Speaker 1: I am all in again Luke's Diner with Scott Patterson
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio podcast. Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all
Speaker 1: in Podcast one eleven productions. iHeartMedia Radio, I heart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Luke's Diner episode with the one and only Beatrice Porto.
Speaker 1: She is the owner proud owner of Porto's Bakery and
Speaker 1: Cafe in Burbank. Welcome Beatrice, Nice to have you on,
Speaker 1: Just really happy to have you. And we've just recapped
Speaker 1: season two, episode two of Gilmore Girls, Hammers and Veils,
Speaker 1: and we'll be discussing food served, the wedding and showers
Speaker 1: and the wedding cakes and that kind of thing. But listen,
Speaker 1: you know as well as as I do. And you've
Speaker 1: catered some of our Gilmore events at the studio, so
Speaker 1: I know your work and I I've gained a little
Speaker 1: bit of weight from an it's so good. You know,
Speaker 1: the shows of family and community and it's just like Porthos.
Speaker 1: How important it's that same feeling of warmth and belonging
Speaker 1: in your bakery, I.
Speaker 2: Would think is everything. I think that's what as a
Speaker 2: business sets and support. So the owners are my brother Rold,
Speaker 2: my sister Margrita and myself. You know, my parents passed away.
Speaker 2: We took up the torch. But talking about wedding cakes,
Speaker 2: talking about family, right, I have people that come in
Speaker 2: with a picture of their mother's cake and they say,
Speaker 2: you know, many many years ago, you made my mother's
Speaker 2: wedding cake, and then you make my baptism, my communion,
Speaker 2: all my birthdays, and that it's my turn. So we're
Speaker 2: in a business of creating memories. That's what we do.
Speaker 2: We create memories, especially through cakes. It's it's something that
Speaker 2: it never stops, it just keeps going, and it's a
Speaker 2: great business to be in.
Speaker 1: It's one of the great things about Los Angeles. There
Speaker 1: are many many businesses like yours from people that came
Speaker 1: from other places. Yes, and through family love and support
Speaker 1: built up these generational businesses of high quality food items
Speaker 1: or materials, what have you. It's one of the great
Speaker 1: features of our city. And you're you're a shining star
Speaker 1: in that city. Thank you, Gilmore. Girls love pop tarts,
Speaker 1: red vines, donuts, cover your ears, donuts, coffee.
Speaker 2: We did donuts before?
Speaker 1: Oh sure, No and Rory walked into Portos. Okay, what
Speaker 1: pastry cake would you recommend to them?
Speaker 2: Oh? My God, they would definitely have to have the
Speaker 2: cheese rolls, right. I mean I have people that come
Speaker 2: not just from la we have sheds from all over
Speaker 2: the world and they just love it because it's about
Speaker 2: this simplicity and you know how clean the ingredients are.
Speaker 2: There's only three ingredients in that patry, so they have
Speaker 2: to try that. And then our number one sellar cake
Speaker 2: is the milk and berries, which is a translated with
Speaker 2: you know, with fruit, with fresh fruit berries. So those things,
Speaker 2: if we sell those two things, we can really stop
Speaker 2: selling anything everything else that would keep us in business.
Speaker 1: So those those are your superstar skews, those two potatables.
Speaker 2: Of course everybody can relate to avable. Who doesn't know
Speaker 2: potatoes and beef.
Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing. But you have so many other
Speaker 1: menu items. Yes, yeah, I have a little coffee company
Speaker 1: and we have our superstars too. I think every business does.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. So coffee. Speaking of coffee, that's it's everything
Speaker 1: at my diner, Lukes Diner, Which porthos pastry do you
Speaker 1: think would pair perfectly with a cup of coffee?
Speaker 2: We have so many things. It could be the cheese
Speaker 2: roll number one, it could be the guava cheese, or
Speaker 2: it can be a scone. Never had our scones. I
Speaker 2: invite you to come in and try it. It's out
Speaker 2: of this world. We use all the rime from the
Speaker 2: oranges that we squeeze to make first orange es. We
Speaker 2: caramelize it and that's one of my favorite pastries. Scone,
Speaker 2: a crawberry scone. But it is that orange says that
Speaker 2: that little piece of caramelized skin of the orange makes
Speaker 2: this cone out of this world.
Speaker 1: All right? So this week I recapped Hammers and Veils,
Speaker 1: where Suki plans an engagement party for Max and Laureli
Speaker 1: and the entire town of Stars Hollows is invited. If
Speaker 1: you were catering a community wide engagement party like that,
Speaker 1: what kind of baked goods would you serve for that?
