And Just Like That!
More than ten years in and I didn’t expect to be pushing a cart around Cash & Carry and yet, here I am, at least once a week, doing just that.
In the early days of Bakeshop, we were still in a rental kitchen, too small to receive deliveries from most companies and not enough space to store cases of goods. So once all of the day’s production, baking and delivery had been completed, I would run round to various businesses gathering what I needed to make the business run.
I’d go to Provvista for fine ingredients, like chocolate, vanilla beans, nuts and dried fruits. Cash & Carry for kitchen staples — sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Bob’s Red Mill for various whole grain flours. Safeway for boxes of red wine to make the fig jam. For that I would have to go when the alcohol sales began at 7am, and since I was seven months pregnant, I got a healthy share of suspicious looks from the checkers and the customers.
As the business grew, however, so did the infrastructure to run it. We eventually opened our brick and mortar bakery on Sandy Blvd., allowing us to meet delivery minimums and to order items by the case. Managers were hired whose responsibility was to keep track of inventory and to place orders.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, some of those bakery chores have returned to me. At first, I found myself frustrated at every stop, wondering how I found myself back here. The switching of roles grew more exhausting with each pivot.
But somehow, last week as I made my way out to Bob’s Red Mill in Milwaukee to pick up three 25-pound bags of potato flour that we needed for the Banana Chocolate Muffins, I found the narrative in my head changing.
I picked my youngest up from school, and as we drove down together they chattered about their adventures that day. As we pulled into the very familiar parking lot, I marveled that the 10 year old kid sitting next to me is the same kid that used to accompany me on my errands as a baby. At times their car seat was set on the flatbed carts of Cash & Carry, at other times in the grocery cart of Bob’s, with hundreds of pounds of flour piled behind them..
As we loaded our flour into the car, we noticed the rock near the stream next to the big red mill, which their big siblings had climbed on before they were born. I told them that a photo was taken at that moment that became our holiday card that year. They ran over and posed with the statue of Bob, imitating his exact stance, which brought us both to hysterics.
We drove back towards Portland, relaxed, moving at our speed, doing the work that is necessary to keep the bakery going. And just like that…I felt the slightest shift. Instead of begrudging the moment as a horrible chore from the long ago past, I was able to reframe the narrative to say, “we get to do this together.”
How fortunate I am to find myself holding on to a business that could have very easily slipped away. They may be the same chores from a decade ago, but now they have a new meaning and significance.
We have enough staff back in the bakery this week to accommodate online preorders. We have a delicious new whole Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake made with ricotta and cream cheese that gives it a soft and tender crumb and a crust with a nice bite. Also Raspberry Coffee Cake Muffins and Brown Butter Apple Hand Pies. And Chocolate Kouign Amann.
Hope to see you all this weekend!