My Bakery Companion

Intro/Outro (00:04):

It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right and having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That’s where Ab Maori, north America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artisan bakers that help optimize success. We’ll discuss more on this episode of the Oven Light. So let’s get going. Flip the switch.

Rick  (00:32):

So everybody, welcome back. The switch is on the oven, light is back on this edition. Boy, we’ve got a great show planned for you. We’ve got a key bakery contact here in the St. Louis region. This gentleman’s been in the baking business for more than three decades. I even read where he pulled his first loaves from the oven in 1993. The bakery he founded has some incredible product. You might know them as companion baking company. He also has a great cafe, so if you’re in the region, stop in and have a great meal. He’s an avid cyclist. He is a speaker. He’s a podcaster like me, and even an American Studies graduate of Stanford. I think he’s the first Stanford grad we’ve had in the program, so this is pretty exciting. Hey everybody, let’s welcome Josh Allen to the Oven Light. Hey Josh.

Josh Allen (01:24):

Hey Rick. How are you? Great to see you.

Rick  (01:25):

Yeah, good to see you as well. I can

Josh Allen (01:27):

Quote Huck Finn to the extent of what came out of that American Studies degree.

Rick  (01:30):

Hey, Hannibal, Missouri is not that far away. I actually made my first trip there a few weeks ago, so pretty cool. But hey, let’s jump in right away. Tell us a little bit about your history. I mentioned three decades, so we’re talking 30 plus years in baking. How did you get started? What a journey to go from American Studies and all of a sudden you’re baking bread and you’re bringing great meals to homes of people here in the region and beyond.

Josh Allen (01:56):

So grew up in the food business. So my family had a company here in St. Louis called Allen Foods. That was a hundred year old company when they ended up selling the business in 2002 to US Foods when US Foods was rolling up across distribution centers across the country. So that was, but grew up in that business, worked swept out trucks, cleaned the freezer, picked orders at night, worked in customer service in high school, drove the van making hotshot deliveries to the stadium and 80 cases of tortilla chips before the Cardinal game. They were running out of nachos or something like that. So always grew up in the business, used to going into the back door. And as I was finishing my degree at Stanford, ended up getting a job at a little restaurant in Palo Alto called Pearl’s Oyster Bar and had never worked in the restaurant business.

Josh Allen (02:42):

I’d always worked on the distribution side and really kind of fell in love with the restaurant side of things and just enjoyed it. But I was racing my bike and racing triathlons, as you mentioned in my intro, and not kind of seriously as an amateur and wanted to keep doing that after I graduated. And so wanted to get a job at night. And so a bakery made sense. I believe it was the third Whole Foods in the country that was in Palo Alto. They were just going to roll up the concept and initially Whole Foods was going to only go into college towns. That was, we were going to find the most liberal college town. So I think it started in Austin. They were in Raleigh Durham, they were in Palo Alto, they were in Berkeley. That was sort of the model at least initially.

Josh Allen (03:20):

And so got a job in the basement, was the only English speaking person in the basement, baking at Whole Foods and just loved it. I mean, anybody that’s in the industry, I think pretty quickly if baking is something that you’re going to enjoy, and for some reason I just fell in love with it. Spent a few years there, worked at a couple of other small shops in the Bay Area, lived in Truckee up by Tahoe for a little while, and then ended up getting a job with a company called the Oakville Grocery Company, which is now owned by Dina DeLuca. But at the time they had, I think there were three, Oakville is right between Napa and St. Helena out there on Highway 29 in the wine country. And so they had been around forever, but they had a location in Palo Alto and then we’re getting ready to open about 10 stores. And so I was actually swimming at the Stanford Master’s program with the owner of the business who was down kind of working at the Palo Alto location. And so he hired me to do a research project of how does

Rick  (04:18):

This come up in swimming? Was it a backstroke?

Josh Allen (04:22):

Well, I was working in a bakery. Yeah, I think in between sets we were having that conversation. He ended up hiring me to do a research project, should we open our own bakery? And so we spent about a year figuring out what’s the product mix, what’s the equipment they were buying from the Acme of the world, semi Freddy’s metropolis. And in the end we really kind of came to the rationalization that, boy, there’s some great bakeries in San Francisco. They’ve already got the distribution figured out and the disparate locations, Napa all the way they were going to open in Los Gatos down near Santa Cruz. There was no way one bakery was going to be able to do it. So they kind of said, Hey, thanks for all that energy and all that time, but we’re not going to move forward with this project. And so I decided to move home back to St.

