224 | Sourdough, Community Health & Growth on Instagram with Ed Tatton
Our guest on the pod this week is Ed Tatton. Ed is the COO and Chief Baker at Ed's Bred, a plant based bakery in Whistler, BC, Canada. He is also the main photographer for the company's Instagram page which has 75K+ followers.
Resources mentioned in this episode are:
Starting a Vegan Bakery - Interview with Ed Tatton of Ed’s Bred
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Ed Tatton
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's guest, in our topic, I have one request. You could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to the show on, hit the subscribe button below review, it helps tremendously. Thanks so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Ed Tatton and our topic is Sourdough, Community Health & Growth on Instagram. Ed is the CEO and Chief Baker at Ed's Bred, a plant based bakery in Whistler BC, Canada. He's also the main photographer for the company's Instagram page, which has almost 75,000 followers. Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Tatton 01:04
Hello, Paul, how are you today?
Paul Zelizer 01:06
I'm doing really good. I'm thrilled to be here with you as I was working on my sourdough this morning.
Ed Tatton 01:14
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, gotta keep it healthy.
Paul Zelizer 01:18
I have one little mason jar. And my guess is you have a little bit more than that.
Ed Tatton 01:23
Yet people often think that today, but we don't, we don't actually maintain too much. And that's the amazing thing about sourdough, we generally keep about 500 grams. And that can sustain you know, a couple of 100 loaves every day, which is quite incredible, because we're constantly building it making the levon and everything like that. So yeah, that's why they call it a mother, I guess it can feed a lot of people.
Paul Zelizer 01:47
Nice. Well, we're gonna get into that in just a second. Before we do that Ed we’re called to Awarepreneurs. And one of the ways we like to get to know our guests, is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you personally use to resource yourself for this powerful work.
Ed Tatton 02:03
Totally. I mean, I've been a chef for over 20 years, and it's, you know, working in kitchens and bakeries is very hard on the body and, and the mind. So moving to Whistler living in the mountains, I mean, straightaway, that's amazing to be out. side, you know, everyone knows, if you get out in nature, it just makes you feel feel good, you know, walking amongst these huge old growth trees. But on a daily basis, I picked up yoga about five, five or six years ago, at an amazing studio in Whistler, good local yoga with with team, James and was going quite regularly to her sort of group, you know, yoga practices things and and then we're COVID here, we're just before that I just sort of had less and less time with the bakery, and started my own practice at home. And now, I do something called the magic 10s. It's 1010 poses, 10 breaths and each posture. And I've sort of added to that a little bit as well. It's supposed to take 10 minutes, but I'm on about 30 minutes every day. So yoga already felt, you know, strengthens muscles and loosens you up and just sort of lets you breathe and almost get ready for the day.
Paul Zelizer 03:18
Yoga is such a powerful practice. Thanks for sharing that. So 20 years in the restaurant space, and in the food space, you've been all over the world. And you've learned a thing or two, that space is known for incredible creativity. But it's also known for being a high stress environments, and hence there's a lot of alcohol, maybe other drugs involved. Talk to us a little bit about why food - why start a vegan bakery - and what it's been like to be in a environment that's both very welcoming of creativity, but also a whole lot of stress and acting out.
Ed Tatton 03:58
Yeah, absolutely.. I mean, I remember the first day my dad had a paper around when I was 12 years old, and I turned 13 And he was like, Look, you know, you obviously have a passion for food. So he took me to a local restaurant. And from there I was hooked really I was just washing dishes and helping around in a sort of small local seaside kitchen restaurant and I just fell in love with it. I love the energy. I love the sort of physical physical nurse of working and being part of a team I really enjoyed that I like team sports as well and, and I was hooked and then my my mom is a teacher. And she wanted me to stay in some sort of education and get some qualification so I went to college and a very good culinary college in the UK and train there for three years full time but I also worked in kitchens whilst at the same time as studying and then from there, I knew I wanted to go into the higher end so fine dining kitchen and got myself into a Michelin star restaurant. And that's really where that that was my sort of journey beginning really, I'd had this basic training in a small local restaurant and at college. And soon as I sort of hit this Michelin star restaurant, and knew that I wanted to stay in fine dining, where we use the highest and the best produce the most seasonal produce, supporting local farmers and making everything from scratch. And that's really eventually what sort of eisert sources like Japanese chef I chose my sort of niche might, you know, where I wanted to specialize was sourdough, and fermentation.
