2024 Recap: honest reflections & hope for the future
The ethics of BBU’s founders and leaders are deeply anti-capitalist at their core. We focus on viability and sustainability above profits. We value livable wages and worker well-being. We want at least some of our products to be affordable to low-income people. We try not to turn people away who are in need of a free coffee or loaf of bread. We seek to source ingredients that are locally made, organically grown, and produced by values-driven businesses. Under certain economic conditions, applying our ethics is totally compatible with profitability. But as economic conditions become more challenging, upholding our own ethical standards can be at odds with the viability of the business.
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Journeying into the holiday season - the menu, the care, the preparation, the nerves
One of the most precious parts of our job as craftspeople is that each time we try something and fail, we internalize lessons that help us improve on our next attempt. Over the years, we have learned so much about bread by trying things that are just beyond our reach, sometimes failing, sometimes achieving excellence, but most importantly–constantly learning.
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Learning to love a bakery: a retrospective after 10 years of bakery ownership
They say that being in a relationship is like holding up a mirror to yourself. Being in such vulnerable proximity to someone shows us bits of ourselves that are normally tamped down or tucked away. Our tenderness, our capacity for patience and understanding, the limits of our compassion. The lengths we will go to hold onto it all.
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Signing Off
Business can feel like an enormous ship, full of momentum and heading in a clearly defined direction. To turn the ship towards a new direction takes time and unrelenting effort. These days it feels like we have to steer it in a different direction every week. That kind of movement takes many hands, all on deck, and lots of heaving and hoeing.
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Getting by With a Little Help
I think it’s important to acknowledge that no one is an island; my circles of support have always included customers, family, and friends. But recently, I’ve found myself turning to other business owners more than ever.
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Cooking for a Cause
“Cooking for a Cause” has allowed me to return to baking, not as a form of commerce or as a means to make a living, but to help people in a crisis. It has lifted my spirits and allowed me to reconnect to a sense of purpose. It reminded me that food is fundamentally not a commodity. I felt something inside of me start to heal.
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Taking a Step Back is OK
News has been devastating – police brutality, violence, and grieving communities – all against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic, and we have so few ways to be together in all of this. To mourn together, to fight together, to heal together.
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Staffing in the time of Covid
So much of what made Bread by Us “successful” as a business was tied to our ability to crank out large volumes of bread & pastry, and serve it crowds of people, unencumbered. We could capitalize on beautiful spring days when people were strolling down Wellington Street. Our café was always teaming with life. That all came to a grinding halt on March 15th, and right now, it seems that everywhere we turn, we come up against roadblocks and constraints to re-building what was lost.
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