Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Jill.
Speaker 4: Why isn't thal Joe?
Speaker 2: I have a very personal question to ask you.
Speaker 5: Well, we've known each other for a very long time,
Speaker 5: so there's not much left that we don't know, but
Speaker 5: go for it.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually don't know the answer to this question.
Speaker 2: Have you ever baked anything?
Speaker 5: Ah, not that much. I went through this. I'm just
Speaker 5: gonna the answer is basically no.
Speaker 3: No, Wait, you were going to say something. You went
Speaker 3: through a phase one.
Speaker 5: Time in high school. I got in this like weird,
Speaker 5: like experimental baking obsession with a friend of mine where
Speaker 5: we just sort of tried to relearn baking by first
Speaker 5: principles and see what works.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Just like not eating any recipes, so not reading any
Speaker 5: recipes and just start figuring it out and then seeing
Speaker 5: like what cause things to rise and what tasted good
Speaker 5: without any starting principles or anything. We knew a few
Speaker 5: basic ingredients.
Speaker 6: It's fun.
Speaker 5: I should get back into bacon.
Speaker 3: You should, It's really fun.
Speaker 5: What do you, Tracy? We know this is just a setup.
Speaker 5: Because you want to talk about your bacon, why don't
Speaker 5: you just tell us what you like to bake.
Speaker 2: Hey, look, I don't bake that much. Actually in my household,
Speaker 2: my husband bakes everything. So he does a really good
Speaker 2: bass cheesecake, really good chocolate chip cookies, things like that.
Speaker 2: But if you were doing first principle baking, I imagine
Speaker 2: you know how difficult it is and all the things
Speaker 2: that are involved in just making like a simple loaf
Speaker 2: of bread.
Speaker 6: I am aware.
Speaker 5: And the other thing is not only I understand that
Speaker 5: it's very complex, but beyond that, I'm always flabbergested at
Speaker 5: the idea of doing it at industrial scale or semi
Speaker 5: industrial scale, and how that even works. I have no idea,
Speaker 5: to be honest, honestly, industrial scale food preparation at all
Speaker 5: seems crazy to me, like steaks and everything, Like how
Speaker 5: do you do it over and over and over again
Speaker 5: and get a repeatable process? It is like a fascinating
Speaker 5: question to me.
Speaker 2: Right, So that's really interesting in and of itself. But
Speaker 2: the other interesting thing about the baking business at industrial scale,
Speaker 2: as you just pointed out, is it's kind of a
Speaker 2: microcosm for the economy. You have all these commodity inputs,
Speaker 2: which obviously move around along with inflation. You have labor issues,
Speaker 2: you have to get bakers who want to get into
Speaker 2: work really really early in the morning, and obviously you
Speaker 2: also have consumer demands. So it's really an interesting lens
Speaker 2: to kind of look through.
Speaker 5: Well, one of our the favorite episodes that we've ever done,
Speaker 5: which I think was twenty twenty two or maybe twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: One, long time ago, we.
Speaker 5: Talked to a commercial baker in Chicago, and I've always
Speaker 5: wanted to do more. There was such a pivotal episode
Speaker 5: for us, and I was like, well, you know, we
Speaker 5: learned a lot about what was going on with commodity costs,
Speaker 5: we learned a lot what was going on with pricing, power,
Speaker 5: et cetera. Well, it's twenty twenty five now I would
Speaker 5: like to learn more about what's going on.
Speaker 2: All right, So we're gonna dive back into baking, possibly
Speaker 2: not on a first principal basis, but we have the
Speaker 2: perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Andy Cayden.
Speaker 5: He diden banking baking from first principles to be a
Speaker 5: really good that would be like a good name for
Speaker 5: a cookbook. All right, Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 2: Good name for a baking podcast. Perhaps, Okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to be speaking with Andy Cayden. He is the owner
Speaker 2: of a bakery in LA that's called Bub and Grandma's.
Speaker 2: They do wholesale orders for a bunch of different LA restaurants,
Speaker 2: so industrial scale, as you mentioned, Joe, but they also
Speaker 2: have a retail restaurant that does sandwiches and they're in
Speaker 2: the process of opening a pizzerias.
Speaker 3: So amazing all the.
Speaker 2: Baked goods Andy, welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Really good to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Shall we start out with where did your interest in
Speaker 2: bread actually come from? Was this like a COVID trope
Speaker 2: where everyone started doing their own sour dough and got
Speaker 2: really into carbohydrates.
Speaker 6: Maybe I'm a little prot Covid in my obsession. I
Speaker 6: was a writer in advertising and TV for about a
Speaker 6: decade after school and learned fairly quickly after I got
Speaker 6: to Los Angeles about sixteen years ago that I hated
Speaker 6: it and hated myself for contributing to sort of the
Speaker 6: advertising culture, so to speak, and I needed to escape
Speaker 6: and always had an obsession with cooking and eating and
Speaker 6: decided to focus on something that I saw missing from
Speaker 6: the Los Angeles landscape. After I moved here from the
Speaker 6: East Coast. I grew up in New Jersey kind of
Speaker 6: in Italian Jewish sandwich mecca, and saw that there was
Speaker 6: sort of a glaring absence of those style of kind
Speaker 6: of walk into it and have a great sandwich kind
Speaker 6: of experience in Los Angeles. There are a few notable spots,
Speaker 6: but they aren't everywhere like they are in New York
Speaker 6: and New Jersey. I decided to start writing some business
Speaker 6: plans and figure out how to open a sandwich shop here,
Speaker 6: and you know, started working at sandwich hoop in Hollywood
Speaker 6: called Potato Chips for free on the weekends, staging at
Speaker 6: a variety of bakeries, just to try and figure out
Speaker 6: how bread worked. And in that process of trying to
Speaker 6: figure out how bread works, simply just to talk to
Speaker 6: bakers about what I wanted, I started baking daily at
Speaker 6: home and got into that pseudo Covid rhythm of daily
Speaker 6: baking and the obsession of that comes from falling into it,
Speaker 6: you know, into its grasp, and you know, started giving
Speaker 6: away all the bread I was making, and it found
Speaker 6: its way to a friend of mine who worked at
Speaker 6: a local restaurant and the owner called me out of
Speaker 6: the blue and asked if I could make bread for
Speaker 6: him daily. I said yes, and hasn't stopped for ten years.
