[00:05:08] Avery Ruzicka:
Yes. I mean, I mean, I think that it's very, there's a lot going on and I mean, even still, I find it like a lot to juggle and I think if I have a calendar, one of the things I feel like is like today's.
[00:05:23]
Version of Avery makes better decisions for her future than like, if I have to make decisions today on my day, I don't always make the best decisions, but if I made the decisions a day ahead or a week ahead and follow those decisions, I do really well. Do you know what I mean? Like in the moment,
[00:05:38] Josh Sharkey:
Oh yeah,
[00:05:40] Avery Ruzicka:
I'm more impulsive. Whereas if I'm a little bit removed from it, so I like a calendar because it's like, what am I supposed to do? Oh, okay, I made a plan, so there, I'll just follow my plan. That's all you have to do in theory.
[00:05:49] Josh Sharkey:
A hundred percent. I'm also like a fanatic for calendars, and it's funny because I also, I love just jamming through a prep list, you know, like, you know, like, okay, I got an event tomorrow.
[00:06:02]
Like, here's everything I have to do. I'm going to time out. I know that it's going to take me about an hour to, make this sauce and I got to prep this stuff and like, I, then I can just, I spend a lot of time on front and then just follow, you know?
[00:06:12] Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely. And I'm definitely an overthinker and it can get a little paralyzing.
[00:06:19]
And so when I make the lists, like, then it's like, okay, I've set this time aside, I've thought through these things. So then you can just, Now you can just act. You don't have to, you know, you don't get bogged down because sometimes you get bogged down during the list making, but it's like all of your actual work and thinking has happened during that time.
[00:06:35]
Then the actual job itself, whatever it might be, is not, you can kind of just enjoy it, sort of.
[00:06:41] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, what's interesting is, To do lists are pretty irrelevant if they aren't relative to the amount of time you have to do the to do list. So you can have a like a checklist of all the things I got to do today.
[00:06:54]
But if that list takes you 14 hours and you have 13 hours, then you're just not getting done. So that's why I love putting everything in my calendar, even if it's not granular, like just even if it just says like, Okay, task block two hours. Yeah, strategy two hours. Yeah. I totally agree. And anytime I meet anybody that uses their account that way, I get really sad.
[00:07:15] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, no, I definitely feel the same way. And it really, gosh, again, like, I think the biggest thing for me is just like, how do you balance? Because as big as we are, in some ways, we are also very small, my, like the company. And so I wear, like any business owner, a lot of different hats and I'm. I'm excited about those hats that I wear, but sometimes then it's like, okay, if I don't have this to do list, like today, for example, before this morning, I went to my Campbell store and one of the things I've learned to do is be much more realistic with how much time I need to a lot things like I'm definitely trying to do.
[00:07:51]
less variety of things with each day and have more like a day be a specific kind of area of the company that's really working for me. And so I went to Campbell and I'm, of course, tomorrow there's a whole bunch of things I want to worry about that are maybe more involved with like the production side.
[00:08:06]
I'm very good at like being like, this is, blinders on, right? And then everything else is waiting. That was not something I could do at first. It's that's been a big help to get to that place because otherwise you just feel like you like you've been working really hard and getting nothing done because you're too scattered, right?
[00:08:23] Josh Sharkey:
Totally. By the way, I call it this app that I use To a lot of people and now I'm
[00:08:28] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah,
[00:08:28] Josh Sharkey:
I'm actually having the founders of the company that built this app. It's a calendar app. It's called Reclaim. They're coming to the podcast, but I love it. And it's like an AI based calendar that helps you to time block things and it'll automatically move things around.
[00:08:41] Avery Ruzicka:
That's great. I'll look that up. I've seen I've seen ads for some of the AI calendar.
[00:08:45] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I've tried a bunch. This one tends to work the best. You know, the other thing I don't actually do this, but I've heard people that do this is You're probably like, look, if we have businesses, we own businesses, we worry all the time.
[00:08:57]
I'm sure you're like, at least I know I do worry all the time and you know, there's always anxiety of what's going to happen. You know, I've heard of people that actually schedule time to worry. Oh really? Yeah. So that they know. Okay. You know, I'm going to worry about this now because I know that tomorrow at 2:00pm to 2:30pm is like my worry time.
[00:09:13] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah. That's really funny. I have not done that, but I definitely, once you get enough time with a low level of, like, my anxiety levels have changed dramatically because now it's like, you expect the hit, like, it's gonna happen, it'll be okay, you'll get through it, things happen, so I'm a much less of a, I don't have as much anxiety worrying, which is good, which is good, I'll take it, you know, and that's the thing, I am happy to maybe outsource worrying to some other people.
[00:09:43] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. So. I want to talk about Manresa bread today, but I think to start, we're going to get a little bit in the weeds of just baking, if that's cool. Sure. So, first question for you. And I don't usually do it this way, by the way. I don't usually like, just like, drill in with some questions, but, I want to learn some stuff and I think other people get a lot of value out of just hearing some of these like things.
[00:10:04] Avery Ruzicka:
I’m happy to talk about bread always.
[00:10:07] Josh Sharkey:
Can you talk about, pontificate about, expound on the benefits of milling your own flour versus buying? Sure. And a couple sort of ancillary things there are like, because you all mill, A lot of your flour, except bread flour. So I want to know why you didn't mill bread flour.
[00:10:25]
So why don't we start there and then have some other stuff.
[00:10:28] Avery Ruzicka:
When I, if we back up to the beginning of the bakery, I had been baking. I loved baking. We were going to open, I was baking at Manresa, I was making the bread for Manresa, and I was selling the bread at Farmer's Market, and everything was great.
[00:10:40]
Okay, so we're going to be opening a bakery. We're already at that point, where I'm, in my career, where like, we've got investors, the bakery's funded, we're going to open a bakery. And I took this trip back to New York to visit some baker friends and to visit some bakeries, and then I went down to to North Carolina, and I went and did a stage at a bakery up in the mountains outside of Asheville.
[00:11:02]
And so when I went to New York, I visited, you know, all of the bakeries that were around at the time and had a lot of really tasty bread. And then I went to this bakery outside of Asheville, And I had the bread at this bakery and it was after, you know, so I'd had this concentrated week of eating bread and I go to this bakery called Farm and Sparrow and it was like, what is this?
[00:11:28]
What is this bread? You know, and it was because he was milling his own flour and it was this, I could just taste the difference and it was incredible and it was like, why, why does this taste so different? What is this? This is like, this bread doesn't even look like it's like, you know, you don't know what's going on.
[00:11:46]
And I, so it was the first, it was the real takeaway from all of these like, amazing bakeries, the one bread that was memorable was from fresh milled flour. So that really got me like curious about fresh milled flour. And I'm a curious person. So I like to, you know, I love ingredients. I like the stories of ingredients.
[00:12:05]
I think, you know, I think that's a passion. I live in California. So it's like we have the best, some of the best, you know, growing climate, et cetera, in the United States. And so when I was just thinking about what we wanted to do for the business, it was like, well, I want to, I want everything to be the best it can be.
[00:12:22]
And so it became very clear to me that milling our own flour was what we wanted to do. was important in that process. And so I ended up going up to the Bread Lab as well, which is at Washington State, and visiting the, what is called the Bread Lab, which is like, it now is in a slightly different location, but it used to be part of an adjunct facility.
[00:12:42]
campus of their, the ag school. And so same, got to talk to farmers and like academic farmers about like grain and the nutritional values and, you know, what's in the flour, like what, you know, learning more about flour. So, you know, a wheat berry has multiple parts. It has the endosperm, it, and then it has the, the bran and the germ.
