Learning to love a bakery: a retrospective after 10 years of bakery ownership
By Jessica Carpinone
1065 Wellington Street West in 2013, right after we signed a lease.
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.
I became a bakery owner in 2013 when I was 27 years old. I had dreams that I thought were simple enough. Build a place where I can make bread every day. Build a place where my partner can enjoy steady work. Build a place where staff feel safe and supported. Build a place where I feel safe and supported. Build a space where customers feel welcomed and cared for. I told myself that these were the years I should do this. The years that most people spend having kids and being tired, I decided I would spend birthing a bakery - and being tired.
On a cold day on December 23rd, 2013, Sarah & I opened our doors to the public. We spent Christmas Day and Boxing day and every day for that first week at the bakery trying to understand our new space. It didn’t take us long to realize that baking bread in a hot steamy restaurant was not the same as baking bread in our new space with paper thin walls and no thermostat. After a couple of nice-enough batches, and a few impressed customers, things started going sideways.
By the eve of our grand opening in mid-January, I had thrown out a lot of bad batches of bread. Bread that wasn’t baked all the way through. Bread that had not risen. Bread that didn’t taste right. Overnight, I went from being a very confident bread baker to completely shaken and shattered. By the time the grand opening was upon us, we weren’t ready. It was the middle of the night and I was staring down the barrel of another dough that wasn’t rising. Knowing that the invitations had already been sent out, and at least 200 people would be walking through our doors the next day, excited to see the new bakers in town, I panicked. Not a little bit, but a lot. My vision went blurry, I saw stars. As I was blacking out, I had the wherewithal to slide my back down a stack of flour bags and sit on the floor until the episode passed. I was alone.
“God knows what we served those customers, and why they ever came back.”
Once I came-to, I called Sarah. There was dread in her voice, but also unwavering kindness. Just enough belief in me to convince me that I could figure something out. When the call was over, I stood back up and baked anything that I could. Hours later, service staff and customers rolled in. God knows what we served those customers, and why they ever came back. But if you were at our grand opening, and you came back again, I owe you. I really owe you.
In that first year, Sarah and I climbed Everest together. We realized how much we had bitten off together. How much debt we took on, how much grit it would take to pay it back, and how giving up was not an option. That taking a day off was not an option. Just how much was expected of us, just how much care goes into all of this. There were bills, debts, and payroll to meet. And there was our pride. I wanted to be known as an excellent baker. If I’m being honest, I wanted to be the best. But those early days were filled with sobering lessons on entrepreneurship, and what it takes. They were filled with lessons about baking under pressure, baking in all the different seasons, baking under vastly different conditions. To build the plane while it's in the air, as the metaphor goes.
Once we survived that first year, we decided that we would hang in long enough to repay our start-up loans and get to the end of this 5-year lease, and then we could throw in the towel. “Let’s just get through this phase”, we said. We wondered what the heck we had done, who gave us permission to take this on, and why did we think we could do this?
A couple of young entrepreneurs, a bit out of their depth. Pre-construction of our space.
In those early years, we relied a lot on the grace, kindness, and gentle advice of people around us. One day I was driving with my dad in the car, and explaining to him that everything I used to find easy was now so hard. “I keep making mistakes and messing things up. Things I used to be able to do with my eyes closed.” He responded by telling me to simplify. “Instead of having 4 cookies on the menu, just make two for now.” A simple piece of advice, but one that I never forgot and still apply constantly, anytime I’m overwhelmed. Permission to simplify operations if things are not going well - check.
On another occasion, Sarah & I were sitting on the lawn of Hintonburg Park when a couple of customers approached us - folks who were starting to become friends. They told us we should close on Mondays. That was something that seemed impossible for us at the time–to not be open 7 days/week. We’d be turning people away and we felt we couldn’t afford that. But we were also working 7 days/week, volunteering most of our time, and not even two years into this project, risked burnout or worse. We took the advice to heart. Permission to close the doors if we don’t have enough capacity - check.
And in those early days, a baker once told me that baking bread is relational. That there is an energy exchange between the baker and the bread. That if the baker is off, the bread will be off. At first, I brushed it off as a little too intangible for my rational sensibilities. But it didn’t take long for me to feel the truth in her statement, to my core. From that day on, I became more conscious of my state of mind before stepping into the kitchen. Not long afterward, my bread mishaps occurred less and less. My bread is a culmination of everything I put into it, and everything that I am. It is a product of the attention that I pay to it, my ability to understand and listen to what it needs, to pick up on subtleties. In short, to love it. Permission to call bread-baking a spiritual practice - check.
Every loaf of bread we bake touches a baker’s hands.
