an Aubor. Of course,
you know, I'm into baking. I hear about this all
the time. We went man and it was a two
hour wait, two hour wait, and I was like, it's
(04:03):
not going to be on this trip. I'm going to
have to wait another time. But you guys must be
doing something right. Could you tell us the difference between
the bake house and the Delicate Testant and a little
bit about the structure. I understand that there's eleven companies
in the Zingerman's family. Is that right, right?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yes? Yes, so, yeah, the structure I think is really
interesting and it's one of the reasons why I decided
to be here. So the first of all the businesses
was Zingerman's Delicatestant and it opened in nineteen eighty two
and it was founded by Paul Saginaw and Ari wines Wide.
And then about ten years later, nineteen ninety two, they
(04:44):
were trying to figure out what are they going to do?
How did they want to grow their business? And they
had a lot of, you know, sort of different options.
Many people said you should just franchise. Why didn't you
open up a deli in you know, Arkansas or Saint
Louis And you mentioned University of Michig. Again, it's really
been a great thing for us. And you have all
these alumni who leave every year, I mean literally, you know,
(05:05):
tens of thousands. They go to their hometown or they
move to where they're going to have their first job,
and they say, why didn't you bring a deli? So
that was something they considered, but they made a different
choice and they decided to create what we now cause
community of businesses. So they decided that they wanted to
give an opportunity to other artisans, people who had a
(05:27):
real passion about a particular kind of food, and they
wanted to help them put their own business, and that
we would share the name Zingerman's, but each entity would
be separately owned, except they would have some ownership in
each one of them. In addition to that ownership and artisanship,
all of them would stay and uniqueness. All the businesses
would stay in ann Arbor. So you may have noticed
(05:49):
we have eleven businesses, but they're all, you know, within
the ann Arbor area. So nineteen ninety two, the bake
house own friends and we were set of the Zingerman's businesses.
And the way that came about was, you know, bread
was sixty percent of all the transactions to the delicatessen
(06:11):
at that time, and so they they and they couldn't
quite get the bread that they wanted. So they Ari
said to the founder of the bakehouse, Frank Crulo, who
actually retired a year and a half ago, because we're
just about to have our thirty anniversary. He was a
bit beat and he needed a break. So but Ari
said to him, there, Frank, well, why don't we open
(06:33):
a bakery together? And that was near the bakehouse in
nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Wow. So for those of us who aren't so familiar
with you know, the the layout of anne Auber and
how big it is. And if you have eleven businesses
within ann Auber, how close are they? What's the square mileage?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Meat with each other.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Sure, I can't even tell you what the square mileage is,
not the kind of thing I usually keep dragging here,
he would know. But uh so, this is how it
works and why the business is really pretty logistic and
we don't compete very much. Uh So, there's the delicate
and that's in an area that's called Carry Town. It's
about a ten minute walk from the University of Michigan's
(07:18):
Central Campus. About the minute drive from there is what
we call Zingerman's south Side, and it's in southern ann Arbor,
and that's where we have the bakehouse, the cream that
makes fresh cheese and gelato, the coffee company, and zing Train,
which is our set that teaches our business practices, and
so we refer to that whole area as south Side.
(07:40):
It's really where the artists and producers are. So we
each have a little shop, but we only sell what
we make. So the delicate Tessant is like our flagship.
So people, you know, if we're in the New York
area or Chicago area, have then Italy think of it
like Belli is like the Italy of Zingerman's and has
everything of all the business. But you could come to
(08:01):
the South Side and you could just come to the
bakery and get what the bakery is, or just go
to the creamery and get cheese. And it's an industrial work,
so it's it's a little hard to get people out here,
but you know, it's an interesting little neighborhood. Then five
minutes a little bit east and a little bit south
(08:22):
of us is Zingerman's Mail Order, which sells everything that
almost make and then through them all over the world.
Zingerman's Roadhouse is the west side of town, so it's uh,
it's yeah, do west of Delicatessen by probably a ten
or twelve minute drive, and that's an All America restaurant,
and very close to the Delhi is another restaurant called
(08:45):
Miss Kim and it is a Korean restaurant. Uh. Then
the furtherest Away is Zingerman's Cornman firm, and it's an
events venue where they do their own cooking and really
post all kinds of weddings, corporate events. So I think
I've named everybody.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, that's a lot. Now, you're a managing partner according
to my notes at the bakehouse, So are you primarily
that's your role? You're not so involved in the day
to day of these other companies, absolutely involved in the bakehouse.
I was going to ask that if the bakehouse provides
all the bread needs of the other Zingermann companies.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yes, so pretty much anything that's baked in the organization
in the community is baked by us. I'm not absolutely so.
If you go to the Roadhouse right now, they have
blueberry cobbler on their dessert menu. They're making that themselves,
but all of the bread and most of the desserts
(09:49):
sold in the organization are made by.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
That's amazing. Now you've personally been at Zingerman's for a
long time, right, we don't have to maybe mention the
years unless you want to. But I don't mind a
number of years.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I think you know you can you can see what
I look like. I can't hide. Yeah, I came here
in nineteen ninety two, so I was all of twenty six.
Now I'm fifty six. I did leave for about four years,
but I've been here much since then. From the time
that the bakery opened, there were eight of us. I
was an hourly employee. There were the second Zingerman's business.
(10:29):
And I just told you about this community of businesses. Well,
we didn't talk about the community of businesses back then.
There was just the deli and then there was just
the bakehouse. And I don't think most of us, and
I don't even think Paulinari knew exactly, you know, had
clear in their mind exactly what was going to happen. So, yeah,
I've been here a long time. I've seen it change
(10:49):
and evolved and participated in making it change and evolved.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Now when you were a young person in junior high school,
high school, is this where you thought you would be
at this stage in your life?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You know, that's really funny. You know, I always loved
restaurants and I would beg my parents to go out
to eat, and I was so I can imagine a
little bit thinking I might own a restaurant, but I
probably thought i'd be a lawyer or you know, a
professor or something like that. But the restaurant thing was
(11:26):
that certainly a part of my childhood. And cooking and
baking my nickname as a kid and older there was
baker woman, So I love doing it. I think I
didn't think I would really happen, but you know it did.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah. And you grew up in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Right, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, I'll keep right and eye.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
So who were your influences in terms of baking and
how did you learn that?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. There wasn't really
there was not a bakery that you could go to
except for the World War. So we called it the
five and ten uh and they had donuts. They had donuts,
chocolate covered donuts that we would beg my mother for
on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So wait, that was like that was the quintessential countertop, right, Yes, yeah, yeah,
I mean there's like one left in the country. I
think I was there, but that's that was a really
cool place.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, it's sort of funny. That was the seventies in
this little town. And then there was a delicatessen there,
believe it or not, and the owners were Ike and Tootsy,
and Ike was cranky and Tutsi was loud, and they
had really good uh what we called French bread and
rye bread and comf. We would go and pick up.
(12:48):
My parents never came to synagogue. It happened to be Jewish.
They didn't come, but they would take us there and
they would pick us up, and then they take us
to Ike and tood season we would buy, you know,
smoke meat and rye bread and pumpernickel, and so that
was another sort of influence. But my grandma baked, and
(13:09):
we had a family friend who was a town and
she made a lot of delicious things, and I would
follow her around and ask her to teach me. So
I had sort of those Oh, and then I lived
next door to a of eight kids, the Malloys, and
that house was crazy, and there was always food all
over the you know, in the kitchen that I didn't
(13:29):
really recognize. So it was a nice sort of counter
to what we ate in my house, plum pudding, and
you know, obviously I knew what apple pie was. But
so that was another big influence, was cooking of that family.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Okay, and then when you move on to figure out
what you're going to do with your life and decide
to go to college, what did you What did you study?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I studied. So there's this I was at Harvard and
there's this department there that still exist. It has the
worst name ever, You're going to laugh. It was called
social studies. So everybody makes of it to this day.
I don't even like to explain it. It was sort
of an you know, interdiscipline area. You actually had to
apply after you got had to apply to be able
(14:15):
to get into this program, and you had to take
a certain amount of kind of social philosophy, sociology and
history and economics, but you could put together what you
wanted to study. So I studied American social movements. And
it's actually a good connection to why I'm at Zingerman's
because it was about, you know, I really wanted to
know what how you brought about change and how why
(14:37):
were some movements successful and why were movements not successful?
Ad Zingerman's I really think an underpinning of the work
that we're doing is trying to do things differently. So
in a sense, building a community that is trying to
bring about change in the workplace. So it kind of fit.