[00:13:07]
And so when we mill flour fresh, if we're milling whole grain flour, which is what we currently do. We're taking the entire piece of berry and we're utilizing the whole thing. And the biggest thing that happens, so there are flavor components in, in flour, like, you know, they're kind of a little bit heady in the sense, like, you're not gonna taste, I don't think it's like, this is a raspberry.
[00:13:32]
Yeah, I got you. This is a banana. Like, those are two very different flavors. But wheat berries and different varieties, we do have different flavors and they definitely have different colors and they have different aromas. And so milling your own flour starts with just like what kind of, you know, so you have choices.
[00:13:48]
So I think that was part of what I was curious about too. What choices can I make as a baker? What can I manipulate? What, how can I express myself in a creative way or my creativity and my curiosity and also make the most tasty thing? And I think the biggest thing to understand as kind of a non professional baker about using fresh milled flour or purchased flour. At this point, we're not even talking about whether it's sifted or whole grain, but just fresh versus fresh milled.
[00:14:19]
You weren't milling yourself or bought off the shelf at the grocery store already milled is the freshness itself. And the freshness of freshly milled flour allows it to absorb a dramatically different quantity of hydration. And this is really what's fundamental to the bread making process. There's a different mentality to think about if you're talking about making pastries.
[00:14:42]
But when you're thinking about making bread, it's the hydration level that it not only will, will support, but really requires when you use fresh milled flour. So, The exact same recipe utilizing purchased, organic, whole grain, already milled flour will absorb a dramatically smaller amount of water.
[00:15:06]
Okay? So, because of that, when you think about what is fermentation, and specifically sourdough fermentation, sourdough fermentation is the process in which yeast is eating the sugar that's in the flour. And then it is multiplying. And in order for yeast to live, it needs access to food and water. Just like any other kind of like living kind of organism.
[00:15:29]
So it is using, so the higher hydration is supporting a higher level of activity and fermentation. And then the fermentation is, not only breaking down the gluten, but the lactic acids and the acetic acids that are produced by the fermentation process of the yeast is breaking down as well the protein structure and it is processing the flour itself so that when we eat a piece of bread that was made with fresh milled, is a fresh milled sourdough loaf versus a off the shelf But same exact recipe, sourdough loaf.
[00:16:11]
It's going to be a lower quantity of hydration and it's going to be a lower level of fermentation. So, and then that fermentation, what we experienced then as like, as the person eating this piece, the slice of bread is a better mouthfeel, a better texture. It's also going to last longer because it's got more hydration in it, like even after baking, better like activity.
[00:16:35]
So like the crumb itself, and obviously there's different recipes and different. things people are looking for in a crumb. Sometimes you want a more open crumb, sometimes you don't, but the texture itself, like what it literally feels like to like chew that piece of bread because of that high hydration and because of that fermentation is just gonna be an all around better slice, right?
[00:16:56]
And then additionally, it's going to be better for your digestion because so much of this wheat itself was processed, if you will, pre-processed by the sourdough fermentation. So the work your body has to do to digest it is much less, which is why some people who feel like they are, obviously celiac disease is a thing, but some people who feel like they are wheat adverse or sensitive to wheat find that when they eat truly properly fermented breads, especially if they're made with fresh milled flour, they actually are fine.
[00:17:29]
I mean, and that's a little bit anecdotal depending on the person, but we definitely find that with customers. We have a lot of customers who say, I can eat your bread. I don't eat bread anywhere else, but I do eat your bread, you know, all of those things together. So, so that's why we mill our own flour because we truly taste a difference between, and it's the same grains of, so let's say I don't want to make, for some reason, I decide to buy a bag of milled flour, I'm using the exact same variety of grain, like hard red wheat from, grown in California, organically grown.
[00:18:07]
and I'm using the same exact recipe. It is a very different loaf of bread, like our 100 percent whole grain loaf of bread that we make. Very different. Completely can taste the difference, even though it was made with exactly the same wheat berry, because of the freshness.
[00:18:23] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes so much sense.
[00:18:25]
There's like the obvious, you know, I just sort of associated with my dumb savory chef brain of like, well, you know, fresh ground spices are better than, you know, spices that were ground a long time ago. But there's all these downstream effects that I didn't realize.
[00:18:41] Avery Ruzicka:
The really, the downstream effects are so dramatic.
[00:18:44]
And the flavor, in terms of like the freshness, the flavor is definitely there. But again, it's a little bit more like you taste the whole thing and the whole thing is because of the hydration of the fermentation that was allowed because of this fresh milled flour. So it's like, you can't even access those flavors unless you're doing all of these, you know, because obviously most of us are sitting around eating, you know, you know, handfuls or spoonfuls of flour, but.
[00:19:08] Josh Sharkey:
What about the consistency? Not, um, in terms of texture, but maintaining the
[00:19:14] Avery Ruzicka:
consistency?
[00:19:15] Josh Sharkey:
like what hydration you're supposed to use. Are there difficulties of like, is it dynamic in that each time you have to sort of test?
[00:19:22] Avery Ruzicka:
It's a little bit dynamic. It's more dynamic in the beginning process of making a bread.
[00:19:26]
So like in the, in the creation of a new product, that's the most dynamic element. I mean, that's a big thing we factor into our recipe development because we have pretty good continuity with our teams. Like, if people leave, they're typically leaving because of a move somewhere, you know, that we almost, we very infrequently, knock on wood, have people leaving because they're like, I don't like working here.
[00:19:52]
It's pretty much almost always something dramatic, like I'm moving, my boyfriend and I are moving, or, you know, so, But we keep these things in mind because we don't want, we wanna make the best thing, but we wanna do it, you know, to some scale for sure. At this point with five stores. And you know, we'd like to have, continue to grow the business.
[00:20:10]
And so the dynamic has more to do with the training process. So at correctly training people to utilize the mill, maintaining the mill, is
[00:20:20] Josh Sharkey:
Is it more about the mill or the, like, if you have mill, if you're buying the sweet berry and you, like you, it's about the mill. You know, every time it's 72% hydration or.
[00:20:29] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, so the consistency from the vendor itself of like, hey, this is a hard red wheat berry, we find much less inconsistency with the grain side. What you find more inconsistency with, occasional inconsistency, it doesn't happen very frequently, is with purchased flour. Because purchased flour, you were asking about bread flour. For example, purchased flour, that's, it's what we call, we would say it's sifted flour, it's so they've had, they've taken the bran and the germ out of the flour.
[00:20:59]
So you're just having the endosperm. And then what the grain companies do is blend, typically, the flour that we get, it is sifted, and then it is combined. So like, it is not necessarily one kind of flour. They've taken maybe different batches of flour and combined them to hit the protein content that you're looking for.
[00:21:21]
So the protein content in American flour is, we just communicate one thing, we communicate just the protein content. So, and you go anywhere from your cake flour, which is the lowest protein content. up to like a bread flour or even almost like a reinforced bread flour. In Europe, they also give you a number that's about elasticity of the dough too, which is really interesting, but we don't, extensibility kind of factor of the dough, but that's not how it's communicated in the United States.
[00:21:50]
So what we purchase is a sifted flour, And the reason we purchased that is because we didn't have a sifter. And so now we actually have a sifter and we're in the process of kind of defining how we want to be including that in our process. We're not at a place where we would be sifting 100 percent of our flour.