Paul Zelizer 05:40
And let's just, like kind of head it off at the pass, it's become kind of a meme during the pandemic. And I started my culture, and I started making kombucha, you know … not that I hadn't ever thought about it before done little tiny, like experiments that didn't last that long. But the the world kind of like got really interested in fermentation in a much more robust way. When the pandemic it, is that fair to say?
Ed Tatton 06:10
Oh, absolutely. 20 I think most I'd say, Yeah, at least a third of the world is making sourdough. Oh, totally blew, it blew up. You know, when you talk, you sort of mentioned Instagram following earlier, we saw a huge growth because I think everyone just had more time. And as we know, sourdough takes time, it's slow fermentation, you need to be near this hour, doesn't need to rule your day, but you definitely need to monitor it and be there every sort of 30 minutes to an hour to see where it's doing, maybe give it a stretch and fold or coil fold. So you need to sort of like you know, look after it and if everyone was on lockdown is kind of the perfect thing is is providing your, your your family, healthy, nutritious food, but it's also good for the brain because it's it's engaging you and is creating some sort of focus.
Paul Zelizer 07:03
So for those who already have some sense of sourdough, please hold on, we're gonna get into the business part and beyond what is sourdough, but if somebody's listening in, they're like, Alright, I know, it blew up during the pandemic, but like, Ed helped me out. What is sourdough? And like, why are people who care about healthy eating so passionate about it?
Ed Tatton 07:24
Sourdough is three ingredients. So it's water, flour, salt, it's the most basic, I guess, kind of process like food that we can just simply make, we've been making bread for over 1000 years. And unfortunately, in about 5060 years ago, that all got ruined, and it got a really bad rap for mighty white and these huge companies that just sped up and up and put loads of ingredients in there that we don't need. And a lot of people sort of, you know, feel that they should be gluten free and all these things. But sourdough would, our customers that come into bread, they can eat our bread because it's it's slow fermented, it's a lot lowering gluten. A lot of it is whole grain, which is good for us. And we try and use the best ingredients, we can use local organic flour, we use Vancouver Island salt, so very close to us in Whistler soap company on the island. They filter their water so there's no microplastics at all in the salt, which is something else that we're quite passionate about. So you know, if you're gonna make something so simple, why not use the best ingredients you can and it's done really well and it's and we've got we've got a great local community who support us and a great tourists that come into town and want to come and see us as well.
Paul Zelizer 08:46
Listeners, you know, if you've been listening for a while I'm really curious and interested in biohacking. When you combine these ingredients, very simple ingredients, the clearest water you can the highest quality flour, you can use organic and local and salt that again, you've sourced very intentionally it changes. It's like an alchemy, Alchemy, right? It's like an alchemical process that that with care and with the certain, you know, microorganisms that are working their magic, the end result is it's different. Isn't that fair to say?
Ed Tatton 09:26
Absolutely. Yeah, it goes through a lot of changes. And you can see it you know, from this, when you first mix the water and the flour together and it's kind of like this Shaggy, sort of mess, really, it doesn't have any strength or structure or anything like that. And we have to use you know, our hands and us all our senses really, you know, have to feel it. You have to smell it, taste it, you know through the fermentation. I worked a couple of days in in LA with an amazing bakers from lodge bread. And I've been making sourdough For years before but they tasted their dough through the fermentation. And I was amazed by this. I was like, you know, it was like a lightbulb moment. It was like, of course you taste the dough, you know, why wouldn't you want to taste how sour is you know it because every day it changes. It's not like, Okay, two hours we do this at three hours we do this. If it's a hot summer's day outside, it might move faster, or, you know, if it's a colder snowy day, like we get in the mountains, it might be going slower. So it's quite a complex process, really. But at the same point, like we said, it's three ingredients, but there's so many so many changes it goes through and so many variations that can happen with your basic sourdough recipe. So whenever people make it at home, I just say, you know, stick to that same recipe and make that bread 1020 times before you start changing flowers and changing the brand of flour that you use. Because that will change naturally as well. You know, when a big male company, they might be sourcing their wheat in the in the winter and then they move to the different crop from the spring. So there's so many variations that we can get into and that's why I'm so passionate about it and why it keeps me so interested in and engaged.