Josh Allen (05:03):

Louis where I had grown up and called my grandfather who at the time was still working in the food business and said, will you loan me $86,000? I want to buy an oven and a mixer. And he said yes. Which kind of surprised me. I, that’s a big ask. The expectation I think was that I was going to go back into the family business. I mean I certainly, I think part of being an American Studies major was that I just sort of assumed college was to learn how to think and that I was going to come back and work in the family business. And when I fell in love with baking, he was probably my biggest fan and biggest supporter. And so bought an oven and they put it on a boat, so it was going to take a few months. So I drove back from California in the summer of 93. So the water, if anybody remembers, that was the flood year. So the water started in Kansas City and it was wet all the way back to St. Louis. And we opened at the end of 93 and wholesale only. We just carved out like a thousand square feet out of a building that my family owned on Gustine Avenue in South City and started baking and I’d bake all night and then go knock on doors and begging people to, that’s

Rick  (06:04):

Incredible. Well, we have a section of the show and I’m going to just ad lib and we’re going to do it right away because I’ve got some hot pan questions for you. We’re just kind of rapid fire. And the first one is off the cuff. You were just talking about wine, right? AB Biotech is our sister company. We do a lot of wine yeast and beer yeast, distillers, yeast, and we work with I think 19 of the top 20 wineries in California. So it got me kind of intrigued. Alright, if you’re sitting down and what is a great pairing of wine and bread, what’s your favorite? What’s your favorite style and what style of bread? With salted butter or not, what would you like to

Josh Allen (06:41):

Eat? Always salted butter. I don’t think that’s a question.

Rick  (06:43):

Okay, good. I just want to make sure. Alright.

Josh Allen (06:46):

And I always go back to the baguette, right? It’s the simplest but the hardest thing to make consistently well. But no, I drink a lot of Oregon. I think that’s my shtick. My wife loves Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand, so we don’t really venture very far. We got five kids and a business and so we don’t have time to venture far in a lot of other things. So if we go out, I’ll find a pinot to drink and she’ll find a Sauvignon Blanc.

Rick  (07:12):

Alright. So you talked about your grandfather having a great advocate that is there another baking moment that is high on your list or something that you finally reflect upon was that moment, I mean you had a few aha moments along the way, but is there something special that maybe hits you or maybe picking up a certain customer along the way that you’re like, wow, I’m so thankful that happened.

Josh Allen (07:35):

So two things. One, there is no question that the first brownie I baked in an easy bake oven when I was a kid was a transformational moment. I mean, if you can bake something with a light bulb, I still have a 1957 Easy Bake oven in my office. Don’t sell that man on a pedestal on the wall.

Rick  (07:52):

Do you break it out? Maybe once in a while.

Josh Allen (07:54):

I haven’t baked it. I’m a little afraid to plug it in. But I mean, there’s no question that taking a group of ingredients, whatever they are, and pulling ’em out the oven and having a transform is still, it’s still the guy that opens the oven and can’t believe that it worked. I think there’s some people that go that work in a bakery and it’s just what they do. They take bread in and out of the oven. But to me it’s still a magical moment. Is

Rick  (08:18):

It like Tom Hanks and Castaway I made fun of right in that kind of moment?

Josh Allen (08:24):

Maybe so. I mean, certainly the end of the day when you leave and you look back and you see all that’s been created really from nothing that day and you’re only as good as you are that day, it completely starts over. So I think there’s no question those moments are there for us in St. Louis. There were two restaurateurs when I was just starting in the business that I said if I could get those two folks to buy the bread, there was a gentleman named Bill Cardwell who had a restaurant here was really kind of the first American, I don’t know what kind of American chef to really create food. And I said, and everybody that wanted to be anybody worked for Bill at one point and then went on to do their own thing. And so I said, bill Cardwell and then Vince Barto Sr.

Josh Allen (09:05):

Who had a restaurant here called Tony’s, which was St. Louis for a long time. St. Louis is only five Diamond restaurant. Still an incredibly an incredible place. If I could get those two folks and then be able to tell that story that I’m baking for those two guys, that would be it. And we ended up working with them really right out of the gate within the first year and really kind of used that as the launching point for the business that if there was tremendous credibility going into anybody’s business to say that Bill and Vince were buying our product. And so that was really, we kind of saw that knowing that from growing up in the food business and understanding how reputations work and how insular, at least the St. Louis food community is, it makes a big difference.