[00:22:05]
But for example, like, I mean, definitely for the pastry department, we'll be utilizing that. So like, well, you know, putting on a banana cake that is 100 percent made with sifted flour that's sifted in because, you know, some pastries are great with whole grain flour. Some pastries. Not everybody, and I'm more of like, I see flour as an ingredient coming from like a chef background as well.
[00:22:28]
Like I'm not like a diehard, like everything has to be whole grain or everything has to be fresh milk. It's about like, where is this going to impact the overall product and be better, be a better product. And so we currently purchase sifted bread flour because And then all of our breads are either, they go anywhere from being a hundred percent whole grain or combination, but we don't really make any bread that doesn't have any sifted flour in it or fresh mailed flour except for like an enriched dough, like a brioche or a brioche currently doesn't have.
[00:23:02]
Yeah. Gotcha. But otherwise, everything else is, is has some variety or some quantity of sifted flour or fresh mealed flour up to a hundred percent. Mm-Hmm. And so we see it as more like, what are you trying to get? And then again, it's we use bread flour because it's an ingredient and like, if you're going to use a fresh milled flour, but you want the loaf to have some kind of higher like, like size, because you want to use it for a sandwich, so you want something that has a little bit more structure to it, then incorporating some percentage of bread flour to help create just a little bit structure is, and so that's how we really look at it is like, what are we trying to accomplish?
[00:23:37]
And then what are the right components to get there?
[00:23:39] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Keith Giusto is the flour company we're
[00:23:43]
Well, there's Giusto, Keith's Giusto Bakery Supply is the distributor and then for whatever reason I'm blanking because now Giustos is a bread company as well and I can't believe I'm forgetting this. KGBS.
[00:23:54] Josh Sharkey:
That's okay, we can find it later. It doesn't, yeah. Or you can Google it. But what's your thoughts on, I mean, this is, it's so funny how flour and I love this that, you know, you can go so deep on flour and I mean, look, I love Sir Galahad All Purpose Flour. I mean, it's a great flour. You do, yeah. But when I hear you talk about this, it's like, oh my gosh.
[00:24:12] Josh Sharkey:
Like, what is your thoughts on just all purpose flour in general as a product to use?
[00:24:17] Avery Ruzicka:
I mean, it's Central Milling that I was like, uh, losing my mind about.
[00:24:21]
Central Milling is the company. I think that home bakers, working with, having an AP flour is great. You know, what I think is though, interesting and one of the things if I, you know, I'm teaching people or talking to people about baking and they're maybe like they've been trying to make something at home and they're like either you know why is your version of this seem like comes out so much better or I'm not happy with this or I want to tweak this what I think people don't really understand I think most of us don't understand if you're just baking at home and never had any like real background or in bread or baking in general is that Baking isn't magic, right?
[00:25:02]
Whether it's pastry side or bread side, it's science. And it might seem magical, but it's really about the properties of the ingredients you're utilizing. And so I think with AP, well, I'm totally pro AP flour. I think it's something that like, it would be so helpful for people to know sometimes like, maybe the reason you're not happy with something is because of the product you're using.
[00:25:24]
And so I think that that's where there's, you know, just, if you think about like, The branding, all purpose flour. Well, it, it is and it isn't, right? Like, uh,
[00:25:34]
so, you know, you want something to be a little bit more delicate, like a biscuit, but you want it to be really tender. Maybe you should be using a portion of AP flour, but also a portion of cake flour, you know?
[00:25:45]
Like, I think that there's, that's something just like where I think it's, it's a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit deceiving, I guess, you know, in the sense that, like, you can't, you cannot necessarily achieve what you're looking for with AP flour, and changing the flour, or even a portion of the flour, could have a dramatic result for your final, for the thing you're making, right?
[00:26:07] Josh Sharkey:
Whatever, how about a white lily flour? I used to love it.
[00:26:10] Avery Ruzicka:
We still buy it. My parents buy it. Yeah.
[00:26:13] Josh Sharkey:
It is so good for biscuits.
[00:26:15] Avery Ruzicka:
That's exactly right. We have it at our house in North Carolina. My parents love to cook. And so, yep, we get white lily flour. Yeah.
[00:26:21] Josh Sharkey:
I don't see it anywhere in stores, but
[00:26:23] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, it is. I've never seen it. I've never seen it on the West coast. I've never seen it.
[00:26:28] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:27:38]
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're going to get out of the weeds a little bit here with the flour and I am going to read a quote that I read from you that really resonated with me and then we'll talk a little about what it means for you. So you said, It's great to be the least knowledgeable person in the room.
[00:27:54]
This means you're in a room full of people who are experts. Every day in the kitchen is an opportunity to learn something new if you surround yourself with the right people. This is like something I live so much of my life by.
[00:28:06] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah.
[00:28:07] Josh Sharkey:
I always want to be the dumbest person in the group of folks that are around because I will leave that place knowing everything that they know plus what I know.
[00:28:15] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:16] Josh Sharkey:
It's such a great mentality. I'm curious for you, and I think better for myself as well, like, you know, you now have a business that's growing. It's grown a bunch. You've been baking for a very long time. Like, how do you continue? To grow and learn and surround yourself with more people that know things that you don't as you're scaling your business and just generally as you're growing as a person.
[00:28:35] Avery Ruzicka:
I mean, I think that that mentality is something I just take with me. And so in a sense that it leads the choices I make, right? So like, in some ways it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. You will create opportunities for yourself to continue to learn if you love to learn. And so that's just like innately built into the choices we make.
[00:28:56]
So like I def I think about it a lot actually because it's like, well, it's definitely about attitude. You have to have the right attitude. As in, you have to have a an attitude of curiosity and you have to go into the day thinking, What are you going to learn today? Because I got some really good advice when I first started cooking and I was like when I was at Aldea, there was actually a really great group of like line cooks there who had much more experience than me.
[00:29:20]
And one of them was a slightly older guy who's, I think he was from, um, Thailand. And he had, like, traveled all over the world working. And he said, every day you write down what you learned. Write down a couple, like, it's kind of like, almost like a gratitude journal, right? Like, and so I, and he was like, you write down what you learned and you write down what you either, like, maybe it's a mistake you made or a thing you want to do better the next day.
[00:29:43]
And I would, you know, take the subway back and forth because I lived in Harlem and I worked down, you know, I mean, Aldea was, gosh, like, you know, off Union Square, and so, you know, I was on the subway a lot, and it was like, so I just, on top of having my little, like, you know, a little notebook with all my recipes in it.
[00:29:58]
I would jot down, this was kind of a little bit like before we had such massive cell phones, I feel like, like where you now take notes in in the cell phone, but I would jot down, I would do that. And it was like, it was such a way to be present in what you were doing and like, and, and going into work with the right attitude.
[00:30:13]
Because like, at that point, I was going to school every day. School was a little bit like, Not, it wasn't a waste of time, but it was like I was already cooking and you had kids in the classes who were, who had never cooked, who were like, I think I want to be a chef. Or, and then you have people who were a little bit more like me.
[00:30:27]
And so that was, I looked at school before I was doing the bread program, but especially in the savory program as a place to like practice and create opportunities. But it was more about the creating opportunities. Like the reason I wanted to go to that culinary school was because of I looked at the chefs that had come out of there and had successful businesses.
[00:30:44]
So like David Chang went there, the original guy who founded Cezanne, the, you know, Christina Tosi, like all of these people who had successful businesses had gone through there. So it was like, okay, I see this, like, I see people being successful. And then they were connected with so many great chefs, and so it was an opportunity to like meet so many chefs, etc.