Paul Zelizer 11:17
Listeners from my simple biohacking research this simplest way I can language why I'm really passionate about it. Sourdough and the general idea of biohacking your carbs is instead of, you know, normally if we eat something like bread or rice or potatoes, it spikes our insulin right? But eat it tastes yummy And then .we get this big spike in our insulin where our body works really hard. Yeah, works to digest these carbs. And they come into our bloodstream in a way that isn't particularly helpful for the long haul. And things like sourdough. I also do simple things with white rice and cook it with coconut oil and then cool it, it turns it into a much slower burning carb and people ask me about like, how do you run these ultra marathons Paul? One of the main things is I biohack my carbs. So that's the simple like, from a biohacking perspective from a non medical person who's looked at this a lot. That's one of the things that's going on in terms of a health perspective, do your own research, but I feel pretty confident after a lot of research saying, here's one of the things that he might, you know, look into, if you're interested in all this,
Ed Tatton 12:29
Obviously, yeah, I mean, like we love using, like flakes like oat flakes and spelt flakes. And, you know, we know that porridge, again, is sort of slow releasing energy. And that's another great way to add into sourdough. You know, so it does give you this energy and also, like I said, it kind of has had this bread has had this bad rap but two slices of sourdough properly made naturally leavened sourdough can give you 25 to 40% of your daily protein. You know, people would never think that like, of that sort of food group. But sourdough and you know, when it's made properly can be a really healthy addition to your diet.
Paul Zelizer 13:08
So notice, listeners what I just said our topic today, sourdough and community health, and now we're going to get into the growth and what this has to do with business but Community Health Park, this simple chemical process, take something that isn't so great for us, you know, flour, and turns it into something that burns slower and what you just said at 25 to 40% of our daily protein needs in two slices of well made sourdough bread. So let's get into the actual how this works as a as a business. So you like been doing 20 years of food you get super excited about sourdough and fermentations. And you wind up in this little gorgeous place. A gorgeous place, right? Have Whistler and decided to open a bakery. And not just any old bakery, a vegan bakery in a town - what is it like a town of 12,000 people if I remember right?
Ed Tatton 14:08
Yeah, it's pretty crazy town 12,000 year round. And then I think we're up to about 3 million tourists per year can get pretty busy at certain times of the year.
Paul Zelizer 14:20
So a vegan bakery in Whistler, Canada, and give us a little bit of sense, like what was the thing? Why Whistler? Why there and like how did that come to be?
Ed Tatton 14:32
Totally Yeah. So Natasha and I we've been together for years and years and we traveled to Australia and New Zealand together and both worked in those in those countries in our separate professions. Natasha was an English teacher. And we went back to the UK. And we had you know, a little bit of money aside so we we bought a property, but we were always itching to get away. We were always itching to explore another country and it could A friend of mine while we were in Australia was in was in Whistler, BC, Canada. And he loved it. So we were like, No, we don't know much about it. Let's give it a go. So anyway, we planned it for a year or two, we eventually got over to Canada. And we thought we'd spent six months in Whistler. And then we'll go to Montreux on the East Coast. I trained in sort of French classic French, fine dining food. So I was like, I had a bit of very basic kitchen French, and, and six months there, and that was our plan. It was just a year out and then head back to the UK. And we just fell in love with Whistler, worked in a farm to table restaurant called out to Bistro, as the sous chef, and, and basically, eventually applied for a residency. And we stuck around. And I've been making sourdough for about 10 years previous to this, in various restaurants, started making the sourdough for friends, and to the taking it to the yoga studio that I mentioned earlier. And people were so excited. They were like, Where can we buy this from it? We want to buy your bread, we want to support you. So it got us thinking like maybe we could start a small business, you know, this could, in my mind attached in No, but I was thinking I could help fund, you know, a wedding. You know, we've been together and I was like, I think it's time I think it could be a really nice little project. So I spoke to the restaurant. And I said, you know, can I rent the space? Can I use can I make the bread in the morning one day, put it in the fridge, do my shift for the for the restaurant, the following morning, come in, bake the bread, sell it to the community. And it was all done through