Speaker 2: Wait, so initially were you just baking bread at scale
Speaker 2: in your kitchen.
Speaker 6: I started as just for me, just as an experiment,
Speaker 6: but very quickly kind of once I had that first account,
Speaker 6: which was maybe six months after I started baking, six
Speaker 6: months to a year, the attention came quickly and I
Speaker 6: started needing to level up over and over and over again.
Speaker 6: So the first place that I would mix the bread
Speaker 6: in my house and ferment it there, and then shape
Speaker 6: it and take it to a pizza place around the
Speaker 6: corner and bake it in there pizza oven. It was
Speaker 6: a variety of these acts together, baking in other bakeries
Speaker 6: off hours to get things done, and as the demand
Speaker 6: grew very quickly, I quickly had to figure out how
Speaker 6: to run a business, not just bake a few loaves
Speaker 6: of bread out of my house, and moved into a
Speaker 6: semi legitimate space at about a year and a half.
Speaker 5: Flash forward to today, zooming out, why don't you tell
Speaker 5: us about the size and scope of your businesses? What
Speaker 5: do you have right now just in terms of a
Speaker 5: volume and number of employees stuff like that.
Speaker 6: The wholesale bakery, which is what that story evolved into,
Speaker 6: is now a fifty person business. We have a sixty
Speaker 6: five hundred square foot facility that produces bread, just bread,
Speaker 6: not pastry, for about one hundred and eighty restaurants in
Speaker 6: Los Angeles. It's a pretty wide distribution, and we are
Speaker 6: still trying to grow. We're kind of wall to wall
Speaker 6: in that space and need to move in the next
Speaker 6: two years, so we're starting to investigate what that would
Speaker 6: look like. We also opened a retail restaurant almost three
Speaker 6: years ago, which is insane how quickly that three years
Speaker 6: has passed in our weird time vortex that we live
Speaker 6: within now, and that is another almost fifty person business
Speaker 6: in the Glassow Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. We are
Speaker 6: in the process of opening a pizza place in Highland Park,
Speaker 6: a neighboring neighborhood, that will be open, hopefully in the
Speaker 6: next four to five weeks, so that'll be another thirty employees,
Speaker 6: growing to fifty over time.
Speaker 2: Why did you decide to do the retail sandwich shop,
Speaker 2: because I imagine wholesale actually sounds kind of nice because you're
Speaker 2: still making a product, but you're divorced from face to
Speaker 2: face interact with customers, which sounds nice to me, but
Speaker 2: obviously you have a different opinion.
Speaker 6: No, I don't. I mean, we started with wholesale. We
Speaker 6: started in this less sexy, less customer facing environment for
Speaker 6: the first say, five years of the business before we
Speaker 6: you know, changed gears to open the retail restaurant. The
Speaker 6: wholesale business is a much more steady ship. I sort
Speaker 6: of describe it as you have this big ship. It's
Speaker 6: moving up and down in the water, but ultimately as
Speaker 6: forward moving. It's harder to capsize. It's harder to knock
Speaker 6: off course, and that makes it a little bit, let's say,
Speaker 6: less crazy the restaurant business, which was what I wanted
Speaker 6: to get into in the first place. Had I known
Speaker 6: what it would be like at the now that I'm there,
Speaker 6: you know, maybe a wholesale would have been better. To
Speaker 6: stay out. It's so much harder. It's much more dynamic,
Speaker 6: everything is changing all the time, much more difficult to
Speaker 6: isolate the variables. There's far more variable to consider in
Speaker 6: the restaurant, especially when you bring in customer customer behaviors
Speaker 6: and how things really just consistently fluctuate across the board.
Speaker 5: One of the themes that comes up in a range
Speaker 5: of topics that we talk about is distribution, and actually
Speaker 5: well distribution in terms of sales, but also the physical distribution.
Speaker 5: How does it work in Los Angeles? Do you have
Speaker 5: your own vans? Are there third parties that drop off
Speaker 5: the bread to the restaurants?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: Talk about how you like built up that network and
Speaker 5: how the bread physically gets from your commercial bakery into
Speaker 5: the restaurant.
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, we have. Currently we have six vans that
Speaker 6: are either leased or owned, and it's been a bit
Speaker 6: of an excruciating endeavor building out this whole network because
Speaker 6: it is a major, major part of what we do,
Speaker 6: especially because we're wall to wall. When I say wal
Speaker 6: to wall, it basically means there is literally no more
Speaker 6: ovens based per hour available for new loaves of bread
Speaker 6: to increase our productions. So if you start baking at
Speaker 6: two thirty in the morning and you need to get
Speaker 6: bread to all of these accounts before they open at
Speaker 6: eight am, you have a very narrow window to cool
Speaker 6: that bread, pack that bread, get it into the vans,
Speaker 6: and get it out to these accounts. So our ops
Speaker 6: team at the bakery are true geniuses and building out
Speaker 6: these roots because you have only had this very narrow
Speaker 6: gap to hit, and if there's famous La traffic or
Speaker 6: anything else that gets backed up in the baking process,
Speaker 6: you are scrambling to try and make sure that you
Speaker 6: take care of these accounts in a way where they
Speaker 6: can still do their jobs. So we have to do
Speaker 6: our job, not only just the baking job, but the
Speaker 6: distribution job before they show up, before anybody else from
Speaker 6: our accounts show up to work. Also, the vans themselves
Speaker 6: are you know, deeply problematic. They are the number one
Speaker 6: thing that breaks needs service, needs attention, you know, more,
Speaker 6: even more so than our ovens, which are in near
Speaker 6: constant use. And we have explored a number of different options,
Speaker 6: especially for when we potentially move to a bigger space
Speaker 6: about outsourcing our distribution. There are a lot of upstart
Speaker 6: wholesale distribution companies, some of which are based in La
Speaker 6: a lot more in San Francisco that are sort of
Speaker 6: taking the Uber approach and outsourcing their drivers or having
Speaker 6: a dedicated pool of drivers who work with a variety
Speaker 6: of different accounts as opposed to one to one so that,
Speaker 6: you know, one of the major issues with our business
Speaker 6: is the you know, fluctuating repair and maintenance numbers for
Speaker 6: our vans. If we can offload that to someone else,
Speaker 6: that is something that we have certainly looked into. But
Speaker 6: when we get into the mix with these conversations, we
Speaker 6: always kind of end in the same place where, yes,
Speaker 6: we are not a customer you know, a consumer facing company,
Speaker 6: but our business relies on that single interaction between the
Speaker 6: chefs and our drivers. They are our point of contact
Speaker 6: with our customers. And if that is not an authentic connection,
Speaker 6: and if that is not something our employees are connecting
Speaker 6: with our customers, there's a potential for things to go
Speaker 6: wrong and a potential for that relationship to be sour.
