In this episode, Josh Allen, founder of Companion Baking in St. Louis, Missouri, shares how he turned a love of baking discovered in the Bay Area into a frozen artisan bread manufacturer shipping custom products across all 48 contiguous states. Guided by his grandfather's advice to listen to his customers, Josh built the business one customer and one product at a time, pivoted from wholesale to frozen manufacturing, and made helping customers tell their stories through bread the heart of what Companion does. He also reflects on why he always took the private equity calls out of curiosity, what made Shore different, and why partnering now rather than later lets him stay part of the journey as Companion builds its platform.

Key Takeaways:

• Listen to your customers and they'll tell you how to grow. One customer, one product, one SKU at a time built a 33-year business.
• Say yes first and figure it out later. The willingness to solve a customer's problem tomorrow, like renting a van to deliver bread two hours away, opened the pivot to frozen that transformed the company.
• Sell the story, not the SKU. When customers help design their own bread, price fades and the relationship becomes sticky.
• Partner while you still have runway. Choosing partnership now instead of an exit later keeps a founder part of the next chapter, with a board, new leaders, and resources a small business could never afford alone.

Chapters:

1. 00:00 – Introduction
2. 02:25 – From the Bay Area Back to St. Louis
3. 08:45 – One Customer, One Product at a Time
4. 12:18 – Telling Stories Through Bread
5. 17:16 – Why Partner, and Why Shore
6. 24:43 – Building the Platform

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Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high-growth organizations.

The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths.

It's a journey where we learn from our mistakes, fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere.

Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure, of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big.

And through their lessons learned, we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing, and leading.

In this episode, I talk with Josh Allen, the founder of Companion Baking in St. Louis, Missouri.

Companion is a frozen artisan bread manufacturer that ships custom products to customers across all 48 contiguous states, from regional grocery chains to independent restaurants to emerging brands.

What sets the business apart, according to Josh, is not just the bread, it's the story.

Specifically, the stories he helps his customers tell through the bread he custom creates with them.

Josh grew up in a multi-generational food family in St. Louis, but discovered baking on his own in the Bay Area in the early 1990s at the heart of the artisan bread movement.

At 24, he came home and opened Companion Baking.

He walks me through how he built the business one customer and one product at a time, guided to this day, 33 years later, by his grandfather's advice to always listen to the customer.

In our conversation, Josh talks about the pivot from wholesale to frozen manufacturing, why he always took the private equity phone calls out of curiosity, even when he wasn't interested and mostly didn't like what he heard, and what made the conversation with the Shore team different.

He shares why partnering now rather than later gives him a chance to continue to be part of the journey he's built with his team so far.

He talks about how Companion is thinking about the next partners to join the platform, and why after 33 years, he still thinks of himself as building the plane while flying it Welcome, Josh.

Thanks for being here.

To get us kicked off, will you just introduce yourself and say what you do and where you do it?

Sure.

I'm Josh Allen.

I'm the founder of Companion Baking in St. Louis, Missouri.

We are a frozen artisan bread manufacturer.

So tell me more about your business.

What got you into that business?

How long have you been doing that work?

How did you get into bread?

Give us some background.

We're going all the way back then.

All the way back.

So- Yeah

… Josh Allen: I actually went to school in the Bay Area in the late '80s, early '90s, graduated in 1991, and bread was a huge thing in the Bay Area in the early '90s.

It was sort of the beginning of the artisan bread movement, kind of started a little bit in LA with Nancy Silverton at La Brea, but also Acme Bread in San Francisco and some of the OGs in San Francisco.

It was really a big deal.

I was racing my bicycle and racing triathlons, so I was eating a lot of bread, and just actually loved it, really enjoyed it.

And when I graduated from school, I ended up getting a job in Whole Foods.

Was I think the fifth Whole Foods in the country- Oh, wow … in Palo Alto at the time, so very early.

But just absolutely fell in love with it, and like many crafts like that, you either love it right away and you know it's something that you wanna do, or you run because it's hot.

You know, it's heavy work, it's mundane.

It's not enjoyable unless you love it, and I happen to love it.

So I kinda bounced around the Bay Area working at a number of different places.

Ended up getting a job with a company called the Oakville Grocery Company, and they were opening stores all around the Bay Area.