Rick  (09:48):

Another hot pan when you’re not baking, what are you doing? And I teased a little bit, but let’s see if you go down that path that

Josh Allen (09:52):

I think actually I’m running now. I’ve made the transition

Rick  (09:56):

Go swimming next. Do you want

Josh Allen (09:57):

To do the full triathlon? No, it’s a lot of trail running. I really enjoy getting out in the woods and kind of doing my own thing. Shoe of

Rick  (10:04):

Choice. How about that

Josh Allen (10:06):

Shoe of choice for running? Yeah, actually a shoe from the North Face.

Rick  (10:09):

Okay. Alright, there you go. I’d like to talk music a little bit on the program. And do you have earbuds in? Do you listen to anything or

Josh Allen (10:18):

I listen to your podcast, Rick, come

Rick  (10:21):

On. That’s just horrible. Plug. Shameless. This is called the Oven Light. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Josh Allen from Companion here. No, but maybe tell us about maybe your first album, first concert. Is there something out there that kind of inspired you that

Josh Allen (10:32):

Way? I’m going to date myself. My first concert was Sean Cassidy in, that’s good

Rick  (10:37):

Stuff.

Josh Allen (10:38):

That is, I think it was 1977, maybe

Rick  (10:41):

The older demo on the program here is going to be enjoying this. Just

Josh Allen (10:44):

See, I mean there aren’t many people that even know who that is. My kids don’t know that. And then there

Rick  (10:48):

Was David Cassidy and there,

Josh Allen (10:50):

Cass, remember, right? I do remember the Billy Joel Piano Man tour at the Arena, by the way, at the old arena back then Way with

Rick  (10:56):

Sean Cassidy. He was in the Hardy Boys too. Was he Not with Parker

Josh Allen (10:59):

Steven. I think that’s why, I’m sure that’s why I

Rick  (11:00):

Was there. That was a great TV program. I we’re similar generation, but hey Billy Joey. Can’t go wrong with that either. So alright, let’s hop back into the business a little bit. So we’re four years since the start of the pandemic, almost to the day, right? How did that change companion, I mean a lot’s happened since then. We’ve seen a lot of things, whether it’s inflation, how people look at their health, how people look at the things that are important to them outside of work. What’s that done for you guys?

Josh Allen (11:32):

I think as challenging as it was, I think it was the greatest thing that happened to our business. I think it really restructured the way that we look at everything that we do and most specifically how we look at taking care of our own folks. And that’s not to say that we didn’t do that before going into the pandemic. I’ve always tracked some kind of interesting metrics. That’s just sort of how I like to run the business. And going into the pandemic, our average tenure for our people was like seven and a half years. So I mean, we had done a really good job of keeping folks.

Rick  (12:05):

What’s a good average out there for a company? Seven and a half years seems pretty

Josh Allen (12:08):

Good. It seems pretty good to me too. I have no idea. I mean, I’ve asked folks, and it can be two years, it can be four years, but we were also at the time going into the pandemic, I guess we were 25 years old or something like that, actually a little bit old, maybe 26 or 27 years old at the time, going into the pandemic. But we didn’t spend a lot of time, never talked about turnover up until the pandemic, never

Rick  (12:30):

Outside of turnovers, right? I mean, let’s be honest, pastry lovers

Josh Allen (12:35):

I know. Enjoy the

Rick  (12:35):

Buffet. I’m here all week.

Josh Allen (12:40):

And that really changed. I mean we were running 90 plus percent turnover through the pandemic, really struggled, lost about two and a half years. So that average turnover number went down to five. And that two and a half years, for anybody that’s worked in a bakery, that’s a long time, a lot of knowledge to go away. That’s the baker who walks across the floor to put something away that brings the next thing back with them, that understands the setup and the transition from one product to the next, how to score something of the oven, what all that looks like. And all of a sudden you start running 80 to a hundred percent turnover and now you’ve got new people, training new people, and you’re just chasing your tail, just trying to take care of your folks. And so it’s really changed. We leaned into and have gone through a process of defining core values and a mission statement and communicating that in a way that we candidly had never done that before.

