Photograph by Katherine Bish
Many college students become multi-degreed professional drones, only to chuck the corporate life to pursue something they are truly passionate about. Josh Allen skipped the first part. Following a dream that was just a tad unusual for a Stanford graduate, he became a bread baker, doing "postgraduate work" all over San Francisco, a city known for legendary bread. He tested himself at night, baking "thousands of loaves" at home, and in 1993 moved back to St. Louis to open Companion Baking Co. Today, tens of thousands of loaves later, many are using that revered term — legendary — to describe his bread. Companion's most recent undertaking, the CollaBREADtive Series, is just gathering steam. —George Mahe
OK, is it me, or does bread just seem to taste better in San Francisco? The artisan bread movement began there in the early '80s, so there's some history and pedigree behind it. Plus, the food scene there is so sophisticated, it almost demands that kind of quality. It's also 57 degrees every night.
A little different than here. A consistent climate yields tremendous consistency. Sourdough is sourdough, but it takes on the characteristics of a community, climactically. I think part of the personality of good bread is that it's not the same twice ... It's fine as long as quality isn't compromised. We do get phone calls, though, people who say, "How come the bread is so squishy today?" I tell them, "How do you feel today?"
How do you counter frequent changes in climate, like we have here? It's hard to bake bread on a hot, humid day. You can use ice to cool the dough, you can use cold air ... but too cold and the required acidity doesn't occur. It's a battle.
You went from baking bread to running café restaurants. I know the latter never turns out the way you thought it would. Wellllll, this just might not be the best year to go into the restaurant business, all things considered.
Thank you, Captain Understatement. We figured out the product mix people wanted but were missing connectivity opportunities with them, baking bread in a windowless factory in the middle of the night. I really wanted to have interaction with our customers multiple times a day or multiple times a week, so we opened a café in Clayton in 2001.
Wasn't that the time the Atkins craze kicked in? Several things happened. The wholesale business since 2002 did not grow substantially. Atkins and 9/11 were factors. But we had the staff that was ready to grow with us. Doing more cafes was one way to keep us all involved.
You opened the last TWO cafés very close to one another. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. In the CWE, construction was slow, and in Ladue, it flew, so we had two stores opening within months of each other. We opened in Ladue on December 30th — no one in their right mind opens a café in January.
So why not duplicate this in other cities? We did. We opened in KC in Oct 2002 and built up a base there with a strong restaurant group. The KC business was good but the economy was weak back here. But quite frankly, laying off eight people was better than laying off 65, so we closed KC in May 2004.
Times are tough around here. What's up your sleeve? In September we began sit-down table service in the evenings in the CWE, where you can sit outside and have a bottle of wine. It'll be slow-bake/slow-roast items, a menu that will provide more opportunities for more visits — cassoulets, mac and cheese, potpies, things like that — all under $10.
How are customers handling the price increases? Never in history has it been so severe. Fortunately, never in history have people so expected a price increase. That being said, I believe in "less but better." I eat less chocolate, but I eat Valrhona. We see that in bread as well. Chefs may be buying less, but they are finding inventive ways to use it and maybe getting some money for it.
Sounds like a good time to discuss the CollaBREADtive ... We talked with eight chefs to create eight signature breads. That chef's bread will be featured at his restaurant for six weeks, then we switch.
Do the chefs actually bake the bread? No. We took the process clear back to the mixing bowl with them to get their input, but we do all the baking. Gerard [Craft] from Niche likes lemon ... so we decided to incorporate lemon oil and cracked black pepper into his bread.
So we have to go to Niche to get it? No, the featured bread is available at our cafés and at grocery stores as well as at the chefs' restaurants. So for us it ties those three aspects of our business together. For the chefs, it drives more business.
It's the perfect promotion. We like that the chefs are promoting the fact they deal with a local baker. In the past, places have promoted their produce or their coffee, but rarely their bread. I hope the CollaBREADtive will change that.
Why go to their restaurants when you can grab a CollaBREADtive loaf at Schnucks? To experience their creativity with it — it won't be a breadbasket item. The chefs make it a part of the meal that's talked about — worked into an appetizer, entrée or dessert — rather than given away. It plays off the "less but better" theory.
So do you see restaurants here ever charging for bread? Not serving it may be better than directly charging for it. Some great restaurants have opened that do just that. Then you never even have to have the conversation. But established places are stuck giving it away, and it often costs them a dessert or a salad.
And they need every incremental sale they can get. I'm not sure why, but there is an expectation of limitless bread here — loaves and loaves and loaves — that you don't see in other cities. The customer eventually pays for it. That steak place is happy to serve you this impressive, huge loaf of bread — but your steak is $50.
What's a secret about the bread business that nobody knows? Most surprising to me is that I'm just as entrenched in the transportation business...it's hard to get 150 deliveries dropped exactly when people want them...like all within a 15 minute window...when a major highway is down.