Speaker 2: I mean again, you know, we have so many beautiful pastries,
Speaker 2: but after almost fifty years in the business, there's never
Speaker 2: a cartering event that I do that doesn't include the
Speaker 2: cheese rolls, the juaba cheese, the meat pies, the chicken
Speaker 2: and bananas, the potato bols and everything else. It's an
Speaker 2: added feature.
Speaker 1: Do you have a every option? Can people walk? Can
Speaker 1: you can you call us how what's the range, what's
Speaker 1: your range where you'll deliver to.
Speaker 2: For like wedding cakes for example, that's a big thing.
Speaker 2: I mean before COVID, we were making on a weekend
Speaker 2: sixty two wedding cakes. I have thirteen delivery guys and
Speaker 2: that's all. They deliver wedding and send other cakes.
Speaker 1: Sixty two day, sixty two cakes.
Speaker 2: On the weekend Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Check it out.
Speaker 2: There's no place I can do that can of My daughter,
Speaker 2: my sister are like twenty five degreaters, seven thousand square
Speaker 2: feet of refrigeration and special things to make all those cakes.
Speaker 2: And now you know, the delivery withold range anywhere from
Speaker 2: thirty five dollars to what we took them to Tabacula.
Speaker 2: We delivered kick to Kega, so it was based on miles.
Speaker 2: But the closest ones would be fifteen dollars, you know
Speaker 2: in the Glendale you know Burba Carrea, and then after
Speaker 2: that it would jump to thirty five dollars. But that's
Speaker 2: a big responsibility delivery a wedding cake. We're not talking
Speaker 2: about the regular delivery service that come in and pick
Speaker 2: up stuff that we have, you know, like everybody else.
Speaker 2: Wedding cakes is another that's something else.
Speaker 1: So what's different about a wedding cake versus a regular cake?
Speaker 1: What are the ingredients?
Speaker 2: The regular gig is just the flat cake we're talking about.
Speaker 2: A wedding cake would be three tiers. I mean we're
Speaker 2: taking cakes of Mulholland Drive and while you driving up
Speaker 2: your praying because the cake is movie and you're like,
Speaker 2: you think it's never going to make it, but it
Speaker 2: does within four tiers. Cake through that and really it's
Speaker 2: it's scary. But these guys, that's what they were doing.
Speaker 2: And they were doing, you know, like I said on
Speaker 2: the weekend sixty two delivery. So it's a big responsibility
Speaker 2: that you hit traffic a few times and then you're late,
Speaker 2: no matter earlier you leave. II there's a if there's
Speaker 2: a big accident in the freeway and you're stuck, there's
Speaker 2: nothing you can do. Some people were very understanding. Most
Speaker 2: people were understanding, but some of the you know, the
Speaker 2: fries get some of them were like so angry, and
Speaker 2: you know, so we were at the end. It all
Speaker 2: worked tough, but it was a big I mean, I
Speaker 2: think I grew white hairs during the process. Because I
Speaker 2: was in charge of deliveries for many, many years.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about baking a little bit. Those extra
Speaker 1: steps that you take like browning your butter or sifting
Speaker 1: the flour, or or following other specific techniques. Talk about
Speaker 1: that how important that is.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's something like my bread for bread for example,
Speaker 2: my brother is that's this big passion in life is
Speaker 2: bread and bread is science. It's completely science. We you know,
Speaker 2: you have to rise some bread the yeast the night before, right,
Speaker 2: but when it gets hot, when it's really hot, you
Speaker 2: have to throw ice to that mother you know that's
Speaker 2: brewing because if you don't, she'll grow too fast and
Speaker 2: her break is done before it's time. So it's so
Speaker 2: you know, it's so just science that if you mess
Speaker 2: it up, that said all your bread is all your
Speaker 2: bread for the day is going to be gone. So
Speaker 2: there's steps that they follow depending on the weather. Water
Speaker 2: is very important. We do sour dough't that we bought.
Speaker 2: We bought, but they call them Mother. We bought it
Speaker 2: from San Francisco and it dates back to the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and you know that lady is kept alive every day,
Speaker 2: so you know you have it in the refrigerator. You
Speaker 2: take away from her every night, but you have to
Speaker 2: feed her whatever it needs, whether it's water, where there's ease,
Speaker 2: which is flour, and I think it's fascinating. Then no matter,
Speaker 2: you know, if you if let's say there's a holiday
Speaker 2: and we close, the people still have to come in
Speaker 2: to feed mama. Otherwise you know she's not going to
Speaker 2: give you what you need the next day. But I
Speaker 2: think baking is it's harder, and making pastes harder than
Speaker 2: cooking because when you're cooking and you oversold something, there's
Speaker 2: ways that you can fix it. But in bacon, if
Speaker 2: you messed up a recipe, that is it. You have
Speaker 2: to throw everything. Whether you're making a cake and you
Speaker 2: miss something, the whole batch goes into the trush. There's
Speaker 2: no way of recuperating. So there's measurement, there's precision, and
Speaker 2: everything is not in steps. For example, a wedding cake.