Josh Allen (13:28):

And it maybe shame on us that we had never done it. We always thought that it was unspoken and was out there. And because I was on the floor every day, it made it, I thought it was being communicated effectively. And once you start to have a lot of new people, you realize that that tribal knowledge doesn’t necessarily get translated the way that you want to if you don’t put it on the wall and talk about it all the time. And so leaned really heavily into safety, leaned heavily into engagement into those core values. And so I think we have a much, much stronger organization now for the next 30 years then we did. We certainly did going into the pandemic.

Rick  (14:05):

Well, I like you talking about some of these foundational things and safety is a big one. You have something that you call the four Cs. Can you talk about it? What are they and what do they mean? And I’ve heard you talk about

Josh Allen (14:16):

It with other people. I mean a lot of it is similar to what Herb always said at Southwest. So the four Cs for us are our companions, our customers, our company, and our community. So

Rick  (14:26):

If we and companions being your own employee,

Josh Allen (14:28):

Companions being our own employee. So if we take care of our companions, they will in turn take care of our customers. If we take care of our customers, they’ll take care of our company, which will allow us to take care of our community. And so it’s pretty simple, but sometimes you can lose sight of it and sometimes you have to pick your companions over your customers if you’re going to value them. I mean, there are instances in which the customer isn’t always right or depending on how they’re treating your people.

Rick  (14:54):

What did you just say? Let’s strike that. You can’t say that. No, I’m kidding. No, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, you’ve got to take your own people first as well sometimes.

Josh Allen (15:03):

So that was sort of the backboard against which we made those decisions. And then we went on to define core values and talk about those a lot. And like I said, safety a lot. I mean, it’s a big thing. We believe that the family of our companions, they expect if they’re going to come to work with 10 fingers and 10 toes, that they’re going to go home with that. And it can be a dangerous profession. We’re slicing a lot of things. We sharp blades, we’ve got hot ovens. There are a lot of opportunities in which you can get hurt, you can get banged up, especially in a manufacturing environment. And so really doubling down on that has made a big difference too, because if people feel valued, then that’s a big piece of it.

Rick  (15:42):

Well, you’re striking on that middle initial of ESG, and we like to talk a lot about that too with environment, social and governance. So you hit that middle prong of safety, taking care of your employees as part of that social element. Let’s talk environmental, because I know this is a really big one. It’s not like you were out in dumpsters looking at bags and measuring pounds of things, but you really took a really critical eye at waste and how much things were being dumped. And it’s really transformed your business and it’s something that you’ve taught other people as well. Like, hey, you can take a really good look at yourselves and boy, you could save yourself some huge dollars and you’re doing some good, buy it too, right?

Josh Allen (16:26):

And look, full transparency, it came out of really dropping the ball when we made, so in 2015 we bought a new building. We moved from South St. Louis. We had about 15,000 square feet in South St. Louis. We bought a building with 42,000 square feet out in Maryland Heights, built a new factory with the goal and the direction of the business to get into frozen manufacturing, which is what we do now. But that transition was really much harder than we anticipated and we really dropped the ball. And candidly, two years in the bank sat me down, had one of those meetings at the conference table that you don’t like having because there’s more suits at the table than guys in baker’s whites. And it’s not really a conversation that I wanted to have. And they said, look, something’s going to have to change running out of cash.

Josh Allen (17:14):

And you bought, you pushed all your chips into the center of the table in 2015 after 22 years, and we weren’t making it work. And in advance of that meeting, because I’ve always looked at metrics and done a lot of things, I just started to try to get my arms around what was the problem, what am I going to say to these folks when they sit me down? Because at some point they’re going to have to buy into whatever plan I leave them so that they give me a little more breathing room to kind of get through this challenge. And one of the things that had happened when we moved in South City, we were in shared space, and so we just used the dumpster. We never really paid attention. Waste wasn’t something again, we didn’t talk about, but now we were managing our own trash.

Josh Allen (17:54):

We had our own building and the trash company was sending me every month the pounds that we were throwing away, how they charged me. So they charged me for the pickup and then they charged me. I don’t know what the per ton of pickup, there was a charge or something, but I didn’t ever pay any attention to it. But then I was like, wait a minute, let me pay attention to this for a minute and see. So I just went back to when we moved in and I charted it and I was like, holy, we’re generating mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms. We’re generating 1.6 million pounds of trash on an annual basis and we were producing, I don’t know, 8 million pounds of bread at the time, way more waste than we were doing. And we had no programs, no recycling, no com compost, no nothing. It was a huge number.