It really fits with what I was interested in a
(14:59):
more philosophical level.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So what kind of change in the workplace have you
guys brought forward?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, well, I you know that that's a really interesting question.
We're really known for service. And I know every company
talks about service and oh we give good service, but
we really define service and then we teach what the
definition is, and we track service like we write and
I ask, you know, frontline staff to document what we
(15:27):
call code. So if a customer is unhappy about something,
or a customer just makes a suggestion about something diffferent
if they want that, all gets documented and then co
greens when somebody's happy. So how we do service, I
really think it has changed how other people do service
in the an Arbor area. And then through Zinc Train,
our training company, I mean they teach people from all
(15:48):
over the country and all over the world about lots
of things we do. But I really think that we've
made some sort of a difference in terms of service.
But sure we all practice open book managem, which we
did not create, But I think it really made a
big difference for people who work in our businesses because
we teach them about the game of business. So they're
(16:09):
not just coming to work and you know, rolling their
thousand throw piece of bread dough. They're really learning about,
you know, what makes a difference in a bakery, what
makes a difference and makes great food, and how it
all plays out financially. So I think creating that work
environment is truly making a difference.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
To what extent do they privy to open book? I
mean the books are like open.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, the only thing that's not open is everybody earns.
But they have complete access to the P and L
and the cash flow statement. Now very many people ask
to see that and so, but it's there if they want.
But what happens really day to day is that each
department in Zingerman's community of businesses, you're supposed to have
(16:58):
a weekly what we call a huddle, And at the huddle,
that department goes over the key metrics, the key financial
and management metrics for their areas. Usually that group defined
what they want the key metrics to be. So I'll
give you an example. In our bread bakery, they meet
really and they talked about what were the sales, what
(17:18):
were the sales last week, what were they supposed to be,
what did we say, what was the plan, what did
we think they were going to be? What had we forecasted?
And then what was the actual? Then they talk about okay,
the week that we're in and next week, what do
we think it's supposed to be and how are we
going to get there? Then they talk about the food cost,
labor cost, and then they talk about things like accidents,
(17:39):
you know, safety measures, how many people aren't out of
their basic training, sort of more management metrics. When the
whole bakehouse meets, we also talk about what our cash is,
what our profit is. They have access to all that information,
and not just access, but they are taught what it
means and what you do to impact it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Now, you mentioned social change and community and we talked about,
you know, how you guys deal with that internally Externally.
I think it's pretty known that Zingerman's gives back to
the community in a big way, in several different ways.
Could you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So we get back about ten percent of our net
operating profit every year to the community in terms of
cash and in common so every year that's unbelievable. Well,
you know, I really learned the generosity. It's interesting, you
know how they often say businesses really reflect the values
of leaders, and both Paulinari are incredibly generous people, Jesse
(18:44):
of spirit and generous financially. And then Frank Carolla, who
was the founder of the Baby also I've just learned
from him about the about being generous. I always think
that emotionally, I've always been generous with people and happy
to give time and energy and support, but I was
not maybe always as financially generous as I'm not only
(19:05):
sure I had the resources that they had, but they
right from the beginning, you know, Paul said, I really
it's important to me that we give to the community.
So made this agreement amongst the partners to give back
to the center of our profit, and so we give
to all kinds of the not for profits that were
in town. We helped build what's called the Delmanas Center
(19:26):
for the Homeless. I think we pledged something like two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get that building built.
And then we also were the founding business for what's
called Food Gatherers. That was one of the first organizations
that collects food from the restaurants and grocery stores that
was going to be thrown away in order to you know,
(19:50):
repurpose it and get it to people who really need it.
So in all those ways, that's how we give to
the community.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's so we have something similar that we participated in.
Someone started in an app cale too good to Go.
So if a restaurant or in our case, we're at
a farmer's market, we have leftover bread people know, and
they could come there and pick it up for like
a third of the retail prices. It's pretty cool because
there is a lot of food waste. People don't realize
(20:20):
how much there is, especially I find in baking, you know,
for me in the farmers markets, I can project what
I'm going to sell. But this past weekend is a
perfect example. It was ninety five degrees in humid and
nobody wanted to come out. I had my typical bake
and I probably sold fifty percent of what I normally say.
(20:42):
Oh wow, So then you're trying to figure out what
you're doing with this bread?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know, right, it happens.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So did you get into this whole baking world?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
How did I get into the baking world? I was
a hobbyist that found myself with a lot of time
at the beginning of COVID, and it was a bonding
experience between my my wife and my three kids. My
older son was at usc and Los Angeles and came
home because there was no in person classes, and my
(21:13):
other two sons were home, and we just started doing it.
And we created an Instagram account called side Hustle Bread
that was our inside joke, and people started asking for
the bread. So one thing led to another. You know,
I'm somewhat of an entrepreneur at heart, and we started
selling that bread, and little by little, be became known
(21:34):
and invited to farmers markets. And you know, we're about
two and a half years in and I'd been baking
every day for two and a half years, feeding my starter,
you know, learning about it. I love to learn. I'm
very curious and one of the reasons I wanted to
start this podcast was to speak to people like you,
pizza makers, business entrepreneurs, and just learn as much as
(21:57):
I can about the world. I'm not sure where I'm
taking this skill or group of skills that I have,
but I but I enjoy baking and I enjoy seeing
people enjoy what I've baked. But I'm not sure what
my personal business model is. But I'm okay with that
because I do have another career, and you know, presently
(22:22):
I'm actually what I'm really spending more time on than
I have been since I started baking is trying to
merge my passion for content and food. And we're starting
to pitch some some food television shows not in the
nonscriptive world, so we'll see where it takes us. I
don't know, having fun, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, you know, it's been a challenging couple of years
that we all know that, and we're about to write
the next vision for the bakery. It's not really a budget,
it's not a strategic plan. It's more a picture in
the future. You know, five years from now, I who
are successful, what does it look like. What's really big
for me at the moment is trying to make the
(23:02):
vision about playfulness, because there's the last couple of years
have not been very playful. And I think we do
our best work. We make the most delicious food, or
we write the scripts, or we film the best thing
if we're really loving it and we're just playing. So
you know, I hope that you're playing and you're liking it,
and I think that's what I'm going to try to
(23:24):
get people here a little more playful.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, We'll see how long I can afford to be.
Sometimes that comes into play, so to speak. Now, you
mentioned you went, You mentioned you went to Harvard. I
did want to talk to you about that. I just
read an article. You know, Harvard puts out obviously so
many successful people, but in the in the in the
(23:48):
arts and television and film. I've recently read an article
about a writer saying it was a struggle for him
because everyone's threatened and looks down upon the people that
came out of the Harvard lampoon and feel that they
are privileged. In my mind, I know what it's like
(24:08):
to get into a school of good quality. I don't
see it as privilege. I see it as somebody who
combined working their ass off and doing what it takes.
And also beyond academics, they had to have other things
to offer the school. But I was wondering, if you've
encountered anything like that where Harvard was actually a crutch.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, you know, it's a really interesting question. Actually, no
one has ever asked me that question in the early
year working in the food business, because first I worked
in some restaurants for a few years before I found Zingerman's.
I think more what I got from people was respect,
kind of the attitude that you're I mean, that was
(24:55):
a while ago. Now, I graduated in nineteen eighty eight,
so we weren't that word privilege was not a word
that was in the vernacular. People were not talking about
who had present right, So there was a little there
was some respect, a little bit of oh wow. And
after that it was more the question was if you
knew that you were going to do this, would you
(25:15):
have bothered? Which I always thought was interesting. And you know,
I went to Harvard because I thought that's where you
I thought I would get educated. I was going to learn,
and I spent a lot of time studying and trying
to you know, it's like a liberal arts education. So
I said No, of course I would have gone because
I was not going there looking for looking for, you know,
(25:41):
some particular skill. I just wanted to educate, you know,
learn about the world. Many days later, I went to
my twenty fifth reunion and I kind of looked around
and I thought, well, God, maybe being educated was not
Harvard was about. It was about figuring out learning how
to be the powerful and influence people in the world.
(26:01):
And I was not interested in that. I was interested in,
you know, doing kind of interesting and service kind of
things in the world, even though I bake, you know,
I think I'm trying to develop people at the bakery.
So anyway I would have that was more the attitude.