[00:31:03]
So now that I own my own business, we decided to be a business that was going to grow. So, you know, I could have had a bakery where we make everything and we sell it in the same location, and that's a done deal. And then that's kind of like, you're in a little world. Well, no, no. We wanted to have a commissary where we make everything.
[00:31:21]
Okay, so. You're constantly having to solve problems. You're constantly, and if you're growing, you're having to both solve new problems. You have to like, so there's just, it's just innate in every day. And it won't be enough to have a business that's been successful. So same thing we've, we've kind of put the challenges in front of ourselves.
[00:31:40]
Like we went through a multimillion dollar expansion in the last couple of years. Between three new stores in 2023 and then in, well, no, three new stores in 2022 and then moving into our new commissary in 2023. So we literally are celebrating like our one year in this new commissary and It's just always about like, what have I learned?
[00:32:01]
How can I do this better? I tell my team that I'm not attached to anything except for the quality of what we do and like the safety and kind of like contentedness of our employees. As long as people are safe and kind to one another and as long as what we're making is delicious, the way we do it, I don't care.
[00:32:18]
As in, If you think it would make more sense for us to, for a reason, for whatever reason you might have, to mix our Levain bread in the evenings instead of in the mornings, let's talk about it. You know, not being too attached to anything except for having guidelines that you live by. So we have to like perform those two things.
[00:32:36]
So I'm not going to make a change if it's going to make everybody miserable, but I am going to work towards a change even if people aren't totally on board with it yet because I think it might make something better. So like we're going through that with our pastry team right now. We're going to, we have some pieces of equipment that when we moved into our new facility, the equipment that I purchased for this facility, we moved all of our old equipment and then we repurchased new things.
[00:32:58]
Some of that is really simple things like additional ovens, but some of it is, the idea was to make the job easier for the employee physically so that they had more energy to focus on the creative and the quality side of what we were doing. So we have what we call, it's called a cutting table. So when we make our, when you make a croissant, You use your sheeting table to lock in the dough with the butter, right?
[00:33:21]
And then you sheet it out and then you have to, so now you have a long roll of croissant dough and now you have to cut it and you have to cut it into the shapes for the croissant or the Pain au chocolat or whatever it has, maybe. So we now have a machine where you take the dough off one machine, the sheeter, and you take it over to this other machine and it basically runs down the top of the machine and there's a wheel, it's very simple mechanics, there's a wheel two different wheels, and they cut the croissant.
[00:33:48]
Because when I looked at the croissant process, cutting croissants, there is some skill to it. You need to cut it correctly, you need to cut it the right shape, but it's not a particularly interesting job, cutting croissants.
[00:34:00] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's definitely a rote job, but it has to be accurate.
[00:34:02] Avery Ruzicka:
It has to be accurate. Accuracy is the issue. Whereas the shaping of the croissant, how you roll it up, all of that, that's much more impactful. And so it was like, well, if we can use this machine to cut them, now the employees, number one, it's much more efficient. Number two, they're freed up to do, to have more time to create more.
[00:34:24]
So it's just, I think of, I mean, I just see places to learn always, you know, sometimes the hard part is more like, yeah. I can see and that's where I'm working on growing as a manager, continuing to grow as a manager, I think, and having the right people around you who are okay, you know, who give you that feedback, right?
[00:34:41]
Like, it's, it's up here for me and what to do, what's going to happen next, how to make it happen, but how I, but I can't physically do it. Like that's the bakery is way too big for me to physically do everything myself now. So learning how to communicate my plan or learning how to communicate. Like the scope of a concept or an idea and then working with my managers and my team members to implement a plan or for them to fill in the details.
[00:35:07]
That's definitely something I'm getting much better at, but like that took a lot of time, both for me to get better and for me to have enough of a structured team around me that could, that both knew the company, knew what my ethos were, knew where we were trying to go. Because, and now that's exciting because I'm not the only knowledge holder.
[00:35:28]
I can be like the idea person because, and then I can come with the idea and say, like, for example, we're going to be putting a tomato soup and a grilled cheese on the menu soon, right? And so, like, that's something we wanted to do as a team. We wanted, you know, so, but then how you actually start that process or implement the process in the stores, in the That's something that I want my store managers to be a part of, right?
[00:35:53]
Like, okay, like, how are you going to use the equipment in the store to heat up the grilled cheese? How many, just like, because it's, there's a lot of moving parts. Things can be much more complicated than you could ever imagine. Like, you would think a grilled cheese and a tomato soup, easy. It's not.
[00:36:10] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, especially at scale with that many locations.
[00:36:13] Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. There's just so many questions you have to answer. And so we're getting so much better with our systems about doing that. But yeah, there's always, I mean, there's no lack of places to learn. Yeah.
[00:36:25] Josh Sharkey:
It's fun though. You know, I think that's one of the best parts of it.
[00:36:29] Avery Ruzicka:
That’s why I love being a business owner? Because I'm not, because you, you get to use all the parts of your brain and you get to make changes and, and then you learn if you want to get better, like that's your responsibility. So it's like, It's on me to be better, not just on my team members to be better.
[00:36:44]
It's on me to figure out if we're not getting the results I want. And we have really good, nice, really nice, great people working for us. So it's not just this like, why aren't you doing this? It's like, okay, we need to go back to the drawing board. What are we not understanding? What's not being communicated?
[00:36:59]
And so much gets lost in communication. So it's, you know, You know, that's something we work really hard on and I agree, it's very fun.
[00:37:06] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I think as you scale too, I think the thing that I struggle with the similar thing of, you know, there's a concept in my head that I want my team to implement and making sure they understand fully what like we oftentimes overestimate what we think people grasp about the idea that we have.
[00:37:22]
But the fun thing is you start to scale business, which you're clearly now doing is the more you involve everyone downstream, actually, the more effective it's going to be. I remember
[00:37:34] Josh Sharkey:
last season, um, Ron Parker, really, really smart operator. He used to run Union Square Hospitality Group. Now he's the CEO of Jose Andres Group.
[00:37:41]
He said a lot of what he did was development, like building out new, new restaurants, right? So like designing everything from the design to the space, such as something that he said that stuck with me was, was how much he involves. The staff in the design of new restaurants, because to your point, yeah, a grilled cheese and tomato seems very simple, but where are you going to store all that bread?
[00:38:02]
Where's the cheese going to live? It's sliced, you know, you know, like once it comes out of the, of the toaster, the convection or whatever it is, where's that going to land? If you have 10 of them, how do you plan 10 of them at the same time? Where are you going to wrap it up? It adds up. But the biggest mistake I think that folks make that sounds like you're not making, which is amazing is.
[00:38:19]
Just assuming that you'll figure that out and then hand it to the team as opposed to getting them involved because then they also have ownership.
[00:38:26] Avery Ruzicka:
Again, like, retention of the team members is so important, right? Because it takes time. It takes time to learn each other's language. It takes time to get to know somebody's strengths and weaknesses too.
[00:38:36]
So, you know, I'm very lucky. My parents really wanted, like, you know, like, That my parents were just are incredible parents. And so they were extremely supportive and really believed in like raising well rounded children. So it was really important that we spoke multiple languages and all of those things.
[00:38:49]
So like I speak Spanish fluently. If I didn't speak Spanish fluently, I have no idea how I do my job because it makes a complete difference. And what kind of leader I can be for my company because I have a ton of Spanish speaking team members between the retail stores and the production facility. And so I can go into a store like this morning.
