Step Five: Alon’s

Today I met with my Senior Project Facilitator at her work. Therese says that she’s been working with Alon, the owner of the bakery, since before it opened. I was amazed by the scale of everything. When she made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, for example, the dough alone weighed more than I do! The picture at the top of this post shows just a portion of all of the dough.

Unfortunately, Alon’s isn’t a vegan bakery, so Therese’s help was more general. It was still immensely helpful, though. I helped crack eggs and separate some butter (neither of which are vegan), but the kitchen was so efficient that I really felt like I was mostly just getting in the way. When I told Therese about the pound cake fiasco, she pointed out some really fundamental flaws that I hadn’t thought about. For one thing, when I tried to change a non-vegan recipe into a vegan recipe by just substituting certain ingredients, I was changing the baseline chemistry of the recipe. She thought I would be much more successful if I made a recipe that was already vegan my own. I guess on some level I realized there must be something that was profoundly different between non-vegan and vegan after the pound cake, but she was able to articulate and explain it much better than I. I feel like this experience put the final nails into the coffin of my original product. I think I will go ahead and try one more recipe, though. This time I’ll start with a vegan recipe.

Meanwhile, I’ve started working on a business plan to take the place of my original cook book plan. It’s interesting learning about how to present ideas to investors, and best of all, I think this product could give me experience that can be more practically applied to any form of business. Therese offered a wealth of advice about good business practices as well. She emphasized repeatedly the importance of using high quality ingredients and remaining passionate about what you are doing. She also told me that she does not recommend culinary schools for most people until they have some hands-on experience, too. She started in the business by acting as an apprentice to an established baker and feels that the method taught her everything she needed to know about baking in a more efficient format. In her opinion, the big negative of culinary or pastry schools is the cost paired with the way everything is done in groups. She says that if there is one strong member in a group they may just delegate jobs, so the weaker members never learn to do the whole process alone.