And now it's some years later that people don't even
(26:22):
ask me, you know, nobody cares what I did so
long ago, and it's not that much of my identity,
you know, at this point, done in the last fifteen
or twenty years is much more formative than having gone
to Harvard. So I even, you know, I don't know
if you know, many people went to Harvard, but there's
that that, you know, you never say that you went
to Harvard. You just say I went to college in Boston,
(26:44):
and you make people ask you until you eventually say, well,
I don't even bother with that anymore. I just say, yeah,
I want to a big deal. Whatever it does, A
ratter does a.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Red Yeah, that's so cool. I've read something also that
you're into organizational design, and that also makes me question
how much of your role has to do with the
actual baking and developing the recipes, and how much does
it have to do with the management of the bakehouse.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, so at this point I spend only twenty percent
of my time baking. I spend you know, another five
to ten percent on top of that talking about product
development or doing the work on product development. But the
(27:38):
rest of my time is really spent leading the organization
and trying to provide a workplace in which people can
really learn and grow and have a very positive daily experience.
You know, we spend so much of our time at work.
Really want to make it a place that people love
coming to and that they can develop a lot of
(28:00):
young people here. My goal is to help them figure
out who they want to be, where they want to go,
and help them get there, even if it, you know,
often it means leaving the bakery, which is a okay,
with me, maybe they realize that they do something else,
or they want to open their own bakery, whatever it
happens to me. So I spent a lot of my
time doing that and then yeah, trying to create culture
(28:23):
and lead in a way that helps us figure out
what culture we want to have at the bakery.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That organizational design that's amazing, you know, because I always,
as much as I'm into learning how to bake bread,
I don't have any idea how to run a bakery.
And I was wondering, you know, and you just said it.
Some of these people come through and it's you guys,
are okay with that. You come here, you work as
(28:50):
long as you want. You know, you're an asset to us.
We're giving you the training, and then hopefully you're happy
if they do go on to open up a successful bakery.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I am.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I find it daunting, you know, personally, And that's one
of the reasons I say I don't know what I'm
doing with bread right now, because I can't imagine a
successful bakery around where I live that just deals with bread,
unless you know, you're the delicatessen is using the amazing
(29:24):
bread that you make to serve other things. Right, And
I guess it would have to be something like that.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, I mean it's possible that you could have a
bakery that only made bread and didn't wholddale. But I
think for us, we were really really fortunate because when
we started, we had this big, big customer waiting for us, Zingerman's,
and so that gave us a big cushion and or
(29:54):
a strong foundation is probably a better way of to
get going. I think within a year and a half
or two years we were profitable and they were our
only customer, so you know, we're very indebted to them,
very grateful, but they were so busy.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
But that was very unique because because of what I
had read is the founders were not happy with the
bread they were bringing in, which is why they decided
to start baking their own bread. Yes, that rightly, right,
I mean that's pretty unique. That's kind of the flip
(30:31):
side of what you happen.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yes, so we were really lucky. And now though forty
five percent we bake, we sell to the organization. The
rest we either sell ourselves out of our own retail
shop or we have all kinds of wholesale customers. So
it's continued to evolve. You know, a lot of it
has to do with perseverance, you know, kind of figuring
(30:55):
out how to hang in there. Sometimes I think the
reason we lost and some of our competitors don't is
just pure old perseverance and willing to be uncomfortable for
long experiods of time. You know, I see other people clothes,
They're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm
like thinking, oh, I don't know why I don't just quit.
But that's we just quit, We just pay, We just
stay and you know, try to manage the cash to
(31:18):
stay and have enough. And and then it's it's interesting
do the keep trying to do the right things and
seeming to work out.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's cool. And you locally source most of you you.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Try to source locally, which as possible. Obviously there's some
things you can't. Like vanilla bean doesn't come locally, but
our apples come from a farm that's literally ten minutes
away from us. Uh. Tomorrow, I'm going to this place
Frank and Mouth to meet up with this farmer who's
going to grow who were Actually we're going to buy
twenty five thousand pounds of soft white wheat berries. So
(31:55):
those are a couple of examples. All our dairy is
local cherry. Michigan's a big cherry state, so many chairs
that we use. So Michigan is a great agricultural state.
I don't think we talk about it that much like
that in the United States. We think of it as
the car industry state. But it's a very big agricultural state,
and so we're able to get a lot of things
(32:15):
that we use locally. So then that is part of
the community and being local. So you know, buy local,
invest in the people around you. We're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And you spent a lot of time in France.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
It was you there for about seven months.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Okay seven months, and what did you do there that
inspired you so much? You became well acquainted, acquainted.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
With banking and with cooking. So what happened was I
had thought I would, as I said earlier, you know,
maybe I'll go to law school. I came to ann
Arbor with my boyfriend at the time who became my husband,
and he was going to graduate here, and I thought,
I'm going to work in some restaurants for fun, love food.
I'll go back to school get a PhD in sociology,
(33:08):
or I'll go to law school. Well, I loved working restaurants,
and then I applied to University of Michigan law school
and I did not get it in, and I thought, okay,
what am I going to do? Well, you know what,
I really loved this restaurant. Where I'm going to go
to cooking school. But my husband and I were kind
of crazy. We got married really young. I wasn't quite
(33:29):
twenty three when we got married, and then we had
our first child when I was like twenty four and
a half. So when it was time to go to
Greek school, I already had this little baby, Jake, and
my husband was still in graduate school, and like, how
am I going to do this? I can't. There was
no cooking in ann Arbor. So we figured out how
to go to Paris. My husband got a grant to study.
(33:52):
He's an archaeologist, so he's going to study a collection
of pottery at the Loop and I was going to
go to this school called Lavern which was very famous.
It's now closed. And they had a school in Paris
and they had one in Burgundy. Right before we were
going to go, they closed the school in Paris and
they said you can go to Brindy I said, no,
(34:13):
I can't go to Burgundy. I have this baby. I
had this So I ended up going to school at
There's a school in the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and
you can take months, multi month long class there. You
can take a class for a day or you can
stay for weeks, and so that's what I ended up doing,
and it was really really great. I didn't need you know,
(34:35):
a lot of American schools at that time, I get
associate's degree or a whole bachelor's but I didn't need
that because I hadn't gone to college. So what I
got out of going being there in France, I mean,
they're just dedication to perfection and you know, perfect flavor,
perfect execution, beauty in the food is sort of the
(34:55):
rigor in the practice. You can learn by being with them,
I think invaluable. So that's mainly. That's mainly what I
got while I was there, was it was very very helpful.
Learning is just the right way. Then then you come
back and you do it and you know, and you
don't always do it exactly as they say when you're
in the actual working.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Environment, right are they always baking with natural yeast and
uh source there?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You know, they are the French, sure, just like us.
I mean, you can find the whole range of grape
bread and terrible bread in France. So there's lots of
wonderful artists and bakers making natural lemon bread. Uh. And
then there are you know, the wholely completely manufactured pumped
(35:44):
up with the preservatives sugars that you can also find.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
So do you mind if we get into the weeds
on some of the actual products, the bread products like
rye Breadjewish rye bread in particular, I'm very interested in
and I know you seem to have a wealth of
knowledge there. I've read an article that you wrote about it.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Can remember is there.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
A difference between European let's see, where was this one?
It's in my hands twenty sixteen Jewish rye bread from
Eastern Europe to eastern North America. I'm wondering if there's
a big difference between European rye and what people are
generally used to in the United States.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Absolutely, it's entirely different. So rye bread or delicatessen. Jewish
rye bread has hardly any rye flower in it at all.
Some of them you possibly not have any rye flowers
so we had a teacher here whose name is Michael London.
(36:53):
He lives in upstate New York, Saratoga Springs, the Great
Prince for you to speak to if he's available. He's
in his seventies now, and he taught us how to
make the rye bread that we make. And he said, Amy,
he would call me. Most of the rye breads they
take right and they hold it over the loaf of
(37:14):
the bread as it's baking. It doesn't have any rye
in it whatsoever. So while European rye breads have a
lot of real rye in it, and they tend to
be dense, and they're often naturally leving. They might have
a little commercial yeast in it, but because they're mainly rye,
they're not soft like Jewish rye breads. They're dense and
you would come in very thin pieces generally, and maybe
(37:36):
you eat it with butter, maybe withakon of burs or
smoked salmon. While the rye bread that we think of
in sort of American delicatessens is mainly white flour with
a little bit of rye flower mixed in, so it's
entirely different, and lots of commercial yeast.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Okay. Now I have spoken to other bakers about rye bread.