[00:39:05]
I went to my Campbell store and it was our first cafe. And It reopened that cafe in 2018. And so it had multiple years of operation before the pandemic. And then with the pandemic, everything shifted. When we first opened, we didn't have DoorDash. It was not a part component of our business whatsoever.
[00:39:22]
Obviously, during the pandemic, we launched it, and then we've maintained it. And it's quite a big part of our cafe model now, just because of this popularity. And so, like, while the store was very thoughtfully designed, it's had to pivot its use in certain areas. So, like, we've been going through a big process of kind of, like, again, hearing from the employees.
[00:39:42]
Like, we used to have a portion of the line that was in the front of the store and then the rest in the back. And when the pandemic happened, the front of the house became where they were like staging all of their to go orders, right? And so like the feedback from the employees was like, no, we'd prefer to have all of the kitchen things happening in the kitchen.
[00:39:59]
Okay, well, how do we move this equipment? And what can we get, you know, how do we, so even this morning we're over there doing that. And I'm getting feedback from the employees and we're doing it in English and we're doing it in Spanish. And it's like, if I couldn't do that, it would be like, it'd be like trying to do your job, you know, shape bread with one hand, which I'm sure people can do, but it's not necessarily the most efficient thing to do.
[00:40:19]
Right. So yeah, I definitely, and I don't know, and it's so nice not to know everything. I'm so happy not to have to know everything because for a long time, I felt like I had to know everything because we were a young company. I knew I didn't know everything, but I didn't have anybody else to be like, okay, how are we going to problem solve this?
[00:40:37]
Like, we didn't have a very experienced team. I knew nothing about retail. I'd never worked in retail in my life. Neither had my business partner, Andrew. He and I kind of run the day to day or, you know, especially at the beginning, he and I were running the day to day. And so, It was hard, you know, but now it's like I can talk to somebody I can say like, Hey, you know, Randy, who's my store manager in Los Gatos, like, what are your thoughts on like how the line is working?
[00:41:00]
Like, what do you, you know, and they have an educated opinion and experience and then we can build off of that together. So it's great. I love that.
[00:41:09] Josh Sharkey:
I'm curious. I don't know if you think about this, but clearly it's been successful, right? You launched it. Now there's a bunch of locations. The bread is obviously pretty good.
[00:41:17]
Fucking delicious. What else is contributing to the success? Because it's got to be more than the bread, right? Because there's a lot of delicious bread. What do you think is making this concept work so well?
[00:41:26] Avery Ruzicka:
I mean, obviously, it's a lot of hard work. I think we have very clear standards of what we're trying to do.
[00:41:32]
I think there's a lot of determination. I, they sound kind of cliche, but what I mean by that is, I mean, there are highs and lows in any company, right? Like, you have to know that, like, we've had bad hires. We've had team members who've, like, taken us in, you know, where you realize, oh gosh, like, because you don't know who somebody is till you know, right?
[00:41:51]
So we've had people who were like, gosh, this person seems like they're going to do so great. And then you start to hear that, no, not so much. And then you got to kind of rebuild a culture when you get that person gone because, you know, the employees around that person are a little gun shy, etc. So I think that I think it's about being curious.
[00:42:11]
I think it's about being willing to evolve. You gotta have confidence in yourself that you can solve problems and believe in yourself that you're gonna get through tough stuff. But you also have to have not too much of an ego to say, Look, if I'm getting feedback that this thing that I thought was great, people aren't enjoying, I gotta hear that feedback.
[00:42:31]
Like, whatever it might be, you know?
[00:42:33] Josh Sharkey:
And from a brand perspective, like those are things that like how you operate, but yeah, how customers are resonating with this. Yeah, well,
[00:42:40] Avery Ruzicka:
I think it has to do with in a bakery quality and consistency in any brand quality and consistency have to be at the forefront of what you're doing.
[00:42:48]
And I mean that on on a product side, but I also mean that on a customer service side. So our training process is something we're always improving and spending a lot of time on. So how we tell our brand story. how people experience the store, like our spaces, all of those things I think are not taking things for granted as a brand, I think is really important because that's something we really talk a lot with our staff because we have a strong brand and we have a strong customer following.
[00:43:19]
And so one thing we really push with our retail side is that you can't rest on your laurels just because people come in so like we can even see sometimes the salesmanship and the experience that I observed sometimes in some of our busiest stores can sometimes not be as high as it is in some of our smaller stores.
[00:43:39]
And we talked to our staff about that because the staff in the busier store sort of expects like, I don't want to say to expect the sale, but people come in, they know what they want and they leave, right? So the person doesn't have to work that hard sometimes to do their job. And so we really are like talk to them about like, what does it mean to be impactful employee?
[00:43:57]
Like you always, you know, what are our points of service? When do you agree to customer? So I think, you know, doing that stuff day in and day out. I mean, we all read, you know, Setting The Table. The Danny Meyer book and it's just it's about coming back every day and doing the same job and if you can't, can't do that, if you don't have the attitude to do that with your brand, I think brands get lost, right?
[00:44:18]
I think people get lost because something gets become successful and you forget why and then if the employees change or whatever. Yeah, I
[00:44:27] Josh Sharkey:
love that. So you have six locations now?
[00:44:30] Avery Ruzicka:
I have five stores and then our commissary is like six buildings.
[00:44:35] Josh Sharkey:
So, what are you still not delegating today that you're like, Mm, pretty sure, like, I need to get this off my plate soon?
[00:44:41] Avery Ruzicka:
Mm, it's hard. That's hard. I really talked to my team, my management team about, Are you doing a job that only you can do? If you're doing a job, you're doing a job someone else can do, obviously you need to pitch in and jump in here and there. But if the majority, if you look at the breakdown of your work week, and you spent the majority of your job doing, The same job that like, if you're a store manager and how you spent your week, the entire week was just bringing customers up, then we need to talk about your choices.
[00:45:10]
And so what I mean by that is when you ask me, like, what I delegate, I don't think that there's a thing I really try to spend my time doing things. And a lot of my day is like with other managers, right? Whether it's a pastry chef, or whether it's a baker, or whether it's a cook, or it's working with them.
[00:45:29]
That's really my job, or how I see my job, because I can plan where I want the company to go. And that part, like, I'm not going to delegate that to somebody, myself and, you know, Andrew and David, like, we're taught, we talk about where we want the company to be, but that we're not going to get there without me helping the team.
[00:45:49]
move in that direction. So I think in this last year, this facility has really helped me feel like I'm in the right, like using my time correctly. Right. And, and because as a business owner, and as a woman to some degree too, I think for a long time, there was like a lot of like guilt. Like if I'm doing this thing, I should be doing this other thing too, but you can't do two things simultaneously.
[00:46:10]
And you can't really multitask. Like you're just going to do two things. Not that great. So I I'm not saying I have it all figured out. I'm just saying in terms of delegation, I try not to do jobs that I can't, that somebody could do better than me. So like, I don't want to do the, I want to have a input about the graphic design, but I don't want to do the graphic design because somebody else is going to be better at that and faster at it, right?
[00:46:32]
So, But I want to be a part of the process. So I really try not to do things like I'm not gonna, I'm like, I'm going to go with my pastry team next week and I'm going to work with the pastry team all week next week because they're not using some of the equipment the way that I think there's efficiencies we're not finding.
[00:46:48]
And I want to put more products on the menu and we're hoping to grow our wholesale. So, and I don't want to hire many more employees. So I don't expect them to solve that problem by themselves. I, that's my job and I like problems.
[00:47:01] Josh Sharkey:
You're such an operator. It's so funny, hearing your dog just. It's very clear.