Speaker 6: So we've ultimately stuck with our own employees and our
Speaker 6: own vans for now.
Speaker 5: Tracy, I'm just thinking about how crazy it must be
Speaker 5: like have an interest in bread such as yourself, and
Speaker 5: then suddenly like you're in the.
Speaker 3: Break become a mechanic.
Speaker 5: Oh, you're in the break prayer business too, and you
Speaker 5: got to take that into account.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I was thinking the same thing, and it's something that
Speaker 2: I guess when people envision a bakery you don't necessarily
Speaker 2: think about the transportation and delivery aspect of it. But Andy,
Speaker 2: you mentioned two thirty am just then and the narrow
Speaker 2: window for delivery, and I have to ask, what's it
Speaker 2: like getting actual workers in the door? Who who want
Speaker 2: to I guess wake up at like one am in
Speaker 2: the morning and go bake bread.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's tricky, you know. You first of all,
Speaker 6: you have to love it. You have to love the process.
Speaker 6: And I mean the two thirds the aspect is, you know,
Speaker 6: very very early and a very very different lifestyle in
Speaker 6: a literal way. You are falling asleep at five thirty pm,
Speaker 6: and that means that your you know, connection with your
Speaker 6: family or connection with your friends. You're operating on a
Speaker 6: completely different time zone than they are, and it makes
Speaker 6: things complicated if folks are not operating on the same
Speaker 6: schedule as you. But you know, the it's that was
Speaker 6: the last baking ship that that I did was the
Speaker 6: Sunday morning two thirty am bake for the Hollywood Farmer's Market.
Speaker 6: I would, you know, get up at two roll down
Speaker 6: to the bakery. It would be just me in the dark,
Speaker 6: a lot of people returning from their various parties, on
Speaker 6: Saturday night, which made driving there a little bit sketchy,
Speaker 6: but always you know, being careful and then you know,
Speaker 6: finish the bake, pack it up, put it in my truck,
Speaker 6: and go to the farmer's market and sell it. And
Speaker 6: then the day would wrap up around two thirty, so
Speaker 6: it would be this twelve hour kind of sprint and
Speaker 6: then sale and then come back. And you know, at
Speaker 6: a certain point it was the only bake shift that
Speaker 6: I was doing because I had to manage the business
Speaker 6: during the other days of the week that I was
Speaker 6: not doing that. And when you just bake one day
Speaker 6: a week at two thirty in the morning, it scrambles
Speaker 6: your mind so wildly and your sleep schedule that I
Speaker 6: had to eventually abandon it just because I needed more
Speaker 6: time to manage the businesses. But you really have to
Speaker 6: subscribe to the lifestyle if you try and push the edge,
Speaker 6: you know, especially when I was baking and managing five days,
Speaker 6: baking five days a week and still trying to manage
Speaker 6: the business, it was getting sick a lot. It was
Speaker 6: very difficult to stay healthy when you're operating across two
Speaker 6: you know, time zones. Really you're living in this kind
Speaker 6: of Oh my wife and my friends are all living
Speaker 6: in this time zone, and my business is living in
Speaker 6: this time zone, and I need both. I need to
Speaker 6: be there for both. Those were far more complicated times
Speaker 6: for my own health. But we're on the other side
Speaker 6: of that now.
Speaker 5: We mentioned in the beginning, you know, we like this
Speaker 5: topic because it's sort of a lends into everything. But
Speaker 5: what are you seeing today in terms of you know,
Speaker 5: if you compare now to when you started, how do
Speaker 5: you think or versus the peak of the inflation whatever was,
Speaker 5: how do things look today when it comes to both
Speaker 5: hiring availability and also raw commodity cost ingredient costs.
Speaker 6: Hiring availability is unique for us. Obviously, we are looking
Speaker 6: for a very specialized group of people. So the skills
Speaker 6: that they hopefully already have are in rare supply in
Speaker 6: Los Angeles, and that makes hiring complicated far more so
Speaker 6: for the wholesale bakery than for the restaurant. The restaurant
Speaker 6: has a lot of over the pool is much wider,
Speaker 6: and we have very little trouble hiring at the restaurant
Speaker 6: the bakery.
Speaker 5: Would you have said this same thing in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: two or twenty twenty three, or does it feel easier
Speaker 5: today than it would have back then at the at
Speaker 5: the retail level, because that's where that's where like all
Speaker 5: the complaints were, right, everyone, all the restaurants in the
Speaker 5: service entities were complaining about how impossible it was.
Speaker 6: I think that it's I think that it's impossible if
Speaker 6: you don't already have a name that people know. And
Speaker 6: I think for us, we've spent a lot of our
Speaker 6: efforts making sure that our employees are well taken care
Speaker 6: of and supported and treated like the human beings that
Speaker 6: they are. And I think that when we open the
Speaker 6: restaurant after the bakery, that was already somewhat established in
Speaker 6: the in the public eye, so that helps us to
Speaker 6: kind of make this place. I mean, this is the
Speaker 6: point of it all is we want to make this
Speaker 6: a desirable place, uh for for people to work, so
Speaker 6: that when they come here, they have a good time,
Speaker 6: they're well supported, they get fed, they get treated well,
Speaker 6: they have health care. And you know, we really built
Speaker 6: this thing on that it's becoming harder and harder to
Speaker 6: have a functional business including all of those things, which
Speaker 6: is you know, the real issue at hand here is
Speaker 6: that the expenses are enumerting and the you know, sales
Speaker 6: remain the same. So when we talk about raw materials,
Speaker 6: there's been there's were actually in a much better place
Speaker 6: than we were, say a year ago or even a
Speaker 6: year before that. The bakery goes by one ingredient, it's flour.
