Wow! We made it four years! We are incredibly grateful we’ve been able to do this work for four years. Every day, every customer, every pastry, and every loaf of bread has been a privilege and we don’t take it for granted. As we have said before, and will say again, this is a dream job and we feel lucky every day we are able to continue baking and doing what we love. 

 

We feel we have made great strides this year, but on the flip side, we still have so much to learn. Four years ago, when we were just a few months into opening, I (Brandon) ran into another downtown business owner and we had a quick conversation. They said to me, “Right now, you’re looking at the numbers (and stressing) at the end of every day. But in six months you’ll look at them every week. And in a year or so, you’ll be looking at each month. And eventually each quarter.” Welp. We might be doing something wrong because we still look every day, ha! Four years in and things are still incredibly tight each week. One big reason for this is that we recently lost our biggest wholesale customer, which has left us scrambling quite a bit.

 

At the same time, we feel we have learned a lot this past year about how to be successful in our own unique way. It is a strange dichotomy. On one hand our total revenue is much lower than it has been in the past, but on the other hand we feel more confident about the work we are doing and how we approach each day.

 

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As I type this, sitting in the empty dining room, I look up on the wall and I see our artwork of Tim Duncan. Lately, we have been getting more and more questions about why we have chosen this artwork for our wall. For us, it isn’t just an aesthetically pleasing piece of artwork, it is a symbol and inspiration for how we wish to run the bakery. 

 

I thought it would be fun to write out our goals for next year, framed around thinking like Tim Duncan. As we look into year five, here are our hopes:

 

1. We hope to keep focusing on doing the small things at a high quality level. 

 

Tim Duncan, aka The Big Fundamental, spent his career focusing on doing the little things very well. He could’ve spent time working on elements of his game that would land him on more highlight reels, but instead, he focused on executing the basics at the highest level. 

 

Quality customer service interactions, consistency in our menu preparation, cleanliness in our kitchen and dining room. Unfortunately, these things don’t make great social media videos, but we believe they matter more than going viral. These small things won't gain us overnight success, but hopefully they'll gain us long standing customers.

 

One seemingly small area we feel we’ve made big strides in is running out of food during lunch a lot less often. It is darn near impossible to be perfect. Just the other day, half way through lunch, someone called in 14 ham sandwiches and wiped us out for the day. Times like that, there is nothing we can do. But every day and every week we take a close look at the numbers and make adjustments. 

 

We keep improving, but there is still much more to improve on. We are trying to do things the right way and the old fashioned way. Which means growth will be slower, but hopefully longer lasting. 

 

2. We hope to stay true to who we are

 

Tim easily could’ve looked around the league and thought, “I need to change my game to be successful.” He could’ve taken a look at a young Dirk Nowitzki, for example, and thought " I need to add a high-arching fade away to my repertoire." But he didn’t. He stayed true to who he was, and we will do our best to stay true to who we are. 

 

You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) the number of people who suggest we add energy drinks to our menu. And maybe we will die on this hill, but we will never sell energy drinks. Similarly, what is with nearly every restaurant using AI images of their food? For starters, the AI rendering of their dishes looks nothing like the plate you get served in real life. But even worse, the rendering also looks incredibly unappetizing. We promise to never use AI. There is a lot of outside pressure to change what we do, but we will keep doing the hard work of introspection and try to keep things authentic and genuine to who we are.

 

3. We won’t raise our prices 

 

Famously, in 2012, Tim Duncan cut his salary in half. This salary cut allowed the Spurs to bring on key team members that helped them win another championship. (Nearly two. Damn you, Ray Allen.) It feels like some businesses have raised prices without even looking at their numbers. It feels like some restaurants have seen that other restaurants are raising their prices, and they see the headlines in the news, and they say, “This is our chance to raise prices without anyone getting upset.” It is a cash grab more than a measured understanding of their food costs. Undoubtedly, some costs have gone up, but it is lazy to just pass those costs increases onto the customer. While some of our food costs have increased, we've worked hard to search out replacement products that are cheaper, but not lower quality. One that stands out is our butter. Last year we found a much better, but much cheaper butter option. The work never ends, every week we are assessing and adjusting. 

 

Another good example is nearly everyone is doing a “cash discount,” which is a tricky way of saying “we are passing the credit card fee on to the customer.” It is a greedy money grab. Instead of passing any cost increases on to our customers, we’ve tried to find other creative ways to increase sales. Whether it is pizza nights, pasta classes, or private dinners. Having a small team that can easily pivot has always been one of our strong suits. We have also been increasingly thoughtful about what goes on the menu. Have beef prices skyrocketed? Yes, so we are using less beef. Admittedly, we do have a luxury of having a flexible menu that can adjust in response to rising costs.

 

One of the things plaguing our country (the world) is the need for endless, exponential growth. There has been rampant shrinkflation, all blamed on the economy, when really greed is to blame. Quality has gone down, prices have gone up. These are deliberate choices to earn more money. There is no option to not grow each year and shrinkflation is the result. It has been and will continue to be our goal to raise prices only as a last resort, not as a knee jerk reaction to the news cycle or as a way to pinch off slightly more profit.

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