I found the recipe that I use in I think
it's called the Book of Jewish Bakers, where I actually
use sour cream in my rye bread. But I haven't
come across many other people that do. I was wondering
if you guys use it, that's fascinating. I think that
(38:17):
I think that helps makes it a little softer, h
even if it's naturally leavened, which does tend to.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
See do you yeah? Do you have a sours What
kind of starter are you using it? Or is it
all commercial use?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I could I do it with both? I I do
a lot of sour dough baking, and you know I
I generally make my rye bread with natural sour dough,
and I sometimes use caraway seeds sometimes don't. My My
specialty bread is Italian prejudto bread, which is prejutto solami
(38:57):
pepperoni and sharp provolona black pepper. And it's it's a local,
tri state New York Italian thing that people have grown
up on. But as I started to infuse bread with meat,
I said, why can't I do this with PISTRAMI? And
I started doing a pastrami in the rye the same
(39:18):
way I do the Italian prescudo breads. And uh, it's
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That's a great idea, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
I just uh, I love trying to combine you know,
ingredients and do that thing. But yeah, I do use
sour cream, and I haven't come across at all. Do
you use uh? I guess you know certain rich breads
you use. You must use milk for certain breads.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So we make we make a that has lots of
milk and butter and eggs in it. We make colla
that does not have milk in it, but it has
lots of eggs in it and a really great corn oil.
We make something that we call bake house white that
has milk in it. It's like a traditional French panda me. Uh.
(40:02):
We bake it in a more of an American pan,
so it's like a white. It's very enriched. Yeah, and
our ride. What I like about it is that we
use rye bread in the day before and we mash
it up and add water to it, and we call
old and it's listed on the list as old and
(40:23):
that goes in and you know, they say the the
it's the spiritual art baking or you know, something from
yesterday into today. But it's also just the economic part
of bakers. You know, if you had bread as you
did after the market the other day on yourself, what
are you going to do it? If you're just going
to throw it away? No, So they would take it
(40:44):
and they would make it, you know, they'd mash it
up and it would kind of save them and putting,
uh like stretch the dough so they would make more
loaves of bread the next day so they didn't throw
it out. So we continue to do that with our
Rye bread.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
That's cool. The Detroit Street sour dough bread. Is there
anything particular about that bread that that you decided to
name it Detroit? Is it different than a regular country's.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
No, what's different about it is that it has a
seed topping on it that the other doesn't. So it's
got yeah in sesame seed on top. But you know,
it's a funny story about our sour dough. Did you
happen to notice it? It is better than San Francisco
sour dough? I don't know I thought it anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
I did not, but I could guess why. Yeah, is
it is your sour dough.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Not But what happened was we're making it and we
called it San Francisco style Francisco sour dough, and then
we got a call one time from a famous baker
bakery in San Francisco that said, you can can't call
it San Francisco sourdough. That's a you know, intellectual property infringement.
(42:05):
And so Paul Saganaw who is a very funny guy,
said to the lawyer, Okay, well could we call it
better in San Francisco And the lawyer said, sure, that's
what the bread is called. Though it's kind of crazy,
but that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
That's amazing. Now that's reminding me of another story I
read about which I wasn't going to go to right now,
but in terms of the name Zingerman's, that was not
the original name from Paul and it was.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Going to be Greenberg. But then they got a call
before they were going to open.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Wait, before that, they went as far as green Greenberg
was a customer affairs from what I understand, that they
loved and they took her out on a photo shooting
a marketing campaign and they started to launch it with
the name and then they got there.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
That's right, someone in Detroit a sign. Don't call it that. Please,
don't call it that. So then they had to come
up with no name. Do you know the story about
why it starts with a Z?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I know that they wanted it to either start with
an A or a Z. Yeah, you did your home right,
which I think is very smart. I did my homework,
and they went through. They had a few beers from
what I understand, and they landed on Zingermann big father.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
This was when we still had phone books, and Paul's
grandfather told them pick an A or a Z name.
It makes it easier when somebody's looking it up in
the phone book. So that's how that came to me. Yeah,
they were sitting on the floor of Paul's kitchen drinking
some beer and came up with the name. So a
long time ago, very long time ago. Funny.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, that's a cool story. Two other things and then
I'll let you go. Technology wise. You know, you guys
are kind of at the top of your game when
when customers come into the delicate tests and at least
they're greeted with sort of like iPads and PUS systems
where they place their order and then go to the
(44:12):
counter and it seems to be very smooth and organized.
Do you do something similar like that in the bake house?
And how did you guys get to the point to
be able to develop all know that.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
That particular ordering style is distinctive, delicate tests and then
that came out of COVID. So they're trying to, okay,
deal with lots of service situations that we've all become
aware of on the last couple of years. So there, yeah,
so there's where that started. They were not like that.
They were very old school, where you know, somebody would
(44:44):
be standing there, they take your order, and they had
many many more kind of staff working there. Zoom mail
order is really probably leads to the whole organization and
sort of technological innovation, and they really Lean manufacturing. I
don't know if you know much about Lean and Toyota way,
(45:06):
but they have a lot sort of great technological use
is in their mail order system that allows them to
ship out, you know, thousands of boxes to do a job.
Now they're not like Amazon obviously, but for food business
they're doing pretty well. I'd say that the bakery our
service is a little more old.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
School, Okay, I think there's a need for that. Yeah,
it's a different, nice feeling. So yep. So lastly, looking
back on everything you've done, if you could talk to
some young people out there that are starting out in
life trying to figure out maybe they know what they do,
(45:46):
maybe they don't. I love the fact that you didn't
necessarily know what you were going to do in college
and you were open to learning about the world. I
personally think that's a great way for a young person
to view going to college. Do you have any life
advice do you have people starting out?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
This might not sound like much. What I often try
to get people to think about is what I really
like their day to day to be like. Because you
might say, oh, I want to be a lawyer, or
I want to be a baker, and you find but
you're a night person and to be a baker you
need to be a warning person. Or you really love farming,
(46:29):
but you can't stand living any place other than a city.
So I want to talk to people about before you
think about exactly what you want to be. How do
you like to live. Do you want to walk to work?
Do you like to work a lot? Do you like
to work with people? You want to work alone. Do
you like details, you big picture and to think about
some of those things first, and then maybe they are
(46:53):
still interested in the same field, whether it's baking or
being a doctor or you know, aninty whatever. But then
you can say, Okay, where do I want to go
in that field based on how I actually like to
engage in the world. I think we often forget and
don't think about those basic things of you know, I
need a lot of sleep. I don't need any sleep.
I never like I don't like working alone. So for me,
(47:17):
this bakery is the best thing in the world. There's
always one here, twenty four hours a day. I could
work whatever, I would be working with the team. I
love that. Now there's some people who can't stand that,
like to have to deal with as many people as
I talk to every day. They would never want it.
I think being in touch with those things is an
important step in despite exactly how you want to live
(47:42):
your life and what you want to do during it,
it's about it.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Well, I think there's a lot there. I think there's
a lot there. So I appreciate you sharing all that,
and Amy, I appreciate you sharing your time. It's been
a pleasure to talk to you and learn more about
you and the operation, and I look forward to getting
thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I'd hope to see you too. It was really nice
to meet you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Bread for the
People featuring Amy Emberlin from Zingerman's Bakehouse. If you're interested
in advertising on Bread for the People, feel free to
shoot me an email at bread for thepeoplepod at gmail
dot com. Remember, if you like what you're hearing, please
rate and review our podcast over on Apple Podcast. This
(48:29):
episode was produced by Milestone TV and Film and edited
by Rick Beck. Have a great day, everyone, Blessed be
the bread
I'm happy to say Bread for the People has a
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I highly recommend Farmer Ground and I like to thank
them for sponsoring Bread for the People. My name's Jim Serpico.
(01:11):
And this should I start with?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
My name?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
What should I start with? This is bread for the people.
Do you like it like this? Welcome to bread? Or
do you like it like this? Welcome ready, Welcome to
bread for the people? Mine? Is there a script for
the people? We're here with Amy Emberling, a managing partner
(01:38):
at Zingerman's Bakehouse. Zingerman's Bakehouses mission is the relentless pursuit
of being the best bakery that can be. They're true
Arson bakers, which means they use traditional recipes, time honored processes,
and their hands. They bake fresh every day and in fact,
if I have my information correct, today we have a
(02:00):
grain three seed bread, Detroit Street, sour dough bread, dnkle Brought,
which I believe is spelt bread, French bagetts, and a
lot more. Amy, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thank you for having me. It was a nice surprise
to get your email.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Oh that's so cool. Now am I correct in that
Dinkle brought is spelt spelled?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Is spelt? Absolutely, it's spelt. It's just dinkle is spelt
in German.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Okay, very cool. And that's a tough bread to work with,
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, it's it's kind of messy. It's a little sloppy,
as is rye, so it's a little stickier than using wheat.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah. My understanding on those two in the combination of
rye and spelt, and I hope this is not getting
too much into the weeds for our listeners, is that
there's not a lot of gluten structure and spelt, so
for the beginning baker, it makes it a lot harder
to work with.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Absolutely, it does have protein, which gluten is a couple
of different proteins, but it's a different combination, so it's
doesn't actually give the structure that we does.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
All right, So you're a managing partner at Zingerman's Bakehouse.