Speaker 6: Flour is wheat, and wheat is you know, a global
Speaker 6: commodity that has a lot of fluctuations. It's usually compared
Speaker 6: to others, fairly steady. But for example, when the Russia
Speaker 6: Ukraine War broke out there Russia was not allowing Ukraine's
Speaker 6: wheat to leave the country. Ukraine is the sort of
Speaker 6: bread basket provider of wheat for Europe, and when that happens,
Speaker 6: there's much more demand coming from the United States. Prices
Speaker 6: go up, and the American users of American wheat are
Speaker 6: the ones who end up paying more so that those
Speaker 6: products end up in Europe cover for the loss of supply.
Speaker 6: So we saw maybe a ten percent increase in flour pricing.
Speaker 6: It caused us to have to drive our prices up
Speaker 6: for the first time in a long time bread wise.
Speaker 6: Now it has settled back down, but in the meantime,
Speaker 6: everything else has gotten more expensive, and you know, there's
Speaker 6: there's a you know, massive wave of restaurant closures in
Speaker 6: Los Angeles right now, including yesterday, Coal's one hundred and
Speaker 6: seventeen year old restaurant announced that it's closing. The pantry,
Speaker 6: which has been around for one hundred years closed. It's
Speaker 6: a very very very very difficult time for restaurants to thrive,
Speaker 6: let you know, survive, let alone thrive in this town.
Speaker 6: So interesting times for sure.
Speaker 2: Just on the commodities front, how does it work in
Speaker 2: terms of actually sourcing things like flower Do you sign
Speaker 2: you know, forward agreement with suppliers at a certain price
Speaker 2: and I guess, like how long term are those prices set.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's depends very much on volume. And we are
Speaker 6: in this very unique sort of middle ground where we
Speaker 6: are not a giant twenty five thousand square foot bakery
Speaker 6: and we are not one of the sort of more
Speaker 6: retail oriented two thousand square feet bakeries. We are in
Speaker 6: the middle looking to make this leap to where we
Speaker 6: can buy directly from our purveyors, and when we can
Speaker 6: like purveyors as in non distributors, directly from King Arthur,
Speaker 6: directly from Camus Country Mill, directly from a variety of
Speaker 6: other flour purveyors. And when we can do those types
Speaker 6: of things that buy at scale, say seventeen to twenty
Speaker 6: pallets of flour at a time, we can lock in
Speaker 6: forward pricing with King Arthur, with some of the other ones.
Speaker 6: But in the moment now where we're operating through distributors,
Speaker 6: we are subject to their markup and they are fluctuating
Speaker 6: what they're doing based on whatever algorithms they're using to
Speaker 6: calculate proper pricing, not only us from what they're getting
Speaker 6: charged from the you know, the actual producer, but also
Speaker 6: however their business is doing, and whatever you know markup
Speaker 6: they need to include. So what we do in that circumstance,
Speaker 6: and what most restaurants do is regularly pit distributors against
Speaker 6: each other for our business, especially because we have a
Speaker 6: lot of leverage with our flower orders. It's it's a
Speaker 6: fairly significant regular order. So even if they're making a
Speaker 6: very small amount on that on each bag, there there's
Speaker 6: a large volume and a large frequency that has those
Speaker 6: purveyors kind of jockeying for the lower price. And that's
Speaker 6: there's no service, there's no anything else that really matters
Speaker 6: in that relationship. It's just if you can get us
Speaker 6: the price we will order from you this week, and
Speaker 6: they know that and they fight, and it's a weekly price.
Speaker 6: It's it's more frequent than week weekly. At the moment,
Speaker 6: there's a little bit of flux June June, you know.
Speaker 6: And I just have regular conversations with King Arthur, who's
Speaker 6: our main brand flower supplier, who are one of the
Speaker 6: most wonderful businesses in the country and just good people
Speaker 6: and always you know, driven to help their clients. They
Speaker 6: always are monitoring, you know, the commodity future futures and
Speaker 6: how things are looking going forward. And I will sometimes
Speaker 6: reach out to them to find out, you know, how
Speaker 6: how they are pricing things relative to who they're selling
Speaker 6: to the distributors, so that I can see if the
Speaker 6: increases in price are coming via the distributor or via
Speaker 6: King Arthur, and then I'll know whether I have some
Speaker 6: leverage to kind of push down a little bit further
Speaker 6: to try and fight for cheaper prices. But there was
Speaker 6: a big spy, you know, things have been trending downward
Speaker 6: in price that the war, you know, the embargo opened
Speaker 6: up or whatever it was that opened up and allowed
Speaker 6: the wheat to leave Ukraine. So prices in the state
Speaker 6: settled back down because there's less exports, and it's a
Speaker 6: you know, something that if you're constantly monitoring, it is
Speaker 6: changing very often in minor increments. But if you do
Speaker 6: that across an entire batch of milled wheat, that's that's
Speaker 6: hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: So how does that actually feed into your prices for bread?
Speaker 2: And how dynamic are they If you get a price
Speaker 2: increase one day, do you immediately pass that through to
Speaker 2: the customer?
Speaker 6: Almost never? And that's you know, the increases and decreases
Speaker 6: are fairly minor at the moment. They are in flux,
Speaker 6: but they are staying in the general vicinity. You know,
Speaker 6: if we're talking specifics, we're talking about somewhere between fifteen
Speaker 6: and seventeen fifty for one fifty pound bag of bread flour,
Speaker 6: and that fluctuation, it stays in that zone. Maybe a
Speaker 6: year ago it was up at twenty three. And if
Speaker 6: you think about that, if we're ordering let's say five
Speaker 6: thousand pounds a week of flour, it's actually more than that.