Josh Allen (18:35):

And so I sat down with ’em and I said, look, here’s where we are. This is the number. This is why, because we don’t have a freaking clue what we’re doing. We’re trying to make, we’re growing at this rate. We’re just not doing a very good job. I’m going to focus a hundred percent of my energy on reducing this 1.6 million pounds and I believe that it’s going to have a dramatic impact, transformational impact on everything. And they said that’s 20%. If Im doing math right, you’re talking waste, right? It was ridiculous. And it was product, it was everything. It was trim on machines, it was screwing up a mix. It was over baking, burning something, whatever it is, plus the just general waste that’s created in an environment from bags and packaging and everything else. Again, we weren’t doing anything. We were so busy and so in over our heads that we didn’t have any programs in place.

Josh Allen (19:24):

And so we said, we’re going to fix that. Give me six months to fix that and let me see what we can do. And that’s all we did. Literally every person in the organization spent their energy trying to figure out how to reduce that. And it completely transformed the business. So now we went from 1.6 million pounds of trash to landfill because everything at the time was going to landfill to, we’re now down to, we just hit I think 113,000 pounds of trash to landfill. So we’ve reduced it by 93%. That’s incredible. And now, I mean we’re still generating a little over 400,000 pounds of total waste, but now 300,000 of it’s goes to compost. We take all of our dough trim, we bake it, we’re controlling it, composting it, and then we have a recycling program that generates another 50 to 75,000 pounds of that waste.

Josh Allen (20:13):

But the landfill piece, which was a big piece of, it’s been reduced by like 93%, but it’s had such an impact on because it really wasn’t just diverting the waste, it was not creating the waste. What we’ve really done is we’ve reduced the waste by 60 some odd percent and it’s money. You’re just pissing away. I mean, not only is it the ingredient cost, but it’s the labor, it’s the energy. It’s having really good people that want to make a great product throwing shiitake mushroom away and not knowing did they do a good job today. It’s hard to think you did a good job if you’re throwing all this product away. So it transformed the mentality I could. Yeah, had a culture shift too. It’s been unbelievable. We’re

Rick  (20:51):

Going to hop back into the hot pan. We’re going to lighten the mood favorite type of donut and why?

Josh Allen (20:57):

Oh, I’m really just an apple fritter guy. Give me an apple fritter.

Rick  (21:02):

Nothing wrong with that. Nobody’s said apple fritter on this program.

Josh Allen (21:04):

It’s the best, absolute

Rick  (21:06):

Best. But let me ask you even, let’s dive a little deeper.

Josh Allen (21:08):

There’s a new place in Maryland height. Have you been to Tony’s in Maryland? I have not. Best apple frit I’ve ever had, and I’m not getting paid to say it either, so I’m not even going to get any free Apple fritter out of the deal, but

Rick  (21:17):

So what are you eating that with? What’s the drink? Is it milk, juice, coffee.

Josh Allen (21:20):

Oh, coffee. Way too much coffee. That’s my vice. I mean, I don’t do a lot of drinking to be honest with

Rick  (21:25):

You. What do you put in your coffee with a

Josh Allen (21:26):

Latte? No, just black coffee. Just

Rick  (21:28):

Black coffee. Okay. Alright. Put it right in the veins. Okay. How about this favorite food experience possibly involving bread that you’ve ever had globally? I’m sure you’ve traveled around a bit. I know American Studies, but you probably have had some international experience describe the experience or something that was just like, man, this is pretty cool.

Josh Allen (21:51):

We had three paer ovens in the old bakery, but we had bought one in 93. Long story short, we had bought another oven that was supposed to come, that other manufacturer went out of business and somehow Gerard Duran, who ran Paer at the time, heard about some kid who needed an oven and he sold me, took care of me, really got it. We ended up buying multiple ovens, but after we bought the second oven, we went to Europan in 1999 in Paris. I wanted to see the US baking team and then I also wanted to see the show. It sounded really cool. Well he, Gerard put my dad and I who was with me on a plane with Charlie Ngaro from Chiso. I dunno if you know Charlie, great guy. He and his son now runs the business. He actually went on this trip, he was 12 at the time I think, but flew us to Tolu to see this 10 11 and this whole bakery operation.