Speaker 2: People think that a wedding cake is made in one day,
Speaker 2: but it's not really. I mean, it gets baked. Let's
Speaker 2: say the wedding cakes for a Saturday, it gets baked
Speaker 2: on Wednesday. Because when you bake a hot cake, you
Speaker 2: know it has to cool off. Before you can fill
Speaker 2: it or you get ice it. So you make it
Speaker 2: on Wednesday night, it rests. Then you know maybe by
Speaker 2: by Friday, you're like stacking it, you're putting the filling,
Speaker 2: you're putting the zerup right, and then on Friday, when
Speaker 2: you do all that, it goes back to the refrigerator.
Speaker 2: Like a fourtier cake for example, when you bring it
Speaker 2: back on Saturday, where you're gonna that cake has shifted.
Speaker 2: It's like a building. It moves and you have to
Speaker 2: start by you know, making it, even by slicing it,
Speaker 2: by measuring. So it's it's a long step. Nothing is
Speaker 2: in the bakery business. You don't make something today. I'm
Speaker 2: baking right away. Everything. It takes time.
Speaker 1: Are there certain ingredients that you source locally that are
Speaker 1: fresh or game?
Speaker 2: Yes, So all the fruits, all our fruits, berries, all
Speaker 2: the berries that are going those cakes we source locally.
Speaker 2: We have bendor the family owned farms that we work with,
Speaker 2: and we're not a storage facility for anybody. So every
Speaker 2: every day around four or five on four in the morning,
Speaker 2: we get the fruit. Every day, we get fruit every day,
Speaker 2: we get milk, every day, we get butter. We don't
Speaker 2: want to keep milk to store because then if the
Speaker 2: employees make a mistake when you're you know, rotating them
Speaker 2: and that used to happen, you have milk that gets
Speaker 2: left over. So what a solution with that store anything?
Speaker 2: We're not a storage facility.
Speaker 1: How many employees do you have over there?
Speaker 2: Each baker has around three hundred employees.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Plus. Then we have our you know, marketing department. We
Speaker 2: also have an HR department, We have an accounting department.
Speaker 2: Doors are in a separate facility and you know those
Speaker 2: each one of those places is like twenty people around
Speaker 2: twenty people's.
Speaker 1: Among Have you ever been approached by a you know,
Speaker 1: a food corporation to take you national.
Speaker 2: All the time?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: My brother, if my brother would be he would leave
Speaker 2: the business today. And when he has people coming from China,
Speaker 2: from Thailand, from Hong Kong wanted us, wanted us to
Speaker 2: go there and to replicate what we've done here. But
Speaker 2: he doesn't have the time. We don't have the time.
Speaker 2: We're always trying to catch up.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, how do you so your suppliers'
Speaker 1: costs go up? Especially now? How do you handle that?
Speaker 1: Do you raise how careful are you to raise prevents.
Speaker 2: We're very because you know, we think one of the
Speaker 2: secret sary success is qualities versus pricing. Right, we're a
Speaker 2: family own an operator, so the people that come to us,
Speaker 2: our families, we don't ever have to not have them
Speaker 2: come in and spend thirty five to forty dollars caring
Speaker 2: for their whole family. You know, you're talking about Chinese Filipinos,
Speaker 2: a bunch of you know, like the Latinos, they care
Speaker 2: for the whole family. So we will want to be
Speaker 2: able to do that. So the secretary success for the
Speaker 2: pricing is the bulk is the amount of stuff that
Speaker 2: we sell. Like for cheese rolls we sell three million
Speaker 2: a month, or.
Speaker 1: The cheese rolls three million a month, potato.
Speaker 2: Bowls two million of bucks. So that's how we can
Speaker 2: keep the prices. If the people keep coming and they
Speaker 2: keep buying, the more they buy, the cheaper we can
Speaker 2: bring the product. Because the more you buy from a supplier,
Speaker 2: the better priceing you get. So suppliers, you know, they
Speaker 2: look at you're going to pay on time, you get benefits,
Speaker 2: you know, you buy a lot. We can just take
Speaker 2: for example, all our paper goods, all our paper goods
Speaker 2: from toilet paper to boxes, whatever. Give it to one
Speaker 2: company and then you can get better prices. So work.
Speaker 2: We have a buyer on that all the time. Again,
Speaker 2: now with all the things we're recycling and all that
Speaker 2: we're on more, we have buyers looking for stuff from
Speaker 2: all over the world, so we can need a new challenge.
Speaker 2: So you always have to stay ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: So the volume of your sales protects your margins all
Speaker 1: the time, every single time.