Zingerman's is world renowned. I first heard of it from
friends of ours who had children that went to University
of Michigan. And if anyone's ever gone to the University
of Michigan or you're about to go, the first question
they ask is have you been to Zingermann's Bakehouse? Actually delicatessen?
(03:40):
I'm sorry, yeah, delicate, and that's something I want to
get into also, but I have actually tried to in
my trip in the spring to an Aubor. Of course,
you know, I'm into baking. I hear about this all
the time. We went man and it was a two
hour wait, two hour wait, and I was like, it's
(04:03):
not going to be on this trip. I'm going to
have to wait another time. But you guys must be
doing something right. Could you tell us the difference between
the bake house and the Delicate Testant and a little
bit about the structure. I understand that there's eleven companies
in the Zingerman's family. Is that right, right?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yes? Yes, so, yeah, the structure I think is really
interesting and it's one of the reasons why I decided
to be here. So the first of all the businesses
was Zingerman's Delicatestant and it opened in nineteen eighty two
and it was founded by Paul Saginaw and Ari wines Wide.
And then about ten years later, nineteen ninety two, they
(04:44):
were trying to figure out what are they going to do?
How did they want to grow their business? And they
had a lot of, you know, sort of different options.
Many people said you should just franchise. Why didn't you
open up a deli in you know, Arkansas or Saint
Louis And you mentioned University of Michig. Again, it's really
been a great thing for us. And you have all
these alumni who leave every year, I mean literally, you know,
(05:05):
tens of thousands. They go to their hometown or they
move to where they're going to have their first job,
and they say, why didn't you bring a deli? So
that was something they considered, but they made a different
choice and they decided to create what we now cause
community of businesses. So they decided that they wanted to
give an opportunity to other artisans, people who had a
(05:27):
real passion about a particular kind of food, and they
wanted to help them put their own business, and that
we would share the name Zingerman's, but each entity would
be separately owned, except they would have some ownership in
each one of them. In addition to that ownership and artisanship,
all of them would stay and uniqueness. All the businesses
would stay in ann Arbor. So you may have noticed
(05:49):
we have eleven businesses, but they're all, you know, within
the ann Arbor area. So nineteen ninety two, the bake
house own friends and we were set of the Zingerman's businesses.
And the way that came about was, you know, bread
was sixty percent of all the transactions to the delicatessen
(06:11):
at that time, and so they they and they couldn't
quite get the bread that they wanted. So they Ari
said to the founder of the bakehouse, Frank Crulo, who
actually retired a year and a half ago, because we're
just about to have our thirty anniversary. He was a
bit beat and he needed a break. So but Ari
said to him, there, Frank, well, why don't we open
(06:33):
a bakery together? And that was near the bakehouse in
nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Wow. So for those of us who aren't so familiar
with you know, the the layout of anne Auber and
how big it is. And if you have eleven businesses
within ann Auber, how close are they? What's the square mileage?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Meat with each other.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Sure, I can't even tell you what the square mileage is,
not the kind of thing I usually keep dragging here,
he would know. But uh so, this is how it
works and why the business is really pretty logistic and
we don't compete very much. Uh So, there's the delicate
and that's in an area that's called Carry Town. It's
about a ten minute walk from the University of Michigan's
(07:18):
Central Campus. About the minute drive from there is what
we call Zingerman's south Side, and it's in southern ann Arbor,
and that's where we have the bakehouse, the cream that
makes fresh cheese and gelato, the coffee company, and zing Train,
which is our set that teaches our business practices, and
so we refer to that whole area as south Side.
(07:40):
It's really where the artists and producers are. So we
each have a little shop, but we only sell what
we make. So the delicate Tessant is like our flagship.
So people, you know, if we're in the New York
area or Chicago area, have then Italy think of it
like Belli is like the Italy of Zingerman's and has
everything of all the business. But you could come to
(08:01):
the South Side and you could just come to the
bakery and get what the bakery is, or just go
to the creamery and get cheese. And it's an industrial work,
so it's it's a little hard to get people out here,
but you know, it's an interesting little neighborhood. Then five
minutes a little bit east and a little bit south
(08:22):
of us is Zingerman's Mail Order, which sells everything that
almost make and then through them all over the world.
Zingerman's Roadhouse is the west side of town, so it's uh,
it's yeah, do west of Delicatessen by probably a ten
or twelve minute drive, and that's an All America restaurant,
and very close to the Delhi is another restaurant called
(08:45):
Miss Kim and it is a Korean restaurant. Uh. Then
the furtherest Away is Zingerman's Cornman firm, and it's an
events venue where they do their own cooking and really
post all kinds of weddings, corporate events. So I think
I've named everybody.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, that's a lot. Now, you're a managing partner according
to my notes at the bakehouse, So are you primarily
that's your role? You're not so involved in the day
to day of these other companies, absolutely involved in the bakehouse.
I was going to ask that if the bakehouse provides
all the bread needs of the other Zingermann companies.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yes, so pretty much anything that's baked in the organization
in the community is baked by us. I'm not absolutely so.
If you go to the Roadhouse right now, they have
blueberry cobbler on their dessert menu. They're making that themselves,
but all of the bread and most of the desserts
(09:49):
sold in the organization are made by.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
That's amazing. Now you've personally been at Zingerman's for a
long time, right, we don't have to maybe mention the
years unless you want to. But I don't mind a
number of years.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I think you know you can you can see what
I look like. I can't hide. Yeah, I came here
in nineteen ninety two, so I was all of twenty six.
Now I'm fifty six. I did leave for about four years,
but I've been here much since then. From the time
that the bakery opened, there were eight of us. I
was an hourly employee. There were the second Zingerman's business.
(10:29):
And I just told you about this community of businesses. Well,
we didn't talk about the community of businesses back then.
There was just the deli and then there was just
the bakehouse. And I don't think most of us, and
I don't even think Paulinari knew exactly, you know, had
clear in their mind exactly what was going to happen. So, yeah,
I've been here a long time. I've seen it change
(10:49):
and evolved and participated in making it change and evolved.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Now when you were a young person in junior high school,
high school, is this where you thought you would be
at this stage in your life?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You know, that's really funny. You know, I always loved
restaurants and I would beg my parents to go out
to eat, and I was so I can imagine a
little bit thinking I might own a restaurant, but I
probably thought i'd be a lawyer or you know, a
professor or something like that. But the restaurant thing was
(11:26):
that certainly a part of my childhood. And cooking and
baking my nickname as a kid and older there was
baker woman, So I love doing it. I think I
didn't think I would really happen, but you know it did.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah. And you grew up in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Right, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, I'll keep right and eye.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
So who were your influences in terms of baking and
how did you learn that?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. There wasn't really
there was not a bakery that you could go to
except for the World War. So we called it the
five and ten uh and they had donuts. They had donuts,
chocolate covered donuts that we would beg my mother for
on Saturdays.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So wait, that was like that was the quintessential countertop, right, Yes, yeah, yeah,
I mean there's like one left in the country. I
think I was there, but that's that was a really
cool place.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, it's sort of funny. That was the seventies in
this little town. And then there was a delicatessen there,
believe it or not, and the owners were Ike and Tootsy,
and Ike was cranky and Tutsi was loud, and they
had really good uh what we called French bread and
rye bread and comf. We would go and pick up.
(12:48):
My parents never came to synagogue. It happened to be Jewish.
They didn't come, but they would take us there and
they would pick us up, and then they take us
to Ike and tood season we would buy, you know,
smoke meat and rye bread and pumpernickel, and so that
was another sort of influence. But my grandma baked, and
(13:09):
we had a family friend who was a town and
she made a lot of delicious things, and I would
follow her around and ask her to teach me. So
I had sort of those Oh, and then I lived
next door to a of eight kids, the Malloys, and
that house was crazy, and there was always food all
over the you know, in the kitchen that I didn't
(13:29):
really recognize. So it was a nice sort of counter
to what we ate in my house, plum pudding, and
you know, obviously I knew what apple pie was. But
so that was another big influence, was cooking of that family.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Okay, and then when you move on to figure out
what you're going to do with your life and decide
to go to college, what did you What did you study?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I studied. So there's this I was at Harvard and
there's this department there that still exist. It has the
worst name ever, You're going to laugh. It was called
social studies. So everybody makes of it to this day.