Facebook, it was very simple. They would just send me a message through the little Facebook group. pre order, no pre pay, it was all done on trust. And they'd come in on Thursday and collect it and I'd have a little book, take their name. If they say, Okay, next week, I'm to Sesame sourdough. And I'll just do one bread. And they would come back the following week and pick that up. And it works. So well. Eventually, after six months or so, again, the community who first said Where can we buy this, they were like, You need to open a bakery and like we want to get this more than just one day a week. So it's really driven and organically grew without us putting in a huge amount of money. But then when we realized okay, community wants us to open a bakery, we want to open a bakery together. We would like both vegan we would like this could really work. Nothing like it. We could open a vegan plant based bakery. You know we looked at different places where it might work. In the village north of the village. There's a town north of West Circle Pemberton. We looked everywhere. And eventually we settled on Creekside, which is where we live. So we could walk to work, which was perfect. We found a little space in Creekside and reopened Yeah, the first 100% Vegan plant based bakery on the Sea to Sky corridor. And we were received with open arms like I don't think the original customers realized that it was gonna be vegan. But that's kind of one of our USPS. It's kind of most bakeries, heavy on animal products heavy on butter and milk cream. And, and for me as a chef, I was like, This is my new challenge. This is me turning like an everyday carrot cake into something like there's going to be equally good or better or cinnamon bun sourdough cinnamon buns, which we've become really well known for sometimes sell out in under an hour. Because we just can't keep up. So it's just been a really lovely process. And I always say to people, when they ask for business advice, you know, just start small like, start it grow organically, maybe do a farmers market and test test out what your customers want, how much they're prepared to pay, you know, what are your like, your go to items like for us, it's sourdough cinnamon buns, and our country sourdough. And chocolate cookies. You know, we know that those things just sell really, really well. On a daily basis.
Paul Zelizer 19:10
There's so much there add so much. Time, how long do I go for? Great. So just just want a couple of things that I just want to kind of highlight or pull out of what you said and unpack a little bit. First of all, big shout out to Natasha, who is the CEO. And that's how we got here. And Tasha listen to another openers podcast episode reached out on LinkedIn. We've been connected in a while but hadn't talked very much. And we went back and forth super sweet conversation. Whenever somebody you know, connecting in a very relational way on any social platform or email or whatever I try to look at what they're doing is Oh my God, look at this. And I said what you all are doing on Instagram is awesome. Will you come on the podcast? She said Absolutely. And you might add not me and we got here. So anyway, just a big shout out to Natasha and helping us get connected in this episode for even happening.
Ed Tatton 20:09
Yeah, she's, she's an amazing lady. And yeah, I love the fact that we've gone into business together after all these years of, of resisting it, but we're very good, we work really well together and a good team.
Paul Zelizer 20:23
Then two other things I wanted some some vocabulary listeners and and one is something you said and another is something you implied. Let me start with the implied one first, when you were talking about first of all, I couldn't agree more listeners, you know about Paul's spiritual highlighter, it's like, imagine I had a big orange neon highlighter and circled what Ed said about starting small and like iterating your way, don't go out and spend the gazillion dollars to open the big group, you don't know quite yet what people will like and what they're excited about, what I heard you say is, you really spent some time and you started cooking, and you started offering it in this very informal way. The vocabulary that I like to use for that is product market fit. You took some time to like work with your community and dial it in and use very simple systems. And you had you didn't like quit your day job until you like got a sense, like a wow, people really want this. And not only were they want this, but as I get to know them. The sesame sourdough and the whole wheat sourdough, like that started growing and you were selling out of it. And people you knew if you made more, you could sell more. But then you also got a sense of who your customers were and what else they might Oh, if we made, you know, sourdough cinnamon bonds, they would sell out like crazy. And you said sometimes, and now that's product market fit, figure out what people want to buy from you. And then you can scale it, and it will go so much easier than if you don't have that product market fit. Wouldn't you agree with that?