Speaker 6: I think it's closer to sixty five hundred pounds. And
Speaker 6: we're talking about a fl fluctuation of a dollar that
Speaker 6: is a massive change in our end of year, you know,
Speaker 6: bottom line. So it's the kind of thing where if
Speaker 6: there are any changes whatsoever within that zone, they're multiplied
Speaker 6: over a large number of bags and end up changing
Speaker 6: things fairly significantly. So we really have to even if
Speaker 6: it's within that fifteen to seventeen range as opposed to
Speaker 6: going all the way up to twenty three dollars a bag,
Speaker 6: that is, it's crucial for us to stay on top
Speaker 6: of it. But in terms of passing the pricing on,
Speaker 6: we've given ourselves a pretty wide range to stay within it.
Speaker 6: That makes our pricing valid and we're constantly staying on
Speaker 6: top of it. But bread, in general, the food cost
Speaker 6: is not the main issue unless you're talking about a
Speaker 6: jump from fifteen dollars a bag to twenty three dollars
Speaker 6: a bag. The main issue is labor because cogs typically
Speaker 6: with bread are in the ten to fifteen percent range,
Speaker 6: which is the cheapest food product you can possibly make,
Speaker 6: even if we're using like really fantastic ingredients like we are.
Speaker 6: The thing is is it just takes a lot of
Speaker 6: human beings and a lot of skilled human beings to
Speaker 6: execute production. So if we're talking about the traditional model
Speaker 6: where you see like thirty percent for labor, we're looking
Speaker 6: at more forty two percent for labor and twelve percent
Speaker 6: for cogs, where cogs typically in a restaurant food business
Speaker 6: environment is somewhere to twenty five to thirty if you're
Speaker 6: doing okay, we're at fourteen, So they the model is
Speaker 6: a little bit different in the wholesale universe than it
Speaker 6: is in the retail restaurant and that that is, you know,
Speaker 6: we're able to have those extra bodies to get things
Speaker 6: done because the cost of goods are sold low.
Speaker 5: This is fascinating. Let's continue on this. But you're talking
Speaker 5: about your wholesale distribution bakery, when you're talking about the restaurant.
Speaker 5: How do you think that generally about the strategy of
Speaker 5: price increases because obviously you know you're not going to
Speaker 5: be sensitive to the day to day or the month
Speaker 5: to month. My guess is many most companies want to
Speaker 5: pass some sort of price increase on on a semi
Speaker 5: regular basis, maybe once a year or something. But generally,
Speaker 5: like talk about like how frequently you make those decisions
Speaker 5: to increase prices and when.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say that we are less on a
Speaker 6: schedule than is typical for a larger bakery. I think
Speaker 6: when you get to scale like us or larger, there's
Speaker 6: an inclination just from the operation side of things to
Speaker 6: make these these changes regular, and for us, it's more
Speaker 6: about making sure that our accounts are getting what they
Speaker 6: expect and are not being pushed further when it's no
Speaker 6: real issue for us relative to cogs to float a
Speaker 6: little bit of that within a range. It's also even
Speaker 6: more relevant to monitor our competitors pricing. Our products are
Speaker 6: not entirely apples to apples, talking about two different basic
Speaker 6: what we call a house loaf, but most places call
Speaker 6: a country loaf basic sour tow loaf of bread, which
Speaker 6: you know we charge six dollars for wholesale and a
Speaker 6: lot of other places I charge seven to fifty, but
Speaker 6: their loaf is two hundred and fifty grams heavier than ours,
Speaker 6: or some other difference. So it's difficult to track. But
Speaker 6: in terms of what the bottom line is for our customers,
Speaker 6: we have to stay within a range. We are a
Speaker 6: higher end wholesale product, which makes us unique as well,
Speaker 6: but at the same time that doesn't mean that we're
Speaker 6: not competing with those who are making some more, you know,
Speaker 6: sort of commercially mechanized loaves of bread. So we have
Speaker 6: to be very mindful of our competitors' prices, and I
Speaker 6: would say that reality mixed with some of the increases
Speaker 6: in hogs, are what drive our price increases. I'd say
Speaker 6: we've raised prices maybe twice in the last four years.
Speaker 6: You know, I think we had no choice when bags
Speaker 6: were all the way up at eight dollars more per
Speaker 6: than they are now. And by the time we were
Speaker 6: able to bring that price back down, which I think
Speaker 6: I would say, you know, was around May of this year.
Speaker 6: So it's a really long time of these elevated prices.
Speaker 6: Other expenses like labor and outside things have increased to
Speaker 6: the point where we can't lower the prices back down.
Speaker 6: It's just the way that it goes. As much as
Speaker 6: I'd like to, because I feel the benefit very you know,
Speaker 6: I feel the benefit from passing savings off to the
Speaker 6: to our accounts, but at a certain point you have
Speaker 6: to protect the business and that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: So I mentioned at the beginning that you're in the
Speaker 2: process of opening a pizzeria, So congratulations on that on
Speaker 2: the expansion. But one thing we hear a lot about
Speaker 2: nowadays is the idea of, you know, regulation slowing down businesses,
Speaker 2: and there seems to be certainly a dereg bent in
Speaker 2: the Trump administration and a general sense that all these
Speaker 2: rules and bureaucracy really slow things down. So I'm curious,
Speaker 2: what's the process been like for you in opening the
Speaker 2: pizza restaurant? How long have you been doing it? And
Speaker 2: I guess how much paperwork have you actually had to do? Well?
Speaker 6: Los Angeles within the restaurant world, is fairly famous for
Speaker 6: the ineptitude of its governmental oversight agencies. We have to
Speaker 6: sort of deal with both the county and the city.
Speaker 6: There's building in safety and the health department. They don't
Speaker 6: talk to each other, but you're they're both kind of
Speaker 6: looking at the same thing, and they both point you
Speaker 6: in different directions, and it gets very complicated when the
Speaker 6: inspectors starts showing up, which is throughout the process. The
Speaker 6: thing about the pizza place is that it was a
Speaker 6: second gen space. It was already a pizzeria that said we're,
Speaker 6: you know, stripping out all the equipment and rebuilding it.
Speaker 6: But that makes the process significantly faster. And if I,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't want to say anything or be
Speaker 6: an absolutist in any way, but I will never do
Speaker 6: a first gen space ever again because it's just excruciating.