Speaker 2: And then it's being smart about labor. You know, we
Speaker 2: have beautiful decorators, but we have some people when when
Speaker 2: they come up with a new cake, they need to
Speaker 2: make sure that the cake is easy to execute. So
Speaker 2: you want to a cake that's elegant, but it has
Speaker 2: to be easy to execute. If you spend too much
Speaker 2: time decorating, there goes your profit. So you want something
Speaker 2: elegant but it's easy to execute. So all that goes
Speaker 2: into the making of the case. When the people, the people,
Speaker 2: the chefs are coming up with a new creation, all
Speaker 2: that has to be kept in mind. How is it
Speaker 2: is it to execute? How fast can they do it?
Speaker 2: The same way a salad, you know, we make it.
Speaker 2: We make incredible salads. People don't know that but we
Speaker 2: have salads that somewhere else you would pay, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five dollars whatever you know, hours is like twelve
Speaker 2: dollars and a half the best ingredients, like any fancy restaurant.
Speaker 2: But what do we do. We need to make sure
Speaker 2: that most of the ingredients are in the kitchen already.
Speaker 2: You can't make a salad where all the ingredients are
Speaker 2: just for that one salad that will kill your profit.
Speaker 2: That will kill That would not be something that you can,
Speaker 2: you know, do because the pricing will not be there.
Speaker 2: So we're very careful about what we bring in. So
Speaker 2: it's not just okay, let's do this salad. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of thinking involved. Can we source the ingredients, Can
Speaker 2: they be locally sourced, you know? Can they be coming
Speaker 2: every day? Will these people be able to deliver to
Speaker 2: us on a daily basis. There's a lot that goes on,
Speaker 2: you know, with vegetables and especially letters and stuff like
Speaker 2: that you see on the market that there's a warning
Speaker 2: about something that's going on. Our companies tell us before
Speaker 2: you guys find out before the consumer. Most of the
Speaker 2: time we already know pull this lettuce. They'll bring another
Speaker 2: type of letters because something's going to So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that goes in the background, and you,
Speaker 2: as a customer, you come in and you have you
Speaker 2: have no clue what's going on. It's not just as
Speaker 2: easy as it looks how beautiful they look.
Speaker 1: There's so much right it's about it's about putting out
Speaker 1: little fires every day.
Speaker 2: There's something going on.
Speaker 1: Everything beautiful thing that is a beautiful thing. I love
Speaker 1: small business owners. It's just and you don't have a
Speaker 1: small business anymore. It's a big we don't, but we
Speaker 1: treated like a small business exactly.
Speaker 2: You know. It doesn't matter how big we grow. We
Speaker 2: still think that the bosses are the customers. They tell
Speaker 2: us what they need, what they want, and some they
Speaker 2: don't like something. They they walk in and sell you
Speaker 2: straight to your face. And I like the spot.
Speaker 1: Let me let me ask you this. Uh. We have
Speaker 1: a little bit of time left so and I could
Speaker 1: talk to you all day. Trust me, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: in your business. And boy, do I want to pick
Speaker 1: your brain. If you were to come into Luke Steiner,
Speaker 1: what would you order?
Speaker 2: I would number one. I would have a cup of
Speaker 2: coffee and anything with customer Okay, make Custer fun all right.
Speaker 2: You know again, a lot of people don't make crimbo
Speaker 2: lens or flun but I love custer over chocolate, my
Speaker 2: sister's chocolate. And I'm customer, so I mean I My
Speaker 2: favorite kick in the world is a kick with custom
Speaker 2: not first property, nothing, just playing custom. Cust If you
Speaker 2: buy a customer kick and you give it a refrigerator
Speaker 2: a couple of days later, it tastes better because the
Speaker 2: custer just soaks into the cake.
Speaker 1: Delicious, just beautiful Beatrice Porto ladies and gentlemen, the other
Speaker 1: of Portos and uh, if you've never been, go it
Speaker 1: is an amazing experience. Take your whole family. It has
Speaker 1: been a pleasure getting to know you a little bit
Speaker 1: and talk to you a little bit about your wonderful
Speaker 1: business and your wonderful employees and every person out there
Speaker 1: that is a regular at Porthos. You're lucky and they're appreciated.
Speaker 1: We're lucky and it works both ways. Beautiful Porto Porthos,
Speaker 1: go check it out. There are many locations in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about. Porto's Bakery, the famous
Speaker 1: Porthos Bakery, and this is the woman responsible for it
Speaker 1: right here. Your entire family is rep and thank you
Speaker 1: for your time. Please do come back. We'd love to
Speaker 1: have we we'd love to have you back. And remember everybody.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the downloads and where you lead, we will follow, stay,
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