Ed Tatton 21:58
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I forgot to mention, when I started bread, out of the restaurant out to Bistro, I was doing 30 loaves a week, you know, it was really small it was to friends and people that I knew through the local yoga studio. And then it just it really did grow from there, you know, 250 loaves, and then I was averaging 150 loaves, you know, from the small kitchen, running between two kitchens, because in the restaurant that expanded and they had two separate kitchens. So I had 10 loaves in one oven, eight loaves and the other just doing multiple batches throughout the morning. But it was great because I could speak to the customers I was selling direct. So that built a really nice relationship within that. But I did that for 18 months, this wasn't this didn't happen overnight, you know, bread started in 2016. So it was really good not just for the customer to get to know me and the product, but also for me to get used to making these much bigger quantities of sourdough and keeping the consistency within that. And I think because I had to use the smaller equipment and everything, it really keeps you engaged and, and educates you, which is which was really nice. It was already for me, it's really fond memories when I get to talk about which happens when I do these occasional podcasts, it really brings back sort of, you know, grounds you which I think is really important as well.
Paul Zelizer 23:31
So notice listener wasn't like they started an Instagram account, it blew up and then they have this awesome, you know, bakery and they're doing all these things that we're going to talk about be corpse and building out a team. All that's great, but it started with making really good bread and dialing it in and building the experience of when you put that bread in your mouth. Customer said, Oh, wow. And how can I get more? If you skip that step, doesn't really matter what you're doing. It's gonna be a harder build. Anyway, let's say that. The other language that you use that is the language USP. If somebody doesn't know what a USP is, or what that has to do with growing a business, what would you say about that?
Ed Tatton 24:14
Yeah, so our unique selling point is that we're vegan. It's, it's quite unusual to go to a bakery and be 100% vegan, they might have a brownie or a cookie, or you know, one savory item. Unfortunately for us, you know, we really, I don't really like the term but we are foodies. Natasha and I we love to go places like Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and try out these new you know, vegan restaurants and support them. Because it's so nice for us to go in these places and not have to worry, you know, are they going to accidentally make my my make my coffee with cow's milk or something like that. So, and we've seen that increase as well when we first opened our members a daily basis cast sometimes would come in and say you don't have real milk, you don't have real, you don't have dairy don't have this. And it's quite funny because from Natasha's side, she comes from teaching English, she's like, this does the language you're using doesn't make sense. Of course, we have real milk, we have real oat milk and real coconut milk, it's not the products on fake, it's just not what you're used to. And over the last two years, we've seen actually it change and switch and people come in and say, Oh, I heard you're 100% vegan, or what vegan options do you have, like the customers now demanding that and wanting to see more options, maybe they're not they don't call themselves vegan, but they're, they know that it's, you know, maybe one day a week, I'm gonna eat animal products. And the rest of the time when I eat plant based, I feel good, I have energy, you know, it's better for the environment, it's better for the animals. So it's really nice for us to see that grow. To a place where people feel more comfortable, and they're choosing to come and support a vegan company, and give you know, and and support us, which is really nice.
Paul Zelizer 26:15
Beautiful. So let's do that. In a moment, I want to come back and hear about how you've grown the company, you have a team, you're just about spoiler alert to get your B Corp certification right on, you have this fabulous thing going on Instagram, want to hear about all that. Before we get into that just want to take a break and hear a quick word from our sponsor. Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow? Both in terms of helping more people, and in terms of your revenue? If so, I'd like to talk to you about podcasting for a minute. And here's why. When I looked into what was going on, and who listens to podcasts, three really significant data points stood out. Number one, podcast listeners are what are known as early adopters. In other words, somebody brings a new idea to our attention, we say, Oh, wow, that sounds really cool. And then we try it much faster than the average population. Number two podcast listeners are what are known as natural leaders, people at work, and in our families and in our faith community and what we do for volunteer work, they say, Hey, you really know a lot about blank. How would you approach this. And number three, podcast listeners make more money, not just a little bit more, but quite a bit more. So think about that. For a second listeners, put those things together with your new idea. You see where I'm going with that. If you'd like to learn about how you can leverage this medium to grow your impact business aware printers has a podcast success team will walk you through every step of the way. Whether you want to be a guest, Ed's being such a fabulous guest today, or do you want to be the host of your own podcast? Or do you want to do both? You can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody in the podcast success team who sponsors this podcast. Okay, so let's get into the nuts and bolts. And second part of the show we'd like to joke about putting on our entrepreneur glasses. So it's starting to move, people are saying I want this and you start to open 2016 You open your own bakery. And like, here we are five years later, give us a sense, like what's on the ground? We'll get to the Instagram part in a second. But if like how many people work in the shop, how many loaves of bread do you sell? How many products do you have? Like the people? They do have tables that people sit in the shop or like just give us a sense of what's on the ground now?