I mean,
[00:47:07] Avery Ruzicka:
it wasn't always the case at all
[00:47:08] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Maniacal might be the wrong word, but like the very detailed approach to Yes. Because it's true. You know, look, there's no But that's how you get somewhere.
[00:47:15] Avery Ruzicka:
If you don't have a plan Yeah, there's no like one
[00:47:16] Josh Sharkey:
thing that makes it work. You have to just get all these things to hum.
[00:47:21] Avery Ruzicka:
I definitely have gone too far in the other direction and too far, I've done it all, you know what I mean? So like, you're talking to me at a specific moment, but I've been the person who was 1,000 percent killing myself and not having enough maturity business wise to understand I was the owner and I could hire more people if that's what, like not trusting my decisions, right?
[00:47:40]
And so, and I was the one who suffered for that. And then the opposite direction of hiring people and maybe giving them a little too much sort of like hands off. And then being like, well, this isn't what I want. Yeah, look,
[00:47:53] Josh Sharkey:
It's so hard, right? You don't know, like, how much am I supposed to dig in? How much do I give up?
[00:47:59] Avery Ruzicka:
As the entrepreneur and as the operator, it's the same thing, like, if you're not getting the result you want, you
[00:48:03]
can’t blame other people. Like, if it's your business, you can't.
[00:48:06] Josh Sharkey:
It's such an advantage when you are an operator like that, because, especially in, in your business.
[00:48:12] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah. Well, I love operations. I love operations.
[00:48:15]
You know? Yeah. That's why I wanted to be a business owner, because I love baking, but same thing, for my personality type. Which it takes all kinds of personalities, right? I don't want to work for somebody else. I want to learn from other people. I want to be inspired by other people. I want, I don't need to know all things.
[00:48:33]
You know, it's like my business partner was a hedge fund analyst. Like, Thank God, you know, and that's why I wanted him to be my business partner because it was like, I want, you know, look around the room. Who has more money, Avery or Andrew? Andrew has more money. Okay, Andrew, how about you be a part of the business?
[00:48:48]
Know about money, you know?
[00:48:50] Josh Sharkey:
Is David involved at all?
[00:48:51] Avery Ruzicka:
He is, but he's, you know, for, for so long, he, Manresa, obviously Manresa just closed now two years ago. So he's not a part of our day to day operations. He's more a part of kind of like long term planning. And then, and he really has, he always has been more hands off, which is great.
[00:49:07]
Like, you know, that was a sign of confidence for him, for us with like, I was the baker and Andrew was at the beginning, the business person, but like in terms of, you know, he helped, he wrote our business plan. He, he, he, and I learned a lot from him. That's why I wanted both him and David as my business partners.
[00:49:23]
Cause it was like, I want business partners, you know, I can learn from like David's obviously an absolutely incredible world class chef, but also. has like created a brand in and of himself and Manresa and in like, just like having a career in food. So like, there's just endless things to learn from there.
[00:49:38]
And I mean, that's what brought me to Manresa in the first place was to work for David, because when I met him in New York, it was like, it was kind of like meeting, it was kind of like when I tried that bread, and it was like, this bread is different, right? It was like, David, this person's different. He was fun, and curious and thoughtful, but also very focused, but also like having a good time.
[00:49:58]
And it was like, this is different, you know? And I really wanted to work in a restaurant at that time that had its own farm. So I wanted to work at a high level, like as in like a multi Michelin star restaurant. And I wanted to work with somebody who was extremely focused on where their produce was coming from.
[00:50:12]
Because it's, and it's the same mentality that I've gone to at the bakery. Like, where does my stuff come from? What am I using? Why are we doing this? Yeah. Yeah, so David's definitely there in that in those ways. And especially now that Manresa is closed, like is more involved, like with as we talk about the future and what we're trying to accomplish, we are hoping to kind of like pull him into some of the savory menu stuff as we go into the summer.
[00:50:36] Josh Sharkey:
That's cool.
[00:50:37] Avery Ruzicka:
This summer, we want to expand our hours of operation for some of our cafes and kind of yeah. And maybe this will mean that we will ultimately expand our hours permanently, but we thought it would be a fun way in the summer to just stay open a little later and to have a couple additional kind of like happy hour snacks.
[00:50:54]
And so like working with David on taking some of the things we already are making, like, you know, utilizing our bread or making, you know, a country pate, like, but with David. So I'm excited about that because again, strategically and from an operations standpoint, like, how I approach this and where the focus in like, I can see the narrow lane now of what we need to do or how to thread the needle.
[00:51:16]
Whereas like five years ago, it would have been like, okay, like, how will we, incorporate David and, you know, I can go to David now and be like, Hey, I really want us to work on a menu item together. Like, it needs to be this to some degree. And then we can create within the bounds that I know we can be successful in.
[00:51:31] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, that's cool.
[00:51:33] Avery Ruzicka:
A great feeling because otherwise you have all the great ideas in the world and you can't make them happen, you know?
[00:51:38] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Speaking of ingredients, I'm curious if you have thought about or you maybe even started to see the impact of this cocoa crisis that's happening.
[00:51:46] Avery Ruzicka:
We haven't just because that's like one of the areas like for us, I mean, I mean, everything has fluctuated in pricing over the last little, you know, over the last couple years as a bakery, like, you know, we're not a chocolate company.
[00:51:57]
And so we use chocolate, we use Valrhona chocolate, more or less exclusively right now. But like that's not a huge portion of our food cost comparatively speaking.
[00:52:06] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know if you've heard how, I mean like 70 percent of the production comes from West Africa and like this El Nino has just like wiped out.
[00:52:15] Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. So in this one area, we're relatively lucky just because, because it's just not something that is a giant portion of our, of our company. And I don't see it becoming a giant portion anytime soon. Like we've done a little bit of chocolate work. Again, that's where like, it's in an interesting, like, learning process of being a business owner and being like, I have all the ideas in the world, but like, what do our customers actually want from us?
[00:52:38]
Like, you can't, people don't want everything from one place. They just don't, you know? And so that's, it's both, that's good, but it's also, sometimes it's a little sad, but mostly it's good because at least it gives you some limits, you know?
[00:52:50] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, you gotta have some focus. Okay, Ursula on our team, Ursula, shout out to Ursula.
[00:52:55]
She's awesome baker, among other things.
[00:52:59] Josh Sharkey:
She asked me to ask you if there is another bread program. Whether in the States or abroad that you really admire.
[00:53:06] Avery Ruzicka:
Oh, oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many. Okay, so I'm gonna go two totally different directions. Porto’s in LA.
[00:53:14] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, yeah. Also great food, by the way.
[00:53:17] Avery Ruzicka:
Oh, it's so good. It's so good. We went and we were lucky enough that a friend of a friend knew a lot of the chefs who work there. And so we were able to go see, like, their actual production facility. And then we were, and then we went to one of their cafes. It was incredible. It was like, as the pastry cook who was working with for me at the time who came with me on the tour said, I wouldn't necessarily want to be working at a Porto's level, because it's just, it quite literally is, like, some of it is fully mechanized, but it was such an, such an, they've just done such an incredible job scaling and maintaining quality and maintaining their price point, and it's just, and they do everything from scratch, and their, everything is extremely affordable, and so it's like, it's their own little, it's, I mean, it's, it's better than Panera, obviously, but I mean, like, they have It's so complex.
[00:54:10]
And so as an operator and a baker, I was just like so amazed by it. Like just It was incredible. Okay, so that's the scale side.