Speaker 6: And you know, when we open the restaurant, we signed
Speaker 6: our lease in November of twenty nineteen, so taking obviously
Speaker 6: there's a pandemic to consider, but it took us three
Speaker 6: years to open. A lot of that was due to
Speaker 6: problems with the city. You know, a lot of it
Speaker 6: is very analog. They print up your application and it sits
Speaker 6: on a literal stack on someone's desk, and if you
Speaker 6: don't follow up with them incessantly, that stack just gets
Speaker 6: piled on top and your thing just disappears deep into
Speaker 6: the you know, into the file. So it's it's a
Speaker 6: very very very difficult process. Do I think the exact
Speaker 6: opposite and just stripping down things to nothing is the
Speaker 6: is the answer? Definitely not. But you know, LA has
Speaker 6: a lot of red tape to navigate. It also is
Speaker 6: expensive red tape to navigate, so you're paying a ton
Speaker 6: for you know, sort of non service and making things
Speaker 6: really complicated for you. You can get to the very
Speaker 6: very end of the finish line and you're you're ready
Speaker 6: to open, and the help inspector walks into the last
Speaker 6: day and says, this floor drain is not in the
Speaker 6: right place based on the plans that they approve, and
Speaker 6: you know, eight months ago from somebody else, and then
Speaker 6: you have no choice but to spend an extra eight
Speaker 6: thousand dollars re routing your plumbing and then getting plumbing inspection.
Speaker 2: Again, sounds like you're speaking from personal experience on that one.
Speaker 2: That's a very specific example.
Speaker 5: I mean, by the way, I looked at Cohle's, the
Speaker 5: restaurant you mentioned, and I'm reading the article and the
Speaker 5: quote litany of reasons for closing pandemic actor and writer strike, crime,
Speaker 5: labor costs, bureaucracy, et cetera. But just on this point,
Speaker 5: like I have never worked in our Actually I did
Speaker 5: work in actually worked you worked at a sandwich shop
Speaker 5: and I worked in a Nigerian restaurant in college, which
Speaker 5: I never talked about. But is it like the bear Basically,
Speaker 5: that's all because when people hear all of this stuff
Speaker 5: about like, oh, you got to move the dream, what
Speaker 5: was there was like something with a balloon or something
Speaker 5: like that. I don't remember the exact sceme, But is
Speaker 5: it like that stressful where, like, you know, they come
Speaker 5: in and everyone is like on bated breath about whether
Speaker 5: they see something or not before you can.
Speaker 6: Open the per The fear that has struck into the
Speaker 6: hearts of restaurant managers when someone with a hanging neck
Speaker 6: tag comes in from the city is overwhelming. The messages
Speaker 6: on slack go immediately out, and everyone springs into gear
Speaker 6: because a lot of the things that they require are
Speaker 6: not logical, don't make sense. Are there for the purposes
Speaker 6: of checking some ridiculous box from nineteen sixty five that
Speaker 6: isn't applicable anymore, But no one wants to make the
Speaker 6: effort to change things with the state government or the
Speaker 6: county government, and you just kind of get locked into,
Speaker 6: you know, for someone who is so focused on logic
Speaker 6: and the logical approach to things and really reasoning things
Speaker 6: out and finding out the best way forward, it's just
Speaker 6: excruciatingly frustrating to be put in this position where nothing
Speaker 6: is logical and the decisions of this individual largely have
Speaker 6: to do with their mood that day or whether they
Speaker 6: don't whether they like your place or whether they like you,
Speaker 6: or whatever's going on. It could be motivated not by
Speaker 6: anything on paper, but more about this sort of unknowable nuance,
Speaker 6: and it's excruciatingly frustrating. There are, you know, known inspectors
Speaker 6: that people fear, there are known inspectors that people hope for,
Speaker 6: and you never know what you're going to get. There's
Speaker 6: I heard stories of so a lot of architecture companies
Speaker 6: have sort of sprung out to become expediters as well.
Speaker 6: So they basically are will take all of your paperwork
Speaker 6: and the ridiculous amount of stuff that you need to do.
Speaker 6: You pay them a fixed fee, and they're the ones
Speaker 6: who not only well if their architects design the restaurant,
Speaker 6: but then will run everything through all the necessary channels
Speaker 6: with the city and the county and the state. And
Speaker 6: that costs an incredible amount. So that's another thing that
Speaker 6: gets you know, piled on top. But no one wants
Speaker 6: to do that anymore because it's so ludicrous that it
Speaker 6: just makes your you go crazy. I hear, I have
Speaker 6: no experience outside of Los Angeles that this this infrastructure
Speaker 6: is one of the worst out there.
Speaker 2: So I listed a bunch of reasons that a restaurant
Speaker 2: might close earlier, but I would love to get your
Speaker 2: take on what exactly is causing restaurants to go out
Speaker 2: of business in LA And also one thing I've always
Speaker 2: wondered about, why do people still open restaurants, Because the
Speaker 2: thing you hear is always that like it's a tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny margin, it's really difficult, it's really competitive. You have
Speaker 2: to basically give your entire life over to this endeavor.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a hard job, but new restaurants open
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 6: It's true. I think I'd say that the motivation to
Speaker 6: open most restaurants is a flawed motivation. It's usually based
Speaker 6: on ego or showing off cash, or trying to acquire
Speaker 6: digital fame, other things that will inevitably either lead to
Speaker 6: a short burst of successful by an immediate decline or
Speaker 6: just an immediate misfire. And that's why most restaurants close
Speaker 6: in the first year, because it's excruciatingly difficult to do this.
Speaker 6: And I think that the general view is that working
Speaker 6: in a restaurant is easy. It's a cop out from
Speaker 6: some more corporate approach to living, and it's just not.
Speaker 6: It's so much less manageable, it's so much wilder than
Speaker 6: you know, a more corporate career that it makes it very,
Speaker 6: very hard to do. But there is, to answer your question,
Speaker 6: incredible joy in interfacing with people and making them happy
Speaker 6: and being connected to hospitality and the pleasure of taking
Speaker 6: care of people and giving them something that they get
Speaker 6: to do, you know, three times a day, but making
Speaker 6: it something that brings them joy. You can see that,
Speaker 6: and that reverberates back to you in a way that
Speaker 6: feels far more authentic than it felt when I was
Speaker 6: writing and producing commercials trying to manipulate people into buying shit.