Josh Allen (22:47):

And he took us out to took, and I’m still so new to this whole thing, I had no clue. I mean this was a really cool facility. Everything was fully automated. Took us to lunch. They had pulled bread off the tunnel oven to go basket of bread. They go to lunch and there’s these big chunks of what we thought was butter on the table and we’re eating this bread and this butter and it was the most delicious thing we ever had. Turns out it was fo, but it was like these mean two pound blocks and I’m not a person that ever eat. I don’t ever eat that. My dad was like, when he found out he was blown away. But I remember that moment sitting at this big table, nobody very little English was spoken at this table. We were in Tolus and we had just toured this bakery. They knew we were bakers, so they really wanted to take care of us and it was really a neat moment of hospitality more than anything else. But I remember that part of

Rick  (23:38):

It. That’s fantastic. I’m going to share a quick one just because it spurred a thought that I had. My wife and I, when I first started with Ab Maori, we were in LaSalle, which is Montreal area and up visiting our plant and we had dinner at a place called Europa. And it was one of those experiential dinners, like eight courses. You go in, you pay almost like a price fix and they brought in everything from Candi Bacon on little clothes lines to you open the book and there’s fish and the steam comes out a clay pot where you had to break it and there’s food inside. It was just this magical dinner, what are they going to think of next? And it kind of evolved to a different restaurant for them up there. But it was just magical. It kind of just shows the bounds are out there. Wow. Just don’t be limited. Do something really cool. Alright, so you’re running. Do you still cycle a little bit and a little bit? Where do you go? Are you still doing across Missouri and all that kind

Josh Allen (24:35):

Of stuff? Yeah, I mean we’re still really involved with Pedal the Cause here, which is a cancer cancer organization here in St. Louis where all the money stays in. So they still have their event at the end of September. We’ve been working with them for, this is their 15th year, so we’ve been involved with them. So I always do that event. I still ride with some friends on the weekends. I

Rick  (24:51):

Believe we put ourselves on the kit a little bit for

Josh Allen (24:53):

Yeah, you have sponsored our team as a matter of fact,

Rick  (24:56):

So I didn’t know if you’re coming through that next cycle. Okay, so we worked with you guys for years. We’ve had some of our innovation team members, some of our bakers in working with you and your team. Why has it kind of clicked? We’ve had a relationship for, I don’t know, seven, eight years maybe, or maybe even longer.

Josh Allen (25:16):

I think you guys come to the table the same way that we do with this element of curiosity. And I think we’re in that interesting space, I think for folks to work with because big enough to do things interesting, but we’re small enough to still all be kind of on the floor and on the bench doing it. And we bring some interesting challenges and we’re just trying to figure out what to do. Our whole business now is custom products really. I mean we’re so small in the scheme of the frozen bread business. If our competition is La Brea and Tribeca and Ace, they’re shipping quarter of a million cases a week and we’re shipping 10,000 cases a week. And so in the scheme of once you go frozen into a back of a distributor’s truck, there’s a lot of competition and there’s some big people and we’re trying to play in that space.

Josh Allen (26:05):

And the way that we figured out how to play in that space is to work with kind of emerging brands, 15 to 150 units and helping them tell their story. And so what we like to do is help our customers tell their story. And so that’s through differentiation. So that might be a special hamburger bun, a special hoagie, a certain table bread, something special. And they enjoy that because they didn’t really realize that there were folks out there that would make something special for them that size. At that size, you’re usually picking from a distributor stock list. Here’s the 12 items at your distributor that you’ve chosen. Pick one of those breads or buns or rolls and that’s what you get to use. And we’ve tried to disrupt that by coming in and saying, look, what do you want? What do want it to look like?

Josh Allen (26:50):

And food is changing so quickly now, especially as the percentage of food being taken to go is changing the restaurant business, I think more than anything else because where it used to be, and you just mentioned the experiential aspect of it, when you’re now taking food to go, what the restaurant looks like, what the hospitality staff looks like, how cool the bathroom is, any of those things don’t mean anything anymore. Now it’s literally what’s in the bag or in the box is how you’re judging these concepts. And so they need points of differentiation that are different. They needed to make a great hamburger, don’t get me wrong before, but the specialness of every one of those ingredients because maybe they presented it in a certain way or they had a certain environment, it wasn’t as important. Now when that hamburger is to go, it’s everything.