[00:54:17] Josh Sharkey:
And then the other scale side
[00:54:18] Avery Ruzicka:
And then on the opposite of that would be like, there's a bakery called Elmore Mountain Bread. And so we, our mill is a new American stone mill.
[00:54:26]
And the maker of that mill is a guy named Andrew. And then he and his wife have this bakery. So it's now he's like made hundreds of mills and they're all over the country. And I think even some of them abroad now, but they also have a beautiful wood fired bakery in Vermont. And it's like, so it's like the opposite, Ed.
[00:54:43] Avery Ruzicka: It's like.
[00:54:44] Josh Sharkey:
Where in Vermont.
[00:54:45] Avery Ruzicka:
It's in Wolcott. Wolcott. Oh, yeah. Okay,
[00:54:47] Josh Sharkey:
Cool.
[00:54:48] Avery Ruzicka:
And so it's a wood fired or tiny, tiny bakery. You know, I think about my future and I would open more bakeries. Like, obviously, I'm going to continue the growth of this company, you know, like, however is appropriate, you know, and different opportunities present themselves at different times and, you know, you weigh them and, you know, and there's, there's like short term goals and there's long term goals.
[00:55:07]
And then you kind of see which, you know, I, what I always hope is I try to make decisions and think through things that, like. These short term goals are going to be the same short term goals, whether we hit the long term goal or not, that we're still going to be moving in the right direction, right? So I'm not, we're not suddenly like, hey, we should start developing, you know, a line of chocolates.
[00:55:27]
Like that's not where we're going to work, right? What we're going to work on is how can we keep making our product fresher and fresher? How can we be baking in the stores with the current stores we have? Because if we open future stores, I want us to bake in the store, like all my stores right now.
[00:55:41]
There's food prepared there, but we bake everything overnight in our bigger productions facility. But if we open stores farther away from this facility, like, and obviously the romance and the joy of having something warm from the oven is the dream, right? But we couldn't grow this business in this area and try to have from day one having five separate bakeries.
[00:56:04]
couldn't afford it, couldn't have any of those things. And so, but then the opposite end of that is like the dream of like a wood fired bakery, like so like the opposite of this basically, like a very small wood fired bakery, you mill your own flour, maybe you even mix everything by hand, you know, I don't know, there's a bakery in like outside of Quebec where he makes, it's a small bakery, but he makes everything by hand in like the wooden trough, you know, so, I mean.
[00:56:30]
There's so many great bread programs, and I like, that's how I look at things, like, how can we take inspiration from other people? Like, I'm not going to suddenly pivot the company, but how can I, you know, what, what is it that I'm attracted to or drawn to in these other people's businesses, right? Yeah.
[00:56:45] Josh Sharkey:
By the way, you were, you were in New York I mean, I feel like there's, there's a lot of good bakeries. I mean, there's like Granddaisy, Pain d'Avignon, and Bien Cuit, Sullivan. Yeah, Bien Cuit, yeah, yeah. I feel like they each had their own, like, Yeah. The semolina raisin from Amy's is awesome. And then like the baguette from Bien Cuit was like, did you have a favorite when you were in New York?
[00:57:04]
Uh, She Wolf is really good. Um, I liked She Wolf a lot. That was kind of, I feel like that was like more my go to because I like their style of bread too. And they kind of like started a little bit like I started, like they were making bread for the restaurant group and then like that became its own business.
[00:57:21]
So I really liked their stuff a lot. I love Bien Cuit, but I think that probably at the time, like, SheWolf was probably my favorite.
[00:57:29] Josh Sharkey:
Cool. Well, you kind of answered a question I was going to ask you that I, I ask often, especially to entrepreneurs, but we'll see if it's, if it's the same, which is. If you had unlimited resources and time and capital, what would you be doing today differently?
[00:57:44]
You know, if there was unlimited amount of money and time and resources to do exactly what you wanted.
[00:57:51] Avery Ruzicka:
It would be two things. It would be continuing to open more stores in, on the West coast right now, but where we're baking in store, it's not a particularly like exciting answer, but it, but it's true.
[00:58:02]
Like. I love being, we, we always call ourselves like a neighborhood bakery like in the sense that we like have intentionally put our stores inside like little downtowns. Like the only store that we have that's not in a downtown neighborhood area is our Palo Alto store. And then we just, because we preferred like, um, The Town and Country Shopping Center almost has more of that feel than like, downtown California Avenue, Palo Alto.
[00:58:25]
So I'd like to continue to be part of like, smaller communities like that if money wasn't a reason, and where we were actually baking on site. And then, developing a frozen line of products because there are certain things that the joy of baking is such a wonderful joy. The experience of like, I love baking.
[00:58:44]
I love baking and I still love baking and that feeling of like pulling something out of the oven. Not everybody is going to be a great baker, right? So to be able to like share that feeling with people like I came out with during COVID. line of like baking mixes that uses our fresh milled flour and so we have like a chocolate chip cookie and it's our chocolate chip cookie recipe.
[00:59:05]
We have a brownie and our chocolate chip cookie is made with 100 percent whole wheat. Our brownie recipe is made with rye flour and then our waffle recipe or it could be waffle or pancakes is made with einkorn flour. And I made those because I loved baking with my parents when I was a kid. Like I loved, my mom and I would bake all sorts of different things, but sometimes as a little kid we would bake like a Duncan Hines cake box or a box of brownies.
[00:59:27]
And so it was like, that feeling of sharing the joy of baking is something that I would really love to, with all of the money and resources in the world, continue to figure out how to be a part of. And so, making baking accessible and fun for people when they're not necessarily going to become. Baking takes a lot of energy and effort.
[00:59:46]
It's really messy. It takes certain equipment. It takes some quantity of strength. you know, croissants at home, like, you need to be able to lock in dough. Like, not everybody can do that. Like, it just, so to be able to share what I think is really beautiful product, like, with more people, and not just on the store level, but at the home level, I think that that would be what I'd love to be able to do.
[01:00:10] Josh Sharkey:
Sounds like a great business, by the way. I mean, no one's really disrupted Sara Lee, you know.
[01:00:14] Avery Ruzicka:
No, they haven't. They haven't. No, you're right. Right. Yeah. Where are we getting? What can we disrupt? Please.
[01:00:20] Josh Sharkey:
That's your next business. You've got to do that because I totally agree, by the way, that it would crush.
[01:00:26] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, especially if you can do it at scale, and it works, it really is, it really is smart.
[01:00:31] Avery Ruzicka:
It's special too, it's confidence building, it's, and I think that's maybe something, not to get like, a little bit too soapbox-y right now, but I never thought I'd be a baker, you know? I thought I was a political science and international studies double major with a minor in creative writing, you know, like, and I own a bakery, like, you, and, and, you know, I thought I would be a lawyer.
[01:00:52]
I thought I'd be, I don't know what I thought I was going to be, but definitely didn't think I was going to be a baker. I thought I'd be a writer, but I definitely didn't think baker ever, you know, and now I own a, you know, bakery. And so what I mean by this, where what I'm trying to get to is like, for kids, right?
[01:01:06]
Like I'm in my late thirties and we talk a lot. As an owner, we talk a lot about our employees, right? We talk a lot about who's out there right now, what attitudes people have, what people are looking for, and I think a lot about like how lucky I feel that I was still kind of like from a generation where we kind of really were taught if you work hard you can do anything.
[01:01:29]
You know, I didn't live through a pandemic as a teenager, et cetera. And I feel like people who are in their, like, now just getting to their early twenties or even a little bit younger, there's like a lot of negativity and a lot of lack of optimism for the future. And I get it. And, but like Are you saying that, when
[01:01:47] Josh Sharkey:
You say that, is that anecdotally hearing from your team, from like younger people?