Speaker 6: It's about that authentic connection, and I don't want to
Speaker 6: have to feel bad for what I do for the
Speaker 6: rest of my life. I don't want to have to
Speaker 6: feel bad about it. And I did that for almost
Speaker 6: a decade. And I think that this provides an authentic
Speaker 6: reality for me and the people that work here, despite
Speaker 6: all of the challenges of doing it. And I think
Speaker 6: the challenges are in place, because the challenges are always
Speaker 6: in place when you're trying to do something that's authentic
Speaker 6: and aside from the general flow of our sort of
Speaker 6: controlled existence that we have.
Speaker 5: Right now, you mentioned digital fame. You're at the pizzeria,
Speaker 5: at the restaurant, do you feel like the need to
Speaker 5: have your equivalent of like, you know, the viral arawon smoothie,
Speaker 5: like something like is that an important thing you think
Speaker 5: about that this is a thing that could blow up
Speaker 5: on TikTok or whatever.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 6: No, no, but I'm I'm unique in that way. I
Speaker 6: can't wait to remove us from social media. That is
Speaker 6: an intractable connection. Here's how I think about it now.
Speaker 6: Where the restaurant and the bakery are established, generally people
Speaker 6: must say lists know to some degree, or the people
Speaker 6: who are involved in food know who we are. If
Speaker 6: I were to seek new customers in this moment for
Speaker 6: our retail restaurant, they would be in authentic connections with
Speaker 6: what we do. They might resonate with some with our
Speaker 6: blt that we just put out first when the tomatoes
Speaker 6: are good now in the summer, and they might come
Speaker 6: to the restaurant on the weekend. But ultimately our bread
Speaker 6: and butter is going to be our regular return customers
Speaker 6: who have a relationship with the restaurant, And I don't
Speaker 6: want to ostracize them because they're the people who are
Speaker 6: going to keep us here for a decade, as opposed
Speaker 6: to the people who are going to make us famous
Speaker 6: in the moment, drive out our regular customers, and then
Speaker 6: move on to the next trendy thing. So for us,
Speaker 6: trends are a business killer. You can get short, short
Speaker 6: success from a trend, but if you want to be
Speaker 6: here for a long time and build a customer base
Speaker 6: that's dedicated, you have to have an authentic relationship with
Speaker 6: those people. And that has to mean that whatever your
Speaker 6: product is, they are offically connecting with it because of
Speaker 6: their own desires, not because I'm forcing them to have
Speaker 6: an entertainment moment with our product by you know, creating
Speaker 6: a TikTok video that goes viral.
Speaker 2: So that's yeah, Well, speaking of the moment, we're recording
Speaker 2: this on July eighth, and we still don't really know
Speaker 2: what's happening with the tariffs. But I imagine in the
Speaker 2: course of building out a pizzeria, you're probably ordering equipment
Speaker 2: from various places, giant pizza ovens and all that. Have
Speaker 2: you been impacted at all by the tariffs.
Speaker 6: Yet very little. It's still very confusing from my vantage
Speaker 6: point as to what is happening or what is supposed
Speaker 6: to come down the road. And we were certainly anticipating,
Speaker 6: you know, our ovens are from Germany are you know,
Speaker 6: a variety of pieces of equipment are coming from international places,
Speaker 6: but I haven't seen any major increases. We did have
Speaker 6: some shipping increase. Is we make these coffee cans that
Speaker 6: we serve our rust to coffee and that come from China,
Speaker 6: there was a massive tariff increase on our shipping. That's
Speaker 6: part of the process. But in terms of, you know,
Speaker 6: the pizzeria equipment, we haven't seen it. Really. I'm anticipating
Speaker 6: that potentially we're talking about a ten percent EU tariff
Speaker 6: they said, floating around. I just don't know what that means.
Speaker 6: And if there's anticipatory price increases from the vendors who
Speaker 6: are in Italy selling us tomatoes or who are in
Speaker 6: a variety of other places in Europe where we buy
Speaker 6: some of our moral luxurious ingredients, we just haven't seen
Speaker 6: those yet. I am in still anticipating that as a
Speaker 6: possibility for pizza because we need to anticipate that, and
Speaker 6: we are certainly testing tomatoes, California tomatoes to see if
Speaker 6: we can find something comparable, because the you know, Sammrazano's
Speaker 6: are truly the best and they do grow in California.
Speaker 6: But it's just a little bit of a different thing.
Speaker 6: So we are anticipating the need to work with California tomatoes,
Speaker 6: but so far have not seen anything really in terms
Speaker 6: of tariffs increases reaching us on this side.
Speaker 5: I just have one last question, and it gets back
Speaker 5: to Los Angeles. It feels like major American cities are
Speaker 5: always sort of dying and thriving at the same time.
Speaker 5: And obviously, yeah, Los Angeles, you know, you hear certainly
Speaker 5: hear about it in New York and Chicago, and Los
Speaker 5: Angeles has going through a lot or the fires, the
Speaker 5: recent ice raids and riots, and then you know, the
Speaker 5: people people, And I mentioned, you know, because it was
Speaker 5: in this article. I just looked up and reminded me.
Speaker 5: You know, people are talking about Hollywood, could it become
Speaker 5: the next Detroit in terms of that industry gutting out.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, it's probably the nicest climate in
Speaker 5: the entire world, and people are always going to want
Speaker 5: to live in southern California. How do you feel about
Speaker 5: doing business in Los Angeles right now?
Speaker 6: Is the city It's excruciating. The city is, especially in
Speaker 6: the in the food business, is very very much struggling.