Josh Allen (27:40):

So we’re seeing a lot of opportunities have a lot of folks reaching out to us now because they need to differentiate how are they going to be special in a world where everybody is throwing all this stuff at ’em. And so those are really the opportunities that we’re kind of jumping on or a part of working with a deli out of Birmingham and a Italian restaurant out of Champagne, Illinois and across the country, we’re finding folks who are looking for somebody like us and it’s been really fun. I mean, there’s nothing more enjoyable to me than working directly with our customers and these either restaurateurs or founders or chefs and they get to say, this is exactly what I want and we get to try to make it.

Rick  (28:20):

If you can’t pick it up by now, Josh Allen is a little bit of a storyteller and you’re telling that from the stance of working with customers and who want to differentiate and tell their own story. Tell me about your podcast where you get to be a little bit of a storyteller and then maybe unveil some of curious people out there too, like yourself.

Josh Allen (28:41):

I started the podcast really more out of curiosity. I think Knock on wood, we turned 30 years old and as we’ve come out of the pandemic, I packed an awful lot of bread for three years during the pandemic because we couldn’t hire enough people to do it. And I’ve been able to be alleviated a little bit of that, but there’s nothing I would rather do than sit down with another business owner and really talk to them about what they do and why they do it and how they’ve built the culture. And so I’ve just sort of leaned into that and podcasting. I have a friend of mine who’s a producer who we were talking over a beer at Christmas and I was like, I always wanted to do a podcast. He said, well, let’s do it. And he completely eliminated the how do I do this? Because he had the barrier

Rick  (29:27):

Was removed. He

Josh Allen (29:27):

Had all the equipment that we’re sitting in front of right now and they removed the barrier. He said, let’s find 12 people that’ll sit down with you. Let’s record ’em, let’s see what it sounds like and then decide if we’ll put it out in the world. So I just reached out to people that I knew who had interesting stories and we recorded the first 12 and I think we just recorded episode 44. And so we’re not, we’re on a faster

Rick  (29:48):

Clip than we

Josh Allen (29:49):

Are, but we’re about a year in, we’re trying. I’d like to release one a week, love to have one of these conversations every week. And it’s just really, it’s been really fascinating to, because it opens it up. Like folks, you put me behind a microphone and I’m talking, I don’t say this much in a day, what I’ve said in the last 20 minutes, but people want to tell their story and they’re interested in sharing that and you can. And I think being a business owner and having done it as long as I have, understanding the challenges, I have certain questions that I’m interested in, how’d you get through this? What keeps you up at night? How are you going to get through that? What’s the culture look like? How did the pandemic, A lot of the questions that you’re asking me, and it’s really interesting to hear that I’ve learned a lot from people. I’ve been fascinated by some of the things that they’ve brought to the table and they’ve been really fun conversations. And these are people that I would love to have just had a cup of coffee with but could never get it scheduled. But somehow you throw a podcast in and they’ll make it work. Right.

Rick  (30:44):

Awesome. Well, okay, promote it. How can people find it, all that kind of stuff.

Josh Allen (30:48):

It’s called the Baked in podcast. It’s on all your favorite podcast players, apple, Spotify, all. Yeah, all of them. Fantastic. Yeah, I mean it’s, we’ve leaned in a little bit to St. Louis regional business owners, but really more, I mean they’re all entrepreneurs and some nonprofits, a lot of hospitality folks, some other interesting business owner, a guy who collects classic cars. I mean all kinds of things. And so the lessons really aren’t specific to St. Louis, but some of the folks would be known in St. Louis and what we’re starting to expand out and we’re going to look to do more things and just sort of see, I don’t know, the podcasting is such a, what is there 2 million podcasts in the world now? Lot. So there’s a lot of them out there and it’s also, sometimes it’s just a lot of know I really want it to be meaningful conversations that can have value to the people that are listening and we’ll sort of see what happens. And if it’s no longer fun, I won’t keep doing it. But so far there haven’t been a conversation that I really haven’t enjoyed having.

Rick  (31:40):

Fantastic. Well, we’ve enjoyed having it here. Before we let go, let’s talk about companion a little bit and what are you seeing? What’s the future hold? Are you looking at trends, people are looking at personalized health, they’re looking for additional convenience, all those sorts of things, those little nuggets. What are you looking at? What do you have your eye on?