[01:01:52] Avery Ruzicka:
I listen. Do you listen to Pivot, the podcast?
[01:01:55] Josh Sharkey:
I don't. I do listen to my young children that are, you know, I asked this sincerely because I'm like, wait a second, like, I wonder what's going to happen.
[01:02:04] Avery Ruzicka:
Well, so Pivot is a podcast. It's, it's, it's Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. And Scott Galloway is in a marketing.
[01:02:09]
He's, he's a six year old. Yeah, he's awesome. They're awesome. And we all like a group of us all like listen to it like religiously. And yesterday they had on a futurist. Okay. And so he was talking about he I'm not sure who the guy was, but he I guess he's put together a TV show that's coming out. That's all.
[01:02:29]
And he goes all over the world and talks to people about the future basically studies the future. But he said, in the poorest countries with the lowest quality of life, yeah. When you poll people, people are more optimistic than, so like in Africa, in like very poor areas of Africa, extremely optimistic for the future, United States, extremely pessimistic for the future, and he said the difference is, is the word future a noun or a verb?
[01:02:59]
Are you building a future? Or is the future just a thing, right? And so when you ask me if my staff feels that way or how they feel. We have team members who are building their future. They have come to this country for a better life. You know, they have given up careers. They are nurses, they were doctors, they were electrical engineers, and now they work in a bakery, right?
[01:03:22]
Because they left some other, but they did, they left something that was whatever, unsafe, whatever it might be, to build something more for themselves. So I have those team members and they have hope for the future. And then I have team members who are younger, who are not as optimistic, who are a little bit, like, entitled.
[01:03:42]
We try not to hire, like, you know, we try to, like, but, but there is sort of this, hey, if you're not happy, you can change your situation. Like, that's how I feel, but I definitely see that that's not how everybody feels.
[01:03:54] Josh Sharkey:
It's such a, I mean, this is, I mean, we could talk about this for a very long time, though.
[01:03:58]
America is, there's so much opportunity here. I know. And there's so much that you can do. And to your point, yeah, I mean, I'm in my 40s, but we're a similar age of life. Yeah,
[01:04:07] Avery Ruzicka:
exactly. And I think that that's what I was trying to get to with the whole, the reason I got off on this tangent was because of the idea of these cake mixes.
[01:04:14]
And what I was trying, wanted to say was, how can you build confidence in kids? You know, you need to build confidence in kids, and not every kid is going to be a great mathematician, and not every kid is going to be, and that's okay, you know, so it's like having these experiences where kids can have wins that, or maybe they don't get wins in other ways, I think is, and like, that's what I think baking can do for people, is like, you're creative, you're working with your hands, you're trying something, the cost of failure is not very high, like there's not All of these positive things that you can learn from baking, like try, try again.
[01:04:48]
I don't know, I just think that there's a lot of power to baking, like for young people too, for anybody, you know. My dad bakes and he's in his late 70s and he loves to, and he, it's so cute because he'll, He's a really good baker, but you know, he'll really like worry about making a change and then he'll be like, but then I just did it, you know, and it's like, that's great because here was this man who's a history professor who sat at a desk all his life, like learning, you know, and he's out there playing, you know, it's great.
[01:05:18] Josh Sharkey:
So, yeah, I mean, it is one of those beautiful things that happened during the pandemic with this baking thing that just sort of like erupted.
[01:05:24] Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely.
[01:05:25] Josh Sharkey:
But it is true. You know, especially with kids, and I think about this a lot now, you have to build confidence without entitlement, which is a difficult thing to do, you know, to say, Hey, you know, like we want to make sure we're singing all the things that go well, but remind you that like, Hey, Yeah.
[01:05:40]
Not everything will go well. And that's okay. No,
[01:05:42] Avery Ruzicka:
No. And I struggled. I, my parents, we talked about, like, I was somebody who, like, you know, things came pretty easily to me in life. Like, I was a smart kid. I was really good at school. I loved school. Like, so when, when I got to a place where it was like, when things start were difficult, it took me, my mom was like, you know, we had to, we couldn't let you win the, you know, chutes and ladders when you were a kid because You had to learn, like, and you did not do well when we, when we actually, we didn't let you win, you know, we beat you, you were a mess, you know, but we had to do that because that's what parenting was because you had to learn not everything's going to go your way and, and there's a difference like you're saying and confidence.
[01:06:19]
Hey, I can try this. That feeling of belief in yourself that doesn't have to do with success, it's not about success, right? It's about believing. There's a difference, right? Because if your success is, belief in self is only associated with success, then it can be taken away from you, right? Well,
[01:06:36] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I think it's how you define success, which is, which is so important, right?
[01:06:39]
If you, if the way you associate success is, my business is going well, thus I'm successful. Like, you're a successful Avery because you love baking and somehow you've got to be able to create a world where you get to do that all the time. And that's a success, even if you scaled, you know, whether you scale up to a hundred of these or you stay at six or you go down to five, like you're doing the thing that you love.
[01:07:01] Avery Ruzicka:
And it has to make you happy too, like, if, like, that's part of, like, being mature too, I think, and growing up is, like, realizing, like, there's, there's a cost to everything, right? So, having a hundred of these might not be the worth the cost, but, like, you know, what, what are you willing to, like, negotiate or not negotiate with, right?
[01:07:19]
So, you know, like, I think you have to be able to have your eyes wide open and really see the cost and the benefit of things in business, right? I mean, and in being a creative entrepreneur, because just because something's possible doesn't mean you should do it.
[01:07:33] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah. Well, there's also a stage of the business that you might be right for and might not be, right?
[01:07:38]
You might get the 25. Oh, yeah,
[01:07:40] Avery Ruzicka:
for sure.
[01:07:40] Josh Sharkey:
locations and decide, you know what, I'm not the CEO anymore. Somebody else should be and I'll be a creative director or something.
[01:07:46] Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah. No, I know. Yeah. And then like I said, we really are still quite a small management team and that's something, you know, there are hard days where you like want to affect change and it's, it's hard and it's tough and you have to kind of sometimes say, okay, like today was not a win.
[01:08:02]
Let's start again tomorrow. You know, like sometimes you get, you get like frustrated or you get, you know, like, learning what the reality like having a great idea and then learning what the reality of it's going to take to make that idea come to life, you know, and I definitely my one of my biggest lessons that I try to remind myself of this is like, I used to be extremely unrealistic about how fast things could change or be done.
[01:08:26]
Things that I thought should take a month really take three months and things that I think we're going to take six months take 18 months there were things I thought we were going to do when we got to this facility that this facility would let us be able to do that we're just getting to and it's like but that's okay we're getting there you know and and we're doing it the right way so patience you really have to have the patience because otherwise You're not really building the foundation, and then it, it, you find out that it's really just that one person who's doing things the way you need them done, and if they leave, you didn't actually build a system, you just had a good employee, you know, so.
[01:09:00] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. I understand. Well, look, I'm so excited for what you're building. I'm also excited to go visit soon, I mean, next time on the West Coast. Congratulations on everything. Business and the growth and what you're doing. It's really amazing. I'm really grateful we got to have this conversation.
[01:09:19] Avery Ruzicka:
Me too. This is really lovely. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
[01:09:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song by an old friend. Hip hop artist, fresh daily for show notes and more visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z . com forward slash podcast.
[01:09:41]
If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it. If you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts, keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we See you next time.
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