And the president of the company, I was actually swimming with at a swimming program, and he said, "Hey, I know you're baking and I know you graduated from a pretty good school. How about we do a research project and see if it makes sense for us to open a bakery in the midst of opening all these grocery stores?"

And spent about a year with them making 10 bucks an hour, but I got a chance to go inside of all of these bakeries that I loved, finding out what equipment they were using and who were the ingredient suppliers and what was the pricing, and sort of, we kind of put the whole thing together.

But in the end, the disparate nature of the Bay Area, because they were down from Los Gatos all the way up to Napa, it didn't make sense for them to have a bakery and try to deliver to all those stores.

So they said they weren't gonna do the project, but we had built a business plan, and so I called my grandfather in St. Louis, who was in the food business.

I grew up in a broad line distribution business, a company that was 100 years old that eventually got bought by US Foods when US Foods was rolling up across the country.

And that was your grandpa's business?

That was my grandfather and my father's business.

Oh, wow.

So yeah, three generations of that.

So grew up in the industry, but fell in love with baking, and I asked him if I could borrow some money to buy an oven from France and a mixer, and drove home.

While that came on a boat to St. Louis, I drove home and tiled some floors and painted some walls and, and started baking bread.

So I was 24 at the time when I opened, so, you know, completely ignorant to sort of everything- Yeah that I was getting myself into.

Yeah.

Appropriately ignorant, right?

Yeah.

App- yeah.

Which was just what you needed to be to get started.

But I loved doing it, and I mean, essentially, it's all I was doing.

Baking all night, going out and trying to sell loaves of bread during the day, and then going back and doing it again.

And, and sort of, he told me from the beginning to shut up and listen to your customers and they'll tell you how to grow your business, and I heeded that advice.

It's still due today.

So one product, one customer, one SKU at a time, we just grew the business.

And 33 years later, you'll do the math now- … so I'm 57, and 33 years later, we're still going.

So it's interesting to hear, you know, both that this was a family business, I mean, in a sense, and multiple generations in the food business, but then you found yourself kind of discovering it on your own in the West Coast.

Yeah, certainly the manufacturing side, right?

Yeah.

So they were distributors.

My great-grandfather had come over from Europe, had enough money to get to O'Fallon, Illinois, started with a donkey and a cart selling groceries and wares door to door, and eventually opened up a chain of general stores.

During World War II, he closed the general stores and opened up wholesale distribution 'cause there were a bunch of Air Force bases in Southern Illinois, and that area started doing that.

Eventually, they came over to St. Louis, built a warehouse, and then the same way, kind of one customer, one product at a time, built a very substantial distribution business.

And so I had kind of always thought that I was gonna go into the food business.

Mm. I mean, there was never really much thought outside of that.

I was an American studies major in college, so I was just learning how to think, you know, with the idea that it was gonna help me someday.

But then I started baking kind of on a whim and fell in love with it, and so that tangent to the kind of the manufacturing piece and the crafts piece took me that direction.

But what's so wonderful in hindsight is that my grandfather, more than anybody, that was supportive of it.

You know, I was very afraid to pick up the phone and ask, you know, "Hey, would it be okay if I did something else?" And he lived to be about 93.

I remember every Tuesday before I would go in to bake, I would go take him a fresh baguette and have dinner with him, and he-

That's why he said yes.

He would… And, I mean, he would ask me the price of wheat on the Kansas City Board of Trade.

I always had to know sort of what was happening, and teaching me how to think about the business differently.

But, you know, I think in many respects, and my dad says it today, and my dad ran that business for 46 years, you know, they're a lot prouder of me having done that from scratch, pardon the pun, than they would've been if I would've been a great sales manager or head of procurement for a… the fourth generation in a family business.

Yeah.

So it's neat in, kind of in retrospect to think that way.

Yeah.

What was it like in the '90s moving from the West Coast, where you said there was sort of all of this spirit and energy and almost culture around bread, back to St. Louis?

I don't know what the '90s looked like.

I mean, I was living and- … and growing up in the '90s as well, but I was not in St. Louis.

That feels like it's a big shift- at a time where you're wanting to start a business, from almost moving from a hot market to what I would assume at that time was a pretty quiet and pretty small market.

Yeah, I mean, we've always had a really wonderful independent restaurant community, which is great.

In the early '90s, there was actually this sort of blossoming of this micro vendor community.

So I was probably the first artisan baker to open in St. Louis.

There was our first coffee roaster kind of opened six months after I opened, and a year before I opened, the first microbrewery opened, which was Schlafly, which became a big microbrewery in the Midwest.

And so there was this vendor community that was sort of popping up to support these independent restaurateurs, and we were all sort of playing off of each other.

And they had traveled all over the country, so they had been to New York and San Francisco and LA and Atlanta and Chicago and seen what was happening, and so they were hungry for bread and artisanal products that, that historically they hadn't been able to find in St. Louis.

So it was really kind of the perfect storm of what was happening.

Yeah, it was ki- there was kind of a moment, a truly a kind of a moment in, in time there where those things were coalescing- Right … in St. Louis.

And, you know, we eventually had to deal with the Atkins diet, you know- Yeah.

… the whole thing.

But honestly, the, the early to mid-'90s was the low-fat craze.

So it was like, "Eat 12 bagels- … but just don't eat any cream cheese," you know.

And so we, we, we did also get a little bit of the benefit.

You know, folks are definitely carb-aware today- Yeah … but they weren't so carb-aware in the mid-'90s.

Yeah.

So share more about your business and your business model.

So you move from the West Coast back home.

You've got this community there and this artisanal product.

What does your business look like?

I mean, we all consume bread, yeah.

So very, very intentionally it was not retail.

So it was not a retail bakery.

I didn't know how to make enough things really to fill a case or to fill a wall.

I really wanted to pick a handful of items.

And again, listening to my grandfather, we started with six things.

So I think we had five artisanal hearth breads, you know, free-form breads baked in a deck oven, and a baguette.

And we went out, and what my dad had told me, which is really true, there were two great restaurateurs in St. Louis at the time.

One was a old-school Italian, and one was kind of a new American.

And they said, "Let's figure out how to sell those two guys bread, and then we're gonna tell that story over and over and over again, that, you know, Vince Bommarito's buying the bread at Tony's, and this gentleman, Bill Cardwell, who is still a great friend of mine, is buying it at Cardwell's restaurant.

Let's find the two most important, most influential people.

Let's make them your customers, and then you're just gonna go tell everybody that those guys believe in you and they're buying the product." And that's what we did.

They were super supportive.

So we then just started selling more and more people and listening.

So, you know, Chef Cardwell needed a hamburger bun for lunch, so together we developed a hamburger bun.

Then we go sell that to more people.

And the Ritz Carlton was buying bread, but then they needed banquet rolls because everybody needed rolls for banquets.

And so we then developed a line of rolls for banquets.

And then Chef Conway at the Hyatt needed Danish and mini pastries for breakfast pastries, so we developed that.

And so really one customer, one product at a time, we just built the business.

And still today, we're essentially a custom manufacturer that's interested in helping our customers tell their story.

That's what we do.

That's what my passion is.

I love the relationships that we get to have with really the food folks, the restaurateurs, the chefs, the culinary innovators.

Those are the people that I love having relationships with.

So how can we help them?

The same way that they're working with farmers, we want them to view us in that sort of, in the incubation process.

Like, what is it that you need?

How can we help you better tell your story?

And that's what we do.

So we grew that for the first, you know, 20 years of the business in a wholesale operation.

I never said no very often.

I usually said yes, and then figured out later if it was sort of the right thing to do or not.

And so in 2011, 2012, I had a grocery store chain that had just opened in Columbia, Missouri, like two hours away, and they said, "Hey, our frozen manufacturer didn't make it.

They're not gonna be here for the opening.

Can you deliver us bread tomorrow?" And I said, "Sure, I'll figure it out." So, you know, we rented a van, and we figured out how to get bread two and a half hours away seven days a week for about a month.

And they said, "Hey, you know, this is really good.

We really appreciate what you're doing." "We're going across the country.

Can you do this frozen and figure out how to help us get across the country?" And so we said, "Sure." Tried to figure that out.

So we started selling that frozen.

That led to more opportunities.

Eventually, in 2015, we built a new factory.

You know, kind of pushed all of our chips into the center of the table, took the SBA loan, you know, signed my firstborn.

Did, did, did what you do to build a factory to really convert the business to frozen over time, and took the opportunity during the pandemic to go 100% frozen, and that's what we're doing today.

So today we are a custom manufacturer, primarily shipping bread to all 48 states, you know, in the continental US.

Most of our customers are what we would say are multi-unit operators with, like, 15 to 150 units.

So think regional grocery stores, think regional chains, emerging brands, innovative ideas that are growing and getting started.

You know, they come to us or we try to find them to make them something special.

I'm struck, one, that your description goes right back to how you said your grandpa told you is listen to the customer.

And it's like, "What are they asking for, and how do I say yes?" And that's the entrepreneurial spirit.

You go figure it out and decide later.

And not always the right thing to do.

Yeah.

It's not always the right thing- Right … but it is the right thing in the moment as you're- Right … figuring out and defining your business model.

You know, you've said the word a couple of times there, and I just would love to hear you say more about it.

You said the word story.

You talked about the original folks in St. Louis and the story that you wanted to tell of being able to partner with them.

But then you talked about some of your early customers and partners and helping them tell their story.

How does story fit into this notion of bread?

Well, look, I think everybody's trying to tell a story.

I think, or the most successful folks or certainly the ones that are passionate that we wanna do business with and partner with.

And so one example, there's a chef in St. Louis, Kevin Nashan.

We have three now James Beard winners in St. Louis.

He was one of those.

He opened a concept called Peacemaker.

So Peacemaker is essentially the poor boy sandwich that you're thinking of from New Orleans- Mm-hmm right?

And it kind of started with the Acadians in the Northeast, and they traveled down.

They became the Cajuns, and they took the fried oysters and all of that.

And the Peacemaker, which I didn't know until I was doing some research with him, was it was a peace offering to your wife because you had been out all night drinking with your friends.

And so you brought home this sandwich that, you know, full of fried oysters as a peace offering for going out and wreaking havoc all over town.

But he really wanted to tell this story of this kind of culinary tradition that had started with like the Atlantic Canadians and gone to the Northeast and come down.

So he has a lobster and crab shack, but then he also has poor boys.

And so it was really important that the sandwich was exactly the way that he wanted.

And so we worked with him for nine months or 10 months to develop this product.

He had a very specific need and story that he wanted to tell.

And being as talented of a chef as he was, He was pretty particular about it.

I mean, it took some time to do it, but we finally got that right.

And, and it's an amazing sandwich when you have it.

And then we developed a lobster roll bread for him because that was something else.

And so for him, every dish at this particular restaurant i- is telling a story.

He's trying to talk about culinary traditions and movement and migration and all of that.

And a lot of the folks that we get to work with are doing that.

I mean, the interesting part about kind of post-pandemic food now is so much food is to go, you know?

So y- you really have to tell a story with the prod… It's not so much that you get to do it with the interior design or the way the service staff interacts with you because now a lot of food's in a box or in a bag.

And so how do we differentiate ourselves?

How do we tell the story through food, whether it's the presentation, the crust characteristics, the flavor, you know, whatever the combination of those things are?

How do we do that in a way that resonates with the customer so that they come back and they tell their friends?

And it's easier to share stories, right, than it is to share dishes.

And so that's what they're attempting to do.

How has that worked and played out for you as you grew the business as you previously described and now are going to 48 contiguous United States.

That notion of story resonates with depth and clarity when I think about the chef in St. Louis and you being in St. Louis and helping.

How does that notion of story for you scale when you start being a much larger manufacturer and distributor and thinking through the frozen process and all that?

How does that story continue?

You know, honestly, it doesn't change that much.

What's so fascinating about it is it's so foreign to most folks when you go in to make…

So when we go to make a sales call, we don't take product with it.

We're not going out there and laying out, "Here's the features and benefits of the things that we make. You can pick our sourdough or our multigrain or our brioche or our baguette." Mm-hmm.

We go in there and we say, "What kind of story are you trying to tell?

Like, what- Mm. "What is it that you're interested in doing?

What's food mean to you?

What's the way in which you wanna convey that food to your customer?

What are you not finding in the marketplace when you're going out?" You know, there's 10 million different baguettes in the market, and sourdough breads, and all of that, but everybody has something that they want a little bit differently.

Maybe they use a certain kind of oven, and so the characteristics of certain breads bake, toast differently in those ovens.

So look, we're using this kind of oven.

Everything's gonna be toasted.

This is the story we wanna tell.

Or it's about flavor or combination of ingredients or whatever it happens to be.

And so when we give people that permission to be able to share that, it really changes the conversation, right?

Mm. Because now it isn't about how much is your price per ounce, you know, it's not pack size or freight.

It becomes a question of, here's somebody that's listening to me, as my grandfather said.

Yeah.

Like, this is somebody who's willing to listen and willing to give me what it is I want, and, you know, price starts to fade away a little bit.

And then the stickiness of that relationship, you know, when Anderson has designed his own bread, it completely changes- Mm-hmm … the nature of that relationship because- Yeah you're invested now, right?

Yeah.

Like, wait, I got to form this.

I got to shape this.

I got to tell it h- how you want it scored, and the color, and the crust characteristic.

So the stickiness piece, when they get intertwined in that story, becomes pretty significant.

So you built this business over 30-plus years, and at some point you started thinking about taking on a partner or seeking private equity or otherwise.

Will you take us through your thinking and your process as to why that became part of the story, and what you were looking for?

Did you know what you were looking for?

Just walk us through your thinking at that time.

I think a little bit, like I mentioned, where I don't really know how to say no.

Um, I, I think curiosity was the biggest thing.

I always took the phone call.

You know, I took 25 years to start getting the phone calls, but you know, as we were heading into the pandemic, we were growing quite a bit.

We started to get the phone calls, and I always took them.

I'm always interested in how do people think about business in a way.

I mean, in, in many respects, starting a business at 24 is great, but it becomes very insulating, right?

It's not lonely in the sense that I have a great team of people and love going into work every day.

But you don't hear how other people are thinking about businesses all that much.

I mean, I did have the luxury of my family having sold a business to be able to lean on, but in many respects I didn't know what valuations meant in the bread business or in the food industry, certainly as a small manufacturer.

So I always took the calls to learn.

I will say in general, I didn't like any of the people in private equity that I spoke with.

It really seemed, I don't know what word to use It just didn't feel like me.

It didn't feel like it would fit our culture or fit who we were.

And that did start to change when I met, you know, so Jeff Smart was the partner at Shore who was part of the deal team in the transaction for us, and I met Jeff probably at the end of '22, maybe '23.

Just, you know, the initial outreach.

Then we had a call, thought it was interesting, kind of put it away, put it in my pocket He touched base.

I did have a chance to come to a Shore day.

Really enjoyed that.

Was just really impressed with the way they thought about things, the way they presented it, the volume of support, not only for me but for my team if we moved forward.

And so it got a little bit more serious.

They expressed a little bit more of an interest.

We expressed a little bit more of an interest and, you know, we sort of put a deal together.

Yeah.

And a lot of it, candidly, was curiosity in that as a small business owner, I was never gonna be a part.

I could certainly have kept going for 10 more years and then figured out what the exit was gonna be, but I have five kids, and I have a team of people, many of whom are very young leaders, who I really wanted to figure out what does that runway look like?

And my concern was if I waited till I was done to then sell, that I wouldn't be a part of that runway, that I would sell and leave and not necessarily knowing how that transition would go.

I could certainly hope for the best and certainly would've paid attention to that, but would've felt a little less control there.

And so I really liked the model that Shore presented, which was stick around, be a part of this.

You know, there is a potential opportunity at the end, both financially certainly, but it was really more curiosity- Yeah … to, you know, what is it?

You know, yes, I got to take some money off the table and put it aside, and that felt nice after having checked the bank balance at 4:00 AM for twenty-five years every day.

It was nice not to do that anymore.

But at the same time, it was an opportunity to then have a board of directors that have been an amazing group of people and to hire some new management that, you know, as a small business owner, I wasn't gonna afford a CFO.

I certainly didn't know what a CXO was or what they would do.

And shout out to Hillary.

She's been a terrific addition to the organization.

And Connor, the CFO, and, like, those are the kind of people that as a small business owner you just didn't think we could afford or even knew where to look or how to attract those kind of people.

And so the whole package that Shore has put together and the opportunity to not only educate my team and give them a little bit of runway on their own, but also for myself to learn and to be a part of this next phase and a part of something much larger than I ever would've done on my own, I think.

I'm curious if you happen to remember having been open to and curious enough to take multiple calls from multiple directions that, you know, for the most part you were feeling like, "Eh, I don't think this is right." Do you remember something about that early conversation with Jeff where you were like, "Well, maybe this is different"?

Just I feel like there's nuance in that relationship with the founder of getting to that next conversation and not shutting that down.

I'm just curious if you remember anything about that.

You know, I think one thing about Jeff that I really enjoy is, one, he's, you know, he's whip-smart, but he's also… he brings a humble curiosity to the conversation that I didn't get from a lot of other people.

Yeah.

So he knew a lot about the industry.

He obviously had studied it.

So he, he knew enough about what was going on, but he also didn't pretend to know what he didn't know and didn't feel like he had to prove anything to me and ask a lot of questions and was just curious and wanted to have a conversation.

And in that, it led me to be super intrigued by what the opportunity is and what they were building.

And then I think the Shore day sort of solidified it for me in the sense that- That wow, there's this huge organization, not all of whom are focused on doing deals.

Like, they're focused on creating great HR platforms for our team, and data, and security, and operations, and sales, and all of these things that we need help with, right?

And that we need more resources on and, and that our team is sort of starved for It's hard to give folks- Yeah … that additional education.

And so I think it was that whole package.

And I think another thing that we hear a lot of founders wonder about that I'd just love to hear, obviously you're still pretty new in the journey, but how has your role changed given the partnership?

Like, how, with bringing in a board of directors, with having investment teams involved now, you've been running the show on your own, and now you have a whole lot of other stakeholders who are part of helping guide the next version of this business.

How has your work and role evolved?

Well, I am the, I guess for lack of a better term, the interim CEO of the platform, which the intention isn't for me not to be the long-term CEO, but until we add an additional bakery, it probably makes the most sense.

And so in that role, there is a fair bit of weekly reporting, monthly reporting, and quarterly reporting.

And you know, it, it's a lot.

You weren't doing that when you were just reporting to yourself.

I was doing, you know… No.

I was filling out my little Excel bank balance every morning.

Like, like, "This is what I think is gonna happen in the next 13 weeks." you know, that document went from one tab to 58 tabs, I think.

Thank God we've got somebody who's doing the, all the tabs, but…

And it's managing and mentoring, for lack of a better term, the, the, the platform management team that we've hired, the CFO and the CXO, who are wonderful people, who I'll do everything in the world to help them be successful, and also my own team.

And so, yeah, it's different.

I mean, I'm traveling almost every week looking at potential targets.

I get to be involved in a lot of conversations that I never would've been involved in.

So it's been great.

It's been a little overwhelming.

And I'm learning a ton, which was sort of the idea.

I mean, that was why I did it, I think.

Like, if I've got five to seven years left, like, let's go out with a bang.

Yeah.

And, and I think it's a really neat opportunity, and that role will evolve again because we'll get a CEO eventually, and then I'll hopefully get to mentor and help them sort of learn the industry, depending on- Yeah … what their experience level is.

I hope that I can be involved in the acquisition piece all the way through and helping identify the right like-minded businesses in which to bring into the platform.

I mean, I have strong opinions about what that looks like.

My opinion is a part of it, but not, you know, the only one.

And so I'll fight for the things that I wanna fight for and, you know, we'll go through that exercise.

So it's changed a tremendous amount, but it's different, right?

Like, it's different in the backpack.

I always refer to owning a small business as wearing a backpack with, like, always one too many books.

And sometimes the math book hits you in the kidney, and sometimes the English book is really heavy this semester or something, and you never take it off.

If you're on vacation or sleeping, you know, you've got this backpack on.

So I feel like the backpack's different.

Like- Yeah … you know, it's still on there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't get, don't get me wrong.

But it definitely feels different.

Yeah.

The books aren't nearly as intrusive as they were before.

Yeah.

I love it.

When you're talking about partnerships for Companion and now you're, as you're saying, hitting the road and meeting some other folks in the industry, what is Companion looking for in the next partner, next two partners?

You know- Types of business?

Are they similar to yours?

Are they complementary?

Just any idea f- if somebody's listening to this and they're like, "Well, I've got a business that sounds…

Or my last 30 years sound a lot like Josh's," what are you looking for?

I think very similar to the way that I built the business, we are building the plane while we're flying it.

And so there is an element of that.

So I think I'm learning more that th- there's a combination of boy, it would be really easy to define here's exactly the target that you want, but maybe they're not for sale or maybe they're not interested.

And so there is an opportunistic nature to this whole thing- Sure … that I don't know that it can be so easily fit into a box.

I think I'm looking for like-minded people who care about their employees, their bakers, care about their customers, care about their community.

And if we can find people like that, I think we can make it work.

You know, we do believe that we make a premium, high-quality product, you know, high touch, great customer relationships, so we're looking for those kind of folks.

So I think there's an element of we'll see.

At the same time, it is definitely, you know, it includes flour, it includes fermentation, and includes making a quality product and taking care of your people and your customers.

And from there, we're gonna have to figure it out.

Which is not really an answer, but I, and I-

No, no.

It's, it's, it's the right answer, right, for where you are as a company, right?

And the, and the stage of the company.

You are still figuring out what that next partner looks like, and that's the way we build.

And a misstep on those partners is a tough one to recover from.

So whether it's values-based or team-based or culture-based or product-based, it's gotta be all of those things that make sense.

Yeah.

And five years seem like forever, right?

Until one year's gone already.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly right.

I'm curious, going back to sort of where we started, we were talking about storytelling earlier and at some point along the way you decided to start your own podcast.

Will you share why and what, what-

It's, it's the exact same thing.

Like, there's nothing I would rather do than sit here and have this conversation with you.

No, I mean really, and everybody's so busy, right?

So it's mainly been focused on St. Louis leaders.

I have a number of folks from the hospitality industry, but it isn't, it was never supposed to be like a trade podcast or something that was gonna garner me new customers.

I mean, it was really this opportunity.

I've been in business for 33 years.

St. Louis isn't a very big town, so you can build some credibility in the business community, and I guess I have that over that 33 years.

And so I just reached out to the people that I have the most respect for and admire and wanted to talk to them about culture and values and entrepreneurship and scale and growth and kind of all the things that I was thinking about and, and curious about.

And people just don't meet you for co- They're too busy, right?

But if you somehow you put a microphone in front of them, and they're willing to have a conversation.

And so we're 110 conversations in or something like that, and it's been a real joy to just have those conversations.

I've just wanted to have conversations with people that are the kind that I like to listen to, and I enjoy the Founders podcast and, you know, those kind of things where people are just talking about lessons from business and entrepreneurship and the challenges and the struggles.

And 'cause there's a little bit of misery loves company going on with that to a certain degree, but at the same time, that's how you learn things and you hear what's happening.

And we've actually taken a lot of things that I've learned on the podcast and turned them into the culture things that we do at the bakery, which has been fun, just asking people, "What are the unconventional things that you do for your people?"

And I remember talking to- Tamara Keefe, who's a friend of mine, she owns, uh, Clementine's Creamery.

So she's got an ice cream manufacturing business.

It's wonderful ice cream.

And one of the things that she does is she does Christmas pictures for all of her employees.

So she's got 80 employees.

They can come in, bring as many people as they want.

She hires a professional photographer and brings in a Santa, and she does Christmas photos.

So she just makes them available, and they can download them.

And we started doing it, and it's such a neat thing for people.

You know, people will come in with 25 family members, and they book little 15-minute spots on a, on a day that we're closed, and they come in, and they take these pictures.

And so I never would've thought about something like that if it wasn't for those kinds of conversations.

And actually, it's funny that one more was there was a gentleman on who had sold his business, who said he was never gonna sell his business, and then one day he realized that he could do more of what he wanted to do for the community.

He was a big Alzheimer's supportive.

And he said, "Look, in the end, what I wanna be able to do is support that community," because he had had some family members that had gone through a number of things.

And he said, "I realized that if I sold my business, I could do it more than I'm doing it today, and it changed my mind about selling my business."

And it was really right at the time that I'm talking to Jeff.

And like all these things are happening.

But it sort of kind of validates some of these things in your head as you listen to somebody in a completely different business, but it didn't matter, like that little nugget of things in those conversations.

And so I wish that I could just have more of those conversations.

It didn't have to always include a microphone, but it just- it's made it easier

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