I don't even like to explain it. It was sort
of an you know, interdiscipline area. You actually had to
apply after you got had to apply to be able
(14:15):
to get into this program, and you had to take
a certain amount of kind of social philosophy, sociology and
history and economics, but you could put together what you
wanted to study. So I studied American social movements. And
it's actually a good connection to why I'm at Zingerman's
because it was about, you know, I really wanted to
know what how you brought about change and how why
(14:37):
were some movements successful and why were movements not successful?
Ad Zingerman's I really think an underpinning of the work
that we're doing is trying to do things differently. So
in a sense, building a community that is trying to
bring about change in the workplace. So it kind of fit.
It really fits with what I was interested in a
(14:59):
more philosophical level.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So what kind of change in the workplace have you
guys brought forward?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, well, I you know that that's a really interesting question.
We're really known for service. And I know every company
talks about service and oh we give good service, but
we really define service and then we teach what the
definition is, and we track service like we write and
I ask, you know, frontline staff to document what we
(15:27):
call code. So if a customer is unhappy about something,
or a customer just makes a suggestion about something diffferent
if they want that, all gets documented and then co
greens when somebody's happy. So how we do service, I
really think it has changed how other people do service
in the an Arbor area. And then through Zinc Train,
our training company, I mean they teach people from all
(15:48):
over the country and all over the world about lots
of things we do. But I really think that we've
made some sort of a difference in terms of service.
But sure we all practice open book managem, which we
did not create, But I think it really made a
big difference for people who work in our businesses because
we teach them about the game of business. So they're
(16:09):
not just coming to work and you know, rolling their
thousand throw piece of bread dough. They're really learning about,
you know, what makes a difference in a bakery, what
makes a difference and makes great food, and how it
all plays out financially. So I think creating that work
environment is truly making a difference.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
To what extent do they privy to open book? I
mean the books are like open.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, the only thing that's not open is everybody earns.
But they have complete access to the P and L
and the cash flow statement. Now very many people ask
to see that and so, but it's there if they want.
But what happens really day to day is that each
department in Zingerman's community of businesses, you're supposed to have
(16:58):
a weekly what we call a huddle, And at the huddle,
that department goes over the key metrics, the key financial
and management metrics for their areas. Usually that group defined
what they want the key metrics to be. So I'll
give you an example. In our bread bakery, they meet
really and they talked about what were the sales, what
(17:18):
were the sales last week, what were they supposed to be,
what did we say, what was the plan, what did
we think they were going to be? What had we forecasted?
And then what was the actual? Then they talk about okay,
the week that we're in and next week, what do
we think it's supposed to be and how are we
going to get there? Then they talk about the food cost,
labor cost, and then they talk about things like accidents,
(17:39):
you know, safety measures, how many people aren't out of
their basic training, sort of more management metrics. When the
whole bakehouse meets, we also talk about what our cash is,
what our profit is. They have access to all that information,
and not just access, but they are taught what it
means and what you do to impact it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Now, you mentioned social change and community and we talked about,
you know, how you guys deal with that internally Externally.
I think it's pretty known that Zingerman's gives back to
the community in a big way, in several different ways.
Could you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So we get back about ten percent of our net
operating profit every year to the community in terms of
cash and in common so every year that's unbelievable. Well,
you know, I really learned the generosity. It's interesting, you
know how they often say businesses really reflect the values
of leaders, and both Paulinari are incredibly generous people, Jesse
(18:44):
of spirit and generous financially. And then Frank Carolla, who
was the founder of the Baby also I've just learned
from him about the about being generous. I always think
that emotionally, I've always been generous with people and happy
to give time and energy and support, but I was
not maybe always as financially generous as I'm not only
(19:05):
sure I had the resources that they had, but they
right from the beginning, you know, Paul said, I really
it's important to me that we give to the community.
So made this agreement amongst the partners to give back
to the center of our profit, and so we give
to all kinds of the not for profits that were
in town. We helped build what's called the Delmanas Center
(19:26):
for the Homeless. I think we pledged something like two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get that building built.
And then we also were the founding business for what's
called Food Gatherers. That was one of the first organizations
that collects food from the restaurants and grocery stores that
was going to be thrown away in order to you know,
(19:50):
repurpose it and get it to people who really need it.
So in all those ways, that's how we give to
the community.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's so we have something similar that we participated in.
Someone started in an app cale too good to Go.
So if a restaurant or in our case, we're at
a farmer's market, we have leftover bread people know, and
they could come there and pick it up for like
a third of the retail prices. It's pretty cool because
there is a lot of food waste. People don't realize
(20:20):
how much there is, especially I find in baking, you know,
for me in the farmers markets, I can project what
I'm going to sell. But this past weekend is a
perfect example. It was ninety five degrees in humid and
nobody wanted to come out. I had my typical bake
and I probably sold fifty percent of what I normally say.
(20:42):
Oh wow, So then you're trying to figure out what
you're doing with this bread?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know, right, it happens.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So did you get into this whole baking world?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
How did I get into the baking world? I was
a hobbyist that found myself with a lot of time
at the beginning of COVID, and it was a bonding
experience between my my wife and my three kids. My
older son was at usc and Los Angeles and came
home because there was no in person classes, and my
(21:13):
other two sons were home, and we just started doing it.
And we created an Instagram account called side Hustle Bread
that was our inside joke, and people started asking for
the bread. So one thing led to another. You know,
I'm somewhat of an entrepreneur at heart, and we started
selling that bread, and little by little, be became known
(21:34):
and invited to farmers markets. And you know, we're about
two and a half years in and I'd been baking
every day for two and a half years, feeding my starter,
you know, learning about it. I love to learn. I'm
very curious and one of the reasons I wanted to
start this podcast was to speak to people like you,
pizza makers, business entrepreneurs, and just learn as much as
(21:57):
I can about the world. I'm not sure where I'm
taking this skill or group of skills that I have,
but I but I enjoy baking and I enjoy seeing
people enjoy what I've baked. But I'm not sure what
my personal business model is. But I'm okay with that
because I do have another career, and you know, presently
(22:22):
I'm actually what I'm really spending more time on than
I have been since I started baking is trying to
merge my passion for content and food. And we're starting
to pitch some some food television shows not in the
nonscriptive world, so we'll see where it takes us. I
don't know, having fun, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, you know, it's been a challenging couple of years
that we all know that, and we're about to write
the next vision for the bakery. It's not really a budget,
it's not a strategic plan. It's more a picture in
the future. You know, five years from now, I who
are successful, what does it look like. What's really big
for me at the moment is trying to make the
(23:02):
vision about playfulness, because there's the last couple of years
have not been very playful. And I think we do
our best work. We make the most delicious food, or
we write the scripts, or we film the best thing
if we're really loving it and we're just playing. So
you know, I hope that you're playing and you're liking it,
and I think that's what I'm going to try to
(23:24):
get people here a little more playful.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, We'll see how long I can afford to be.
Sometimes that comes into play, so to speak. Now, you
mentioned you went, You mentioned you went to Harvard. I
did want to talk to you about that. I just
read an article. You know, Harvard puts out obviously so
many successful people, but in the in the in the
(23:48):
arts and television and film. I've recently read an article
about a writer saying it was a struggle for him
because everyone's threatened and looks down upon the people that
came out of the Harvard lampoon and feel that they
are privileged. In my mind, I know what it's like
(24:08):
to get into a school of good quality. I don't
see it as privilege. I see it as somebody who
combined working their ass off and doing what it takes.
And also beyond academics, they had to have other things
to offer the school. But I was wondering, if you've
encountered anything like that where Harvard was actually a crutch.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, you know, it's a really interesting question. Actually, no
one has ever asked me that question in the early
year working in the food business, because first I worked
in some restaurants for a few years before I found Zingerman's.