Speaker 6: I've never ever seen so many closures of restaurants, good
Speaker 6: ones that deserve to be open in my time, you know,
Speaker 6: let alone being a consumer, but being in the business,
Speaker 6: I think that there's a lot, an endless list of
Speaker 6: factors that make Los Angeles complicated. It's expanse the reliance
Speaker 6: on Hollywood as a major motivator or a major provider
Speaker 6: for a large number of people in terms of income,
Speaker 6: and with that whole market shrinking, you know, you do
Speaker 6: see a lot less business happening in Hollywood proper. That said,
Speaker 6: it's a four hundred square miles city, you have. You know,
Speaker 6: where we are is about fifteen minutes from downtown, where
Speaker 6: some of the protests were happening, and a lot of
Speaker 6: that stuff. But I don't see anything, you know, it's
Speaker 6: just a regular, small, small neighborhood experience over here. And
Speaker 6: you're really kind of like these neighborhoods have a very distinctly,
Speaker 6: you know, unique way of behaving. So as Hollywood is
Speaker 6: sort of shrinking down and moving east and west, you
Speaker 6: see a lot of development, and then you also see
Speaker 6: a lot of gentrification protests, You see a lot of
Speaker 6: things where folks are. There's a lot of expansion and
Speaker 6: contraction in this really wide city. Part of it is
Speaker 6: exciting because it's a dynamic, but it's also just makes
Speaker 6: things very difficult because the city doesn't really have its
Speaker 6: own identity. The identity is defined by the neighborhood. So
Speaker 6: as downtown and Hollywood are contracting, you know, Highland Park
Speaker 6: and glass El Park, and this area of Glendale kind
Speaker 6: of on the east side is expanding. Silver Lake and
Speaker 6: Echo Park and Los Pelas are kind of becoming like
Speaker 6: Hollywood once was and getting a little bit more corporate
Speaker 6: businesses in there, and they're all looking to capitalize on
Speaker 6: the growth of these neighborhoods. It's it's a very unique place,
Speaker 6: but it's very hard to work here. And you get
Speaker 6: a lot for choosing to be here and operating here
Speaker 6: and living here, but you're also very much behind the
Speaker 6: eight ball.
Speaker 2: I got to ask one more question, but why is
Speaker 2: a San Marzano tomato grown in California considered subpar to
Speaker 2: San Marzano tomato grown in Italy.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say subpar. I wouldn't say subpar. The climate
Speaker 6: is vaguely different, slightly different, so you end up with
Speaker 6: a little bit of different result from what we've seen
Speaker 6: the San Marzano's from Italy end up being a little
Speaker 6: bit sweeter, a little bit more robust, and maybe that
Speaker 6: has to do with even more direct sunlight, more volcanic soil.
Speaker 6: Who knows. There's a variety of different, different reasons why
Speaker 6: the microclimates creates slightly different and results. It's just like wine.
Speaker 6: It's sort of like, you know, you can grow the
Speaker 6: same grape in southern France and in northern California and
Speaker 6: end up with a distinctly different flavor based on the microclimate,
Speaker 6: the soil in the environment. So it's a it may
Speaker 6: just be our own projection, but we're working to try
Speaker 6: and find whatever the best possible option is for us.
Speaker 5: All right, just a couple of seconds left. Give us
Speaker 5: one sandwich recommendation here on the East Coast that we
Speaker 5: should try.
Speaker 6: Well, I would say, oh that's really hard. I mean's
Speaker 6: Defante is in Brooklyn is a special spot. But you know,
Speaker 6: the deli that I grew up with is in Milburn,
Speaker 6: New Jersey. It's the Melbourne Deli and has now become
Speaker 6: kind of like a famous deli somehow, which is crazy.
Speaker 5: I'll check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well, Andy, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on odd lots. We're going to have to leave
Speaker 2: it there, but it was really fun to talk about
Speaker 2: the baking business here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was great, Thanks so much, Andrew.
Speaker 6: No, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys, Joe. Have you ever been to.
Speaker 3: It's in Soho.
Speaker 2: It used to be literally across the street from where
Speaker 2: I lived. Best sandwiches ever. It blew my mind the
Speaker 2: first time I went there. They've expanded since then. The
Speaker 2: expanded store is not so.
Speaker 4: Good, you know.
Speaker 5: A shout out to our producer Dash, because didn't he
Speaker 5: like he did the tour where he tried every one
Speaker 5: of the hundred best sandwiches in New York. We got
Speaker 5: to get him on interview Dash at some point about
Speaker 5: New York City.
Speaker 3: That'd be fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: But on a more serious note, there was lots of
Speaker 2: interesting stuff to pull out from there. But one of
Speaker 2: the things I'm thinking about, and this kind of came
Speaker 2: up in our Chicken series when we talked to the DOJ,
Speaker 2: But it's that idea of the tyranny of the middle man, right,
Speaker 2: and this idea that Okay, obviously you're buying flour from
Speaker 2: a flower producer, but then in between the producer and
Speaker 2: getting to you, there's the distributor which is charging a markup.
Speaker 2: And then when you're setting up a new business nowadays
Speaker 2: you have to have like basically a red tape su
Speaker 2: to walk you through. That's another middle man. And then
Speaker 2: the shipping costs going up, I mean shipping not necessarily
Speaker 2: a middle man, but certainly the middle of the process.
Speaker 2: It seems like that's where the cost pressures are really
Speaker 2: coming in.
Speaker 5: No, I think all that's super interesting. Also this idea
Speaker 5: that like you could have an uber for distribution, but
Speaker 5: then you lose that the bread bus, but then you
Speaker 5: lose that personal relationship and if that's important because you
Speaker 5: need to hear feedback from the chef at that restaurant,
Speaker 5: then you don't get it if you don't own the distribution.
Speaker 5: And then just you know, La itself we should do
Speaker 5: at some point, we got to go back to La
Speaker 5: because it does I mean incredible place, but incredibly number
Speaker 5: of like sort of ranching things going on in that city.
Speaker 5: And opening a restaurant, as you mentioned, sort of seems
Speaker 5: crazy and the easiest of times, Like I feel like
Speaker 5: you have to have a little bit of brain damage
Speaker 5: to do that, and then to do it and there's
Speaker 5: a lot there that was very interesting.
Speaker 2: I want to learn more about the pizza business as well.
Speaker 2: We're in New York.
Speaker 3: We should do pizza.
Speaker 5: We're gonna do a pizza episode.
Speaker 3: All right, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 5: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy.
Speaker 5: Alloway and I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at
Speaker 5: the Stalwart. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand
Speaker 5: dash albin At at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. And
Speaker 5: from our Odd Lots content. Go to Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 5: slash odd Lots, where you have a daily newsletter and
Speaker 5: all of our episodes, and you can chet about these
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Speaker 2: And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
Speaker 2: when we talk about baked goods, then please leave us
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening,