Great Harvest Bread - Oakland |
| May 28, 2003 |
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I paid a visit to Great Harvest Bread in Oakland today. I had tested a couple of their breads
and was impressed by the quality, so I figured it would be a good idea to drop by and see
for myself how they do what they do.
I was met by the owner, Terry McDomough, at his shop at 5800 College Avenue. It was early morning
for me (8AM) but the bakery was in full swing, with loaves being measured out, dough being mixed,
and customers trickling in.
Terry is a personable
57-year old with the voice of a drill sergeant. He has the busy look of a man who has a lot to do,
and he is clearly passionate about his business.
He has worked in bread all his life, but most of it
as a salesman for Colombo and Parisian. Then two years ago he took the plunge and started a new
Great Harvest franchise.
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| The welcome blackboard |
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Although Terry was intimately familiar with the industry, running a bakery day-to-day is quite
different from selling bread. Today, for instance, is the first day this year that he has had
problems getting the water to the right temperature (63 degrees), so starting tomorrow he'll have
plenty of ice on hand in case this happens again. "Temperature is everything in this business", he says.
That includes the temperature of the water, of the oven (300 degrees), and the
weather outside -- business goes down when it's hot.
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His shop, right across the street from Claremont Middle School, is set in a new building, with
tall windows running all along the wall, giving it a lot of light, which is somewhat unusual -- most
bakers are condemned to a life away from the sun.
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Typical day
Business varies quite a bit during the week. Mondays and Tuesdays tend to be pretty quiet, whereas
Thursday through Saturday are a lot busier. "This place is hoppin' on Saturday", says Terry.
On a typical Friday, Terry gets to his shop at 4:30AM to start mixing the doughs, baking sweets,
and getting ready for the onslaught. The doors open at 7:00AM, and there is a first rush around 8AM,
when a lot of kids are dropped off at school and people start trickling in to work.
Things quiet down between 9 and 11, then the lunchtime
rush starts, and lasts until about 1PM. That's usually when the baking stops for the day.
Another quiet period, and a final spike around 4:30-5:00,
as people start leaving work and heading home. The doors close at 7PM, and by then it's been a long day,
although Terry usually leaves for home around 3PM (a ten hour day would do it for me too).
On a typical Friday, Great Harvest will sell around 500 loaves,
more on Saturday, which is the busiest day of all.
Great Harvest does not just sell out of its shop, though: it also goes to ten farmer's markets
around the Bay area. "It's not a bad deal because you get full price", says Terry, but it's very time-consuming,
and he hopes that some day he'll be able to cut back and get more sales out of the shop, to avoid
the overhead of the markets. In the meantime, he's got three employees doing nothing but the farmers market
circuit.
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| Measuring out the honeywheat |
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The business
Great Harvest Bread Company is a franchise -- the mother company
is in Dillon, Montana. Terry decided to create a new franchise because he liked Great Harvest. "They're
pretty hands-off", he says. Some of their requirements are that only approved wheat must be used, and it must be ground
fresh every day (although it is not always fully used the same day).
Every six months, Great Harvest requires him to send in a loaf of honey wheat for quality assurance.
He's had good grades so far, and the company has made suggestions for improvement every time (I guess they have to
justify their licensing fees somehow).
Great Harvest does most of its business in breads (about 75%), but also has a number of sweets such as cookies,
scones and rolls, very popular with the kids. Terry notes amusedly that a lot of health-conscious
adults pick up a whole wheat bread with a scone. Maybe that's like having a diet Coke with a Snickers bar --
they cancel each other out.
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Need some honey? Two 155-gallon drums of what makes bread sweet. |
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Ingredients
Talk to Terry about ingredients, and you'll get an earful, especially about honey. Honey white bread and
honey wheat bread are the two staples of the shop, and the bakery uses about a thousand pounds in a typical month.
But over the past couple of years, the price of honey has been skyrocketing, from around $450 per barrel to
well over $1,100 nowadays. He keeps looking for new, reliable suppliers, but it's been a struggle.
Great Harvest uses a lot of different ingredients for all their specialty breads, so as you walk around the
store room, you'll see pine nuts, millet, sacks of raisins, and of course barrels of honey. The fruits
(like olives and tomatoes) tend to come out of the can -- it's just too much trouble to get them fresh.
As I was walking through the backroom, I saw a large bowl of greens and olives all mixed up and ready to
be made into a couple of dozen loaves. This kind of interesting ingredients is what makes Great Harvest
a fun place to visit -- every day there is something different.
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Wide variety
On any given day, you can find anywhere between five and ten different breads, with such fun combinations
as apple crunch (today's special bread), pecan swirl, spinach feta, or cheddar garlic sesame. For a complete
list of June's selection, see the schedule.
So far, all the recipes for the breads come from the mother company, but Terry says he can do his own if he wants to,
and he might do that in the future. For now, though, all the recipes have been a success, so he doesn't see the
need to change.
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Future
Terry's near-term plan is to expand into sandwiches. He already has figured out how to rearrange the shop
to make space for this new venture (he'll need to install a freezer).
He'd like to go on for another five years before he retires, although
he may revisit that when it gets closer. His wife Marcia, who worked for AT&T for 30 years and is now retired,
stays at home and does the books. Overall, Terry says, being your own boss is the best part. "My back hurts,
but my head feels good". The flip side, of course, is that he is the boss, so anything that goes wrong
is his problem.
As I left, I picked up the signature honey wheat bread, as well as the specialty bread of the day: spinach feta.
Stay tuned for a review. So far Great Harvest is the number one bakery out of 22 reviewed on this site. The staff
is friendly, the facility looks good (it has to -- passersby can see the entire backroom through the large windows),
and (most important) the breads taste great.
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The proud crew: Terry, Angela, Sheila |
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