I think more what I got from people was respect,
kind of the attitude that you're I mean, that was
(24:55):
a while ago. Now, I graduated in nineteen eighty eight,
so we weren't that word privilege was not a word
that was in the vernacular. People were not talking about
who had present right, So there was a little there
was some respect, a little bit of oh wow. And
after that it was more the question was if you
knew that you were going to do this, would you
(25:15):
have bothered? Which I always thought was interesting. And you know,
I went to Harvard because I thought that's where you
I thought I would get educated. I was going to learn,
and I spent a lot of time studying and trying
to you know, it's like a liberal arts education. So
I said No, of course I would have gone because
I was not going there looking for looking for, you know,
(25:41):
some particular skill. I just wanted to educate, you know,
learn about the world. Many days later, I went to
my twenty fifth reunion and I kind of looked around
and I thought, well, God, maybe being educated was not
Harvard was about. It was about figuring out learning how
to be the powerful and influence people in the world.
(26:01):
And I was not interested in that. I was interested in,
you know, doing kind of interesting and service kind of
things in the world, even though I bake, you know,
I think I'm trying to develop people at the bakery.
So anyway I would have that was more the attitude.
And now it's some years later that people don't even
(26:22):
ask me, you know, nobody cares what I did so
long ago, and it's not that much of my identity,
you know, at this point, done in the last fifteen
or twenty years is much more formative than having gone
to Harvard. So I even, you know, I don't know
if you know, many people went to Harvard, but there's
that that, you know, you never say that you went
to Harvard. You just say I went to college in Boston,
(26:44):
and you make people ask you until you eventually say, well,
I don't even bother with that anymore. I just say, yeah,
I want to a big deal. Whatever it does, A
ratter does a.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Red Yeah, that's so cool. I've read something also that
you're into organizational design, and that also makes me question
how much of your role has to do with the
actual baking and developing the recipes, and how much does
it have to do with the management of the bakehouse.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, so at this point I spend only twenty percent
of my time baking. I spend you know, another five
to ten percent on top of that talking about product
development or doing the work on product development. But the
(27:38):
rest of my time is really spent leading the organization
and trying to provide a workplace in which people can
really learn and grow and have a very positive daily experience.
You know, we spend so much of our time at work.
Really want to make it a place that people love
coming to and that they can develop a lot of
(28:00):
young people here. My goal is to help them figure
out who they want to be, where they want to go,
and help them get there, even if it, you know,
often it means leaving the bakery, which is a okay,
with me, maybe they realize that they do something else,
or they want to open their own bakery, whatever it
happens to me. So I spent a lot of my
time doing that and then yeah, trying to create culture
(28:23):
and lead in a way that helps us figure out
what culture we want to have at the bakery.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That organizational design that's amazing, you know, because I always,
as much as I'm into learning how to bake bread,
I don't have any idea how to run a bakery.
And I was wondering, you know, and you just said it.
Some of these people come through and it's you guys,
are okay with that. You come here, you work as
(28:50):
long as you want. You know, you're an asset to us.
We're giving you the training, and then hopefully you're happy
if they do go on to open up a successful bakery.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I am.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
I find it daunting, you know, personally, And that's one
of the reasons I say I don't know what I'm
doing with bread right now, because I can't imagine a
successful bakery around where I live that just deals with bread,
unless you know, you're the delicatessen is using the amazing
(29:24):
bread that you make to serve other things. Right, And
I guess it would have to be something like that.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, I mean it's possible that you could have a
bakery that only made bread and didn't wholddale. But I
think for us, we were really really fortunate because when
we started, we had this big, big customer waiting for us, Zingerman's,
and so that gave us a big cushion and or
(29:54):
a strong foundation is probably a better way of to
get going. I think within a year and a half
or two years we were profitable and they were our
only customer, so you know, we're very indebted to them,
very grateful, but they were so busy.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
But that was very unique because because of what I
had read is the founders were not happy with the
bread they were bringing in, which is why they decided
to start baking their own bread. Yes, that rightly, right,
I mean that's pretty unique. That's kind of the flip
(30:31):
side of what you happen.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yes, so we were really lucky. And now though forty
five percent we bake, we sell to the organization. The
rest we either sell ourselves out of our own retail
shop or we have all kinds of wholesale customers. So
it's continued to evolve. You know, a lot of it
has to do with perseverance, you know, kind of figuring
(30:55):
out how to hang in there. Sometimes I think the
reason we lost and some of our competitors don't is
just pure old perseverance and willing to be uncomfortable for
long experiods of time. You know, I see other people clothes,
They're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm
like thinking, oh, I don't know why I don't just quit.
But that's we just quit, We just pay, We just
stay and you know, try to manage the cash to
(31:18):
stay and have enough. And and then it's it's interesting
do the keep trying to do the right things and
seeming to work out.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's cool. And you locally source most of you you.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Try to source locally, which as possible. Obviously there's some
things you can't. Like vanilla bean doesn't come locally, but
our apples come from a farm that's literally ten minutes
away from us. Uh. Tomorrow, I'm going to this place
Frank and Mouth to meet up with this farmer who's
going to grow who were Actually we're going to buy
twenty five thousand pounds of soft white wheat berries. So
(31:55):
those are a couple of examples. All our dairy is
local cherry. Michigan's a big cherry state, so many chairs
that we use. So Michigan is a great agricultural state.
I don't think we talk about it that much like
that in the United States. We think of it as
the car industry state. But it's a very big agricultural state,
and so we're able to get a lot of things
(32:15):
that we use locally. So then that is part of
the community and being local. So you know, buy local,
invest in the people around you. We're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And you spent a lot of time in France.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
It was you there for about seven months.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Okay seven months, and what did you do there that
inspired you so much? You became well acquainted, acquainted.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
With banking and with cooking. So what happened was I
had thought I would, as I said earlier, you know,
maybe I'll go to law school. I came to ann
Arbor with my boyfriend at the time who became my husband,
and he was going to graduate here, and I thought,
I'm going to work in some restaurants for fun, love food.
I'll go back to school get a PhD in sociology,
(33:08):
or I'll go to law school. Well, I loved working restaurants,
and then I applied to University of Michigan law school
and I did not get it in, and I thought, okay,
what am I going to do? Well, you know what,
I really loved this restaurant. Where I'm going to go
to cooking school. But my husband and I were kind
of crazy. We got married really young. I wasn't quite
(33:29):
twenty three when we got married, and then we had
our first child when I was like twenty four and
a half. So when it was time to go to
Greek school, I already had this little baby, Jake, and
my husband was still in graduate school, and like, how
am I going to do this? I can't. There was
no cooking in ann Arbor. So we figured out how
to go to Paris. My husband got a grant to study.
(33:52):
He's an archaeologist, so he's going to study a collection
of pottery at the Loop and I was going to
go to this school called Lavern which was very famous.
It's now closed. And they had a school in Paris
and they had one in Burgundy. Right before we were
going to go, they closed the school in Paris and
they said you can go to Brindy I said, no,
(34:13):
I can't go to Burgundy. I have this baby. I
had this So I ended up going to school at
There's a school in the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and
you can take months, multi month long class there. You
can take a class for a day or you can
stay for weeks, and so that's what I ended up doing,
and it was really really great. I didn't need you know,
(34:35):
a lot of American schools at that time, I get
associate's degree or a whole bachelor's but I didn't need
that because I hadn't gone to college. So what I
got out of going being there in France, I mean,
they're just dedication to perfection and you know, perfect flavor,
perfect execution, beauty in the food is sort of the
(34:55):
rigor in the practice. You can learn by being with them,
I think invaluable. So that's mainly. That's mainly what I
got while I was there, was it was very very helpful.
Learning is just the right way. Then then you come
back and you do it and you know, and you
don't always do it exactly as they say when you're
in the actual working.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Environment, right are they always baking with natural yeast and
uh source there?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
You know, they are the French, sure, just like us.
I mean, you can find the whole range of grape
bread and terrible bread in France. So there's lots of
wonderful artists and bakers making natural lemon bread. Uh. And
then there are you know, the wholely completely manufactured pumped
(35:44):
up with the preservatives sugars that you can also find.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
So do you mind if we get into the weeds
on some of the actual products, the bread products like
rye Breadjewish rye bread in particular, I'm very interested in
and I know you seem to have a wealth of
knowledge there. I've read an article that you wrote about it.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Can remember is there.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
A difference between European let's see, where was this one?
It's in my hands twenty sixteen Jewish rye bread from
Eastern Europe to eastern North America. I'm wondering if there's
a big difference between European rye and what people are
generally used to in the United States.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Absolutely, it's entirely different. So rye bread or delicatessen. Jewish
rye bread has hardly any rye flower in it at all.
Some of them you possibly not have any rye flowers
so we had a teacher here whose name is Michael London.