Josh Allen (32:03):

It’s interesting because we’re in the custom because we’re helping folks tell their story and we’re not necessarily looking to tell our story. Building a brand name is really expensive, and for somebody our size, it just isn’t where we’re going to necessarily go. So we’re sort of helping folks do that for them. So some of it is what they’re seeing out there. I mean, we are definitely working on some baked goods that are macro specific, so high protein muffins and stuff like that. We’ll see if those things, I mean, it’s such a crowded space right now, and what I keep to them is it’s great we can make a tasty muffin, but where are you going to sell it? What kind of shelf life because you tell you want to go to GNC or a supplement store and the thing’s got to have a 90 day shelf life because these guys aren’t in the business of selling fresh baked goods.

Josh Allen (32:52):

And so it’s hard to figure out how that distribution works necessarily. And again, we’re not really trying to do that. We’re trying to help other folks do it, so we know a lot about it. So we can ask those questions and see. So we’re seeing a little bit of that kind of macro specific nutrient specific baking. I think it’s really, the portability of food, like I mentioned before, is a big piece of it. So it’s really this to-go food. And so we’ve had a lot of opportunities and continue to have opera opportunities in the sandwich bun sandwich bread, hoagie kind of arena. How can we make something special that’s unique and sometimes unique is just textural. I mean, unique is different for everybody.

Josh Allen (33:35):

We talk a lot about the fact that we believe that, I believe we’re an artisanal bakery in the sense that everything that we make, we have a very specific intention with what we’re doing. So to me, artisan bread is bread made with intention, but not everything as a tartine sourdough loaf. And we make poor boys and we make hoagies that if you look at on their surface, you would say, well, that’s not very artisanal, but if you recognized or you appreciate that the end consumer has a very specific need, they toast a certain way, they hit it on a flat grill a certain way, it’s used in their system very intentionally and works exactly the vision that they had then to me, that’s just as hard of creating as it is to create a beautiful loaf. Sourdough bread and beautiful loaf of sourdough bread are wonderful, but we really like helping folks get to wherever they want to get to.

Josh Allen (34:25):

And so the portability thing is certainly coming. We’re not seeing nearly the dinner rule thing for us has kind of fallen off. You’re not seeing the bread basket so much. I mean I think the bread course is still, now it’s a sold course and so maybe it’s a little more unique, but it’s sold with a special butter or some kind of thing. We’re not seeing as much table bread anymore as we did before. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s lots of opportunities because as people make, people are still carb aware, I’ll use that term air quote, carb aware. So when they do choose carbs, do choose a sandwich, I think they want it to be something special. And so we’re seeing that kind of specialness be more important than it used to be.

Rick  (35:09):

Two final questions, I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you this. Why the name companion?

Josh Allen (35:14):

So the Latin Root of Companion ise, which means with bread, so a companion via it’s Latin root is a person with whom you share bread or break

Rick  (35:23):

Bread. I didn’t know we were going to get into foreign languages here, but I

Josh Allen (35:26):

Learned something new and I don’t speak Latin other than that’s the extent of it. I

Rick  (35:29):

Took two years of French and I don’t really have much beyond that. Alright, so one final question. Is there an inspirational quote or maybe a mantra or maybe a book or a film or something that you take some, it’s kind of filled your soul a little bit or maybe that you could

Josh Allen (35:46):

Break down and throw to us? It’s tattooed on my arm. It’s a TS Elliott quote. Ts Elliott’s from St. Louis. Actually, I have a son named Elliot, but if you’re not in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? So that’s my quote because it just reminds me to keep taking a shot at something that I might necessarily be able to succeed in. Yeah,

Rick  (36:06):

I love that, man. That’s a great quote. That’s a great way to finish this. I tell you what everybody, we’ve had a great time with Josh Allen from Companion Baking here today. And for now, the switch is off, the oven, light is over. But before I end this, I have to at least add, if you do have a question for Josh or me or the folks at the oven light, you can send us an email, the oven light@abmaori.com. Again, we will pass that on to Josh. We’ll take a look at it. If you say something clever in your email or your question to us, we might even send you some swag. But hey, now officially this witch is off. The other

Josh Allen (36:47):

Light is off. Smash the subscribe button and leave a review. Right. I love that.

Rick  (36:50):

Exactly. Cheers everybody. We’ll see you next time. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Oven Light. Until next time, when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking technology trends and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.