Hi! I feel like I’ve been absent and well, I feel very ok about it. We’ve all been hit with a strange reality these fast few months and it’s served me as a time to pause and rethink some things. I’ve hustled a lot in these last 10 years of my baking career. I’ve kept going in times when I probably should’ve taken a break. I’ve worked to avoid some personal things. And if I’m honest with myself, I’ve worked and worked and WORKED to prove to a lot of the wrong people that I was worth something in this industry. But this industry is shifting. In a lot of ways, it’s a very positive and needed shift. In other ways, the future of how food gets to diners is very up in the air, and that is terrifying. So for these last few weeks of this new and daunting time-off from baking, I’ve had some reflective time. I’ve never had a paid opportunity to step away from work and just BE and it has only enhanced and sharpened where and how Bread is Good moves forward from here!
For the last year and 3 months, I’ve been so so so incredibly lucky AND GRATEFUL to bake out of Ammazza and grow the Bread is Good brand. I’ve learned a lot, baked a lot, grown a lot, created an amazing community, and ultimately found a lot of clarity and peace in where I want this rogue bread brand to go. Simultaneously, as I’ve been baking and growing, I’ve been collaborating alongside PERC Coffee Roasters out of Savannah on a coffee shop / restaurant project here in Atlanta / East Lake. Close to a year ago, the owners of PERC: Philip + Alan, approached me regarding their new proposed project in Atlanta and asked about my interest in being involved on the food side. In the last few years, I’d become weary of partnerships, grown tired of men (sorry, but thats the way it’s been) making promises or wanting you to be apart of this team blah blah only to find the reality is a toxic soup of abusive and oppressive shit. But in my first conversation with the men of PERC, I felt very heard, very seen, and very excited, and the relationship as only grown stronger since then. From day 1, I have felt a respect from their team that I’ve not experienced anywhere else, and I’m so grateful for that.
During the past year, as the Bread is Good brand has grown and then literally swollen to a bursting point during the initial Covid months lol, I’ve worked with PERC as a consultant to the restaurant buildout advising on everything from kitchen design to hiring to permitting to menu production. And here we are, getting set to open a coffee shop with a full pastry, breakfast, lunch, and brunch menu!
So , as PERC Atlanta gets ready to open, where does that leave Bread is Good?? PERC is set to open in the coming weeks: health inspection pending and a bit of needed kitchen training and inventory stocking. I have begun my time as a full time employee of the PERC team and will continue to create, train, manage, and oversee the daily pastry offerings as well as our full breakfast, lunch, and weekend brunch items (which I am truly truly so excited about). You will probably find me working the line most days as I am the most excited about taking this good bread + pastry I’ve honed in on and putting good local and exceptional ingredients on said good bread. I’ve had the insane honor of working with my girl Olivia McCoy who will begin taking a baking leadership role within the kitchen to help expand our bread and pastry offerings. I’m so excited to work alongside such a creative, kind, energetic, young baking force… she is a force y’all!
From day 1, PERC has understood and very much respected my need for autonomy and the need for my baby, Bread is Good, to continue to exist and thrive. So Bread is Good is not going anywhere. Bread is Good, which is an LLC, will continue to grow and operate as the umbrella for all that I do which includes this project with PERC. BUT please note: the food at PERC is not Bread is Good. This isn’t Bread is Good in the back of house and PERC up front, no no, we are 1 unit and it is PERC Atlanta. Think about it in terms of laminated dough. Bread is Good is the sexy yummy well experienced high fat butter folded into the well milled high quality flour and whatever else (that’s PERC), and we are laminating together at the right time and temperature to form a lovely delicious mind-blowing croissant.
We are each coming together with our respective skills, passions, and expertise to bring you, the customer, an exceptional product, experience, as well as a profitable and sustainable business model to properly employee a hard-working staff and maintain a living wage for the long term.
From here, I will be working full time with Perc to get our bread + pastry game solid as well as our menu offerings and continue to evolve and grow Bread is Good. Bread is good has very much become more of a personal bread brand and I want to continue to evolve it as such. I will be working on a website re-do (thanks so much to the several very unnecessary and annoying comments regarding my website lol, I didn’t ask). I am looking into local makers to diversify my BIG merch offerings: think totes, loaf bags, mugs, etc… swaggifying the Bread is Good brand. I will be amping up and diversifying my teaching and workshop routes (moving it to online somehow), and I will be working on more bread writing. Finally, I will be working to full-circle Bread is Good back to my initial reason for baking : access for all to good food and cooking knowledge as a way of supporting, improving, and enhancing underserved communities through mentorship work, after-school programs, and research and implementation of nutrition + mental health connections.
The future future is still open and yet to be determined, but as I work with PERC to align our vision and goals, there will come a day when a Bread is Good bread house will be on the horizon. A cool place with a chill walk-up window and a dreamy big open kitchen space to teach, to retail, to wholesale, to meet + greet, to connect through bread and to literally break bread together… when we can. The horizon is so bright y’all!!! Thanks for reading and we can’t wait to serve you so so soon!
Cheers + Bread,
Sarah