(36:53):
He lives in upstate New York, Saratoga Springs, the Great
Prince for you to speak to if he's available. He's
in his seventies now, and he taught us how to
make the rye bread that we make. And he said, Amy,
he would call me. Most of the rye breads they
take right and they hold it over the loaf of
(37:14):
the bread as it's baking. It doesn't have any rye
in it whatsoever. So while European rye breads have a
lot of real rye in it, and they tend to
be dense, and they're often naturally leving. They might have
a little commercial yeast in it, but because they're mainly rye,
they're not soft like Jewish rye breads. They're dense and
you would come in very thin pieces generally, and maybe
(37:36):
you eat it with butter, maybe withakon of burs or
smoked salmon. While the rye bread that we think of
in sort of American delicatessens is mainly white flour with
a little bit of rye flower mixed in, so it's
entirely different, and lots of commercial yeast.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Okay. Now I have spoken to other bakers about rye bread.
I found the recipe that I use in I think
it's called the Book of Jewish Bakers, where I actually
use sour cream in my rye bread. But I haven't
come across many other people that do. I was wondering
if you guys use it, that's fascinating. I think that
(38:17):
I think that helps makes it a little softer, h
even if it's naturally leavened, which does tend to.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
See do you yeah? Do you have a sours What
kind of starter are you using it? Or is it
all commercial use?
Speaker 1 (38:34):
I could I do it with both? I I do
a lot of sour dough baking, and you know I
I generally make my rye bread with natural sour dough,
and I sometimes use caraway seeds sometimes don't. My My
specialty bread is Italian prejudto bread, which is prejutto solami
(38:57):
pepperoni and sharp provolona black pepper. And it's it's a local,
tri state New York Italian thing that people have grown
up on. But as I started to infuse bread with meat,
I said, why can't I do this with PISTRAMI? And
I started doing a pastrami in the rye the same
(39:18):
way I do the Italian prescudo breads. And uh, it's
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That's a great idea, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
I just uh, I love trying to combine you know,
ingredients and do that thing. But yeah, I do use
sour cream, and I haven't come across at all. Do
you use uh? I guess you know certain rich breads
you use. You must use milk for certain breads.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So we make we make a that has lots of
milk and butter and eggs in it. We make colla
that does not have milk in it, but it has
lots of eggs in it and a really great corn oil.
We make something that we call bake house white that
has milk in it. It's like a traditional French panda me. Uh.
(40:02):
We bake it in a more of an American pan,
so it's like a white. It's very enriched. Yeah, and
our ride. What I like about it is that we
use rye bread in the day before and we mash
it up and add water to it, and we call
old and it's listed on the list as old and
(40:23):
that goes in and you know, they say the the
it's the spiritual art baking or you know, something from
yesterday into today. But it's also just the economic part
of bakers. You know, if you had bread as you
did after the market the other day on yourself, what
are you going to do it? If you're just going
to throw it away? No, So they would take it
(40:44):
and they would make it, you know, they'd mash it
up and it would kind of save them and putting,
uh like stretch the dough so they would make more
loaves of bread the next day so they didn't throw
it out. So we continue to do that with our
Rye bread.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
That's cool. The Detroit Street sour dough bread. Is there
anything particular about that bread that that you decided to
name it Detroit? Is it different than a regular country's.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
No, what's different about it is that it has a
seed topping on it that the other doesn't. So it's
got yeah in sesame seed on top. But you know,
it's a funny story about our sour dough. Did you
happen to notice it? It is better than San Francisco
sour dough? I don't know I thought it anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
I did not, but I could guess why. Yeah, is
it is your sour dough.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Not But what happened was we're making it and we
called it San Francisco style Francisco sour dough, and then
we got a call one time from a famous baker
bakery in San Francisco that said, you can can't call
it San Francisco sourdough. That's a you know, intellectual property infringement.
(42:05):
And so Paul Saganaw who is a very funny guy,
said to the lawyer, Okay, well could we call it
better in San Francisco And the lawyer said, sure, that's
what the bread is called. Though it's kind of crazy,
but that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
That's amazing. Now that's reminding me of another story I
read about which I wasn't going to go to right now,
but in terms of the name Zingerman's, that was not
the original name from Paul and it was.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Going to be Greenberg. But then they got a call
before they were going to open.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Wait, before that, they went as far as green Greenberg
was a customer affairs from what I understand, that they
loved and they took her out on a photo shooting
a marketing campaign and they started to launch it with
the name and then they got there.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
That's right, someone in Detroit a sign. Don't call it that. Please,
don't call it that. So then they had to come
up with no name. Do you know the story about
why it starts with a Z?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I know that they wanted it to either start with
an A or a Z. Yeah, you did your home right,
which I think is very smart. I did my homework,
and they went through. They had a few beers from
what I understand, and they landed on Zingermann big father.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
This was when we still had phone books, and Paul's
grandfather told them pick an A or a Z name.
It makes it easier when somebody's looking it up in
the phone book. So that's how that came to me. Yeah,
they were sitting on the floor of Paul's kitchen drinking
some beer and came up with the name. So a
long time ago, very long time ago. Funny.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, that's a cool story. Two other things and then
I'll let you go. Technology wise. You know, you guys
are kind of at the top of your game when
when customers come into the delicate tests and at least
they're greeted with sort of like iPads and PUS systems
where they place their order and then go to the
(44:12):
counter and it seems to be very smooth and organized.
Do you do something similar like that in the bake house?
And how did you guys get to the point to
be able to develop all know that.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
That particular ordering style is distinctive, delicate tests and then
that came out of COVID. So they're trying to, okay,
deal with lots of service situations that we've all become
aware of on the last couple of years. So there, yeah,
so there's where that started. They were not like that.
They were very old school, where you know, somebody would
(44:44):
be standing there, they take your order, and they had
many many more kind of staff working there. Zoom mail
order is really probably leads to the whole organization and
sort of technological innovation, and they really Lean manufacturing. I
don't know if you know much about Lean and Toyota way,
(45:06):
but they have a lot sort of great technological use
is in their mail order system that allows them to
ship out, you know, thousands of boxes to do a job.
Now they're not like Amazon obviously, but for food business
they're doing pretty well. I'd say that the bakery our
service is a little more old.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
School, Okay, I think there's a need for that. Yeah,
it's a different, nice feeling. So yep. So lastly, looking
back on everything you've done, if you could talk to
some young people out there that are starting out in
life trying to figure out maybe they know what they do,
(45:46):
maybe they don't. I love the fact that you didn't
necessarily know what you were going to do in college
and you were open to learning about the world. I
personally think that's a great way for a young person
to view going to college. Do you have any life
advice do you have people starting out?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
This might not sound like much. What I often try
to get people to think about is what I really
like their day to day to be like. Because you
might say, oh, I want to be a lawyer, or
I want to be a baker, and you find but
you're a night person and to be a baker you
need to be a warning person. Or you really love farming,
(46:29):
but you can't stand living any place other than a city.
So I want to talk to people about before you
think about exactly what you want to be. How do
you like to live. Do you want to walk to work?
Do you like to work a lot? Do you like
to work with people? You want to work alone. Do
you like details, you big picture and to think about
some of those things first, and then maybe they are
(46:53):
still interested in the same field, whether it's baking or
being a doctor or you know, aninty whatever. But then
you can say, Okay, where do I want to go
in that field based on how I actually like to
engage in the world. I think we often forget and
don't think about those basic things of you know, I
need a lot of sleep. I don't need any sleep.
I never like I don't like working alone. So for me,
(47:17):
this bakery is the best thing in the world. There's
always one here, twenty four hours a day. I could
work whatever, I would be working with the team. I
love that. Now there's some people who can't stand that,
like to have to deal with as many people as
I talk to every day. They would never want it.
I think being in touch with those things is an
important step in despite exactly how you want to live
(47:42):
your life and what you want to do during it,
it's about it.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Well, I think there's a lot there. I think there's
a lot there. So I appreciate you sharing all that,
and Amy, I appreciate you sharing your time. It's been
a pleasure to talk to you and learn more about
you and the operation, and I look forward to getting
thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I'd hope to see you too. It was really nice
to meet you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Bread for the
People featuring Amy Emberlin from Zingerman's Bakehouse. If you're interested
in advertising on Bread for the People, feel free to
shoot me an email at bread for thepeoplepod at gmail
dot com. Remember, if you like what you're hearing, please
rate and review our podcast over on Apple Podcast. This
(48:29):
episode was produced by Milestone TV and Film and edited
by Rick Beck. Have a great day, everyone, Blessed be
the bread
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