By the time our start-up loans were paid off, and our first lease was up, there was some distance from the trauma of our first year in business. The bakery started giving back to me in small but tangible ways, and we were making real strides. I realized that I did some of my best thinking at 4am. I realized that if I share my struggles with other business owners, clarity can sometimes emerge. And if clarity doesn’t emerge, friendships can. I realized that I might actually be good at some of this. Staff members regularly come to me for answers, for solutions, for guidance. I can think quickly on my feet, I can usher the team through hiccups. And incredibly, I was seeing other leaders emerge from the crowd. Five years in, there were other staff members who seemed to care about this dream too, for their own reasons. That was incredibly touching, and still is.
I would be lying if I said that attachment to my bakery, and my role as a business owner, came easily. For a long time, I dreamed about finding a way out. My body feels broken more often than it feels whole. 10 years in, I still can barely make plans with friends and family, and stick to them. The onset of the pandemic dissolved any boundaries that I had successfully put up between my work-life and my life-life. I regularly operate on a level of burnout that is unhealthy. It scares me sometimes. And I don’t say any of this lightly. I don’t say any of it to glorify it. It is just a matter of fact, I think, that in this moment, being a small business owner is as much about survival as it is about trying to leave a beautiful mark on the world.
“I realized that I felt pride in being part of a creative and resilient community of small business owners”
But something also happened at the onset of the pandemic that surprised me, and that keeps on surprising me time and time again. Faced with another Everest, I didn’t know if I had it in me to climb again. Sarah wasn’t with me in the same way anymore. She took a step back to care better for herself - a difficult, seemingly impossible choice, but one that has paid off in spades. Tasked with re-inventing the business, I did it - with a LOT of help from unexpected places. Other business owners rallied and helped me through the learning curves of e-commerce. We called each other, talked things through, checked in. Throughout that period, a feeling of pride started to emerge inside of me that went well beyond my ability to bake. I realized that I felt pride in being part of a creative and resilient community of small business owners. I was beginning to appreciate the qualities that make us keep climbing, keep holding on.
The bakery turned 7 in December 2020, right in the thick of the pandemic. Though this business wasn’t technically new, we felt like we were back to square one. Pictured here are Jess (left) and right (Sarah).
As owners of bakeries, cafes, restaurants, clothing stores, breweries, and bookstores, we do what we do for so many reasons, chief among them because we think the world deserves to have nice things. We want to bring you a tasty treat, a special experience, something beautiful. We are curators, collectors, event planners. We bring the party, we set the table, we work behind the scenes to bring you a good time. We miss Christmas dinner (or fall asleep through it) so you can have yours. We work weekends so you can have something nice to do on yours. We sacrifice a lot for the sake of love, and care, and community, and creation.
This pride - the pride that I have developed for my labour, for the service and sacrifice, for our contributions to the tapestry of the neighbourhood, my pride in our craft and the skills we have shared - all of that pride has gathered over time and has turned into a love for my bakery. That love, I can safely say now, has grown into attachment. It took ten years, but it is unmistakable now.
After all these years of learning to love this bakery, it has been holding up a mirror to me. Sometimes it shows me things that I do not love about myself, and that I am not proud of. There is much I am not proud of yet - I have a long way to go in learning how to be an effective and fair manager. The ways I can hurt and harm people, unknowingly, through action, inaction, and unchecked bias. I have a long way to go in cracking the nut that is financial security. We still walk a precarious path, and as an owner, I know much of that is on me. The mirror has also shown me some beautiful angles of myself. Like my endless and seemingly boundless curiosity about my craft. That baking is, unmistakably, my calling. 10 years in, I still feel like a kid on Christmas morning when I wake up knowing I will be trying something new today. The mirror has shown me that my capacity for care is deep. That in my lowest moments, I can usually stay even-keeled. And most obviously, it has shown me the depths of my grit. The force that propels me out of bed at 3:20am, rain or shine, ice or snow, slept or unslept.
I know absolutely nothing of what the next decade will bring, but I am certain that it will be unpredictable and full of new challenges. I want to thank every single person who has shown me patience, grace, or gratitude. For anyone who has told me that my business matters to you - you have no idea how much that touches me and keeps me going. Recently I was having a particularly difficult day, and I went to the front to check on something. A customer told me “you know you guys matter, right? You’re important to this community.” It made me well up, thinking about how something as simple as a bakery can make someone’s day, or move them to say something so meaningful.
I hesitate to say too much about what I want from this next decade, but I will end with this. I hope I can continue to bring you nice things, made with care, for a long long time. I hope to spend my whole career baking bread and sharing it with you. Thank you for being a part of this beautiful and grueling process. I couldn’t have made it this far without you.