Last December, right around Christmas, I sat down and started sketching out ideas of how I envisioned our future shop to look like. I took influences from all the great bakeries I had visited and dreamed about visiting; kept in mind all the aesthetic elements that I would love to be surrounded by while at work every day; and most importantly, I had to try my best to foresee the functional totality of the space because surely, as a business, we would change, grow, and mature over the years within these walls. We had limited square footage to work with and I was determined the make the most use of it. After a couple of rough drafts, I sent off the sketch to my architect, Joe, and then contacted my friend Jeremy Klonicki of MainFraiM to take on the custom build-out work for the front-of-house and......well, the rest is history.
Eight months later, in July, a week after we opened, I took a snap of our sweet Ella at work (pictured below). At the time, I had completely forgotten about the sketch. When I found it much later, gathering dust under a big pile of papers, I couldn't believe my eyes - I thought to myself, "Wow, it actually turned out the way I imagined."
I've constantly lived in the future for a very long time before we opened the store. Planning for the future of the bakery, the future expenses of the build-out, the future menu, the future expansion of our offerings...even the making of sourdough bread or laminated pastries is a three day process, so that had me operating in a perpetual future-state work mode. Always working ahead meant I was typically well prepared and there was always a plan - so life just kinda felt calm and controlled.
This week marks the fourth month since our opening and, oh man, it has been a wild ride. Exceptionally long sleep-deprived days and steep learning curves; many moments of panic as I've tried my best to learn on the fly to manage a new business and a growing team; mountains of paperwork and ill-timed maintenance issues. For a while there, my priority task for every day was just to get through the day...forget emails, forget newsletters, forget anything that didn't have to be done for right now because I suddenly found myself wearing so many different hats that ended up really weighing me down. The future had flown out the window....until now.
I work with some amazing people (this pic doesn't even include all of them!) They are just so talented and committed. What we produce at the bakery takes very specific skill that took me a very long time to gain....and with a lot of hard work and focus, my team has mastered them all in a crazy short period of time. I haven't even baked a loaf or rolled a croissant lately and the case is filled to the brim by the crew with exceptional loaves and pastries every day. To say I feel proud is an understatement. So now because of these amazing people, I get to plan the holiday season special offerings and test recipes for soups and sandwiches that'll be on the menu soon. I get to go back to planning and working on the future again. I get to work and collaborate on fun projects with other great local businesses.
For years now, we have had a wonderful friendship and working relationship with our neighbors at the Prairie St. Brewing Co. As you may know, one of our best-selling loaves - Baker & Brewer - is made with spent grains from their brewery. Bread and beer are natural companions because of the similar ingredients and the fermentation process that each go through. Knowing this, we had always talked about how awesome it would be to close that loop and 1) Brew a beer with bread, 2) Take the spent grains from the beer to bake bread and other goods with them, and, 3)To take that bread and brew the beer again. We also talked about how the perfect beer to represent C&C would be a beer that tastes like bread...
Pinch me now because that "talk" became a plan and the plan became a reality because those crazy-cool-talented guys down the street from us got it done! When I tasted the beer, I thought to myself, yet again - "Wow, it actually turned out the way I imagined." They even came up with the idea of designing the label similarly to the tile floor accent piece which has kinda become a memorable aspect of our shop.
This limited special edition collaboration brew is being released tomorrow - Friday, Nov 8th!!! They will be available for sale only at Crust & Crumbles, Prairie St. Brewing Co, and Artale & Co. To celebrate the launch, we are planning on having ourselves a little bit of a pizza & beer party from 6-9pm. We'll be baking up pizzas starting at 6p and our buddy Reed from Prairie St. will be by at 7p to sample out the "Bread Beer". We hope you come out and join us - now that I don't come to bake stuff in the middle of the night and leaving to go off and sleep during the day, I'd love to actually see you all at the shop!
Like writing to a long-lost friend, this post has gotten a little long with all the updates I wanted to include. I'm sorry about that, you guys, but thank you so much for reading it anyway. I'm so happy to be back.