Ed Tatton 28:55
Sure. Yeah. So maybe I wasn't clear. But 2016 I started bread at the restaurant. So it was very small, just myself. And Natasha would come in and help me for a couple of hours just serve customers. But it was at the restaurant we were setting out at the restaurant. So it was it was very grassroots. So we did that for a year and a half and then we actually closed down the business for a year while we built found a location and built the bakery. So the physical bread as we know it now the bakery in Creekside opened on March the 22nd 2019. And the first year we saw a great growth we built we started with five employees including myself, Natasha. So Natasha and I and plus three, another Baker, a barista, and a dishwasher. And then we got a couple other baristas, another Baker. So by Christmas 2019 There was eight of us on the team And it's quite a small, you know, it's 900 square feet. So it's quite a small bakery, two thirds of it is used for the bakery, the production. And just the front third is where the espresso machine is, and the bread display the bear system, and we had six stools. So live very limited seating. And we've got a beautiful shelving unit where we sell the local artisans, ceramics jams, we sell sourdough cookbooks, we have a few sort of branded T shirts and local chocolate dark chocolate, which is amazing. So it's really nice. And we rotate through that as well to keep it fresh. And it's nice sort of while someone's waiting for their coffee, they can just sort of have a browse and, and look, you know, who we're sort of supporting and collaborating with, which is really nice. And then we got to March, the 15th, which is my birthday. And we heard that the mountain was going to close down that the ski resort was going to close down because of COVID. And we'd kind of been following it in Europe and around the world what was happening, but it really did come to us as a shock. But we were a week away from our first birthday at the bakery. And we had to close the doors with the closed down like a lot of the the world it was I will never forget that birthday. So we say we sold everything, and we closed a couple of hours early, just because it was the unknowing, we wanted to keep our staff set, if unhealthy and and that's always you know, the one thing at the top of the list is keep you know, look after your staff look after your people. And we can come back to that as well and talk about sort of how we do that within the company. So we closed down. We had a meeting with my assistant Baker next day who's quite good at Squarespace. And we decided we needed to keep serving the community the bread, and we set up an E commerce shop through our website. And, and each week we would sell to the community and it was all it almost went back to how it started but a bit more professional in the sense that they could prepay, they could schedule a pickup as well. So every five minutes, we would have a customer come in at the front. And we would lock it off and there was a pickup table and we would keep our distance. And we would do that for 10 hours on a Saturday. So every five minutes. So it was full on it was intense. And to keep our staff safe. We just did it Natasha and I she did all the orders and packed all the bread. And I would bake almost the same amount of bread. We were baking in five days in one day. And it was it was huge. Like the Thursday, Friday, I would prep all the cookies and the bread and pizza dough and all these things. We simplified the menu. But we were doing huge amounts to sort of just support the community and let them know that bread as a business and Natasha and I were there for them and wanted to help in any way we could when the supermarket's were short with flour, we're like, Okay, we have these huge sacks of flour, people were making sourdough and cakes at home. Let's sell them organic flour at a reduced price, because we're going to rebag it in a brown compostable bag. And let's let's listen to the customers into our community and see how we can help them get through this really tough time. And we did that for three months. And then eventually, June came around and we were like, Okay, everyone starting to reopen, we need to reopen now and, and rebuild the team. A lot of our staff, it's a very international community. So a lot of them went back to Australia and to the to Europe. So we had to start rebuilding. And it was like starting from scratch again. And we had to do you know, everyone had to wear face masks. And we went through all that. So it's been now we're still in COVID times, we still have to have limited people in the shop. We don't have any indoor dining, but we still we've built that community back with we've shown them that, you know, they can trust us that we're not going anywhere. And it's been really nice. But now we've been in COVID as a brick and mortar business longer than before, which is quite surreal.
Paul Zelizer 34:25
Yeah. I was supposed to get on a plane on March 15 2020 and go visit my brother and sister in law medi in Colombia. So I'm very well cognizant of that time. You know, frames. Yeah. Well imagine what was going through your mind. Yeah, absolutely. I think they get on a plane or not. Anyway. Yeah,
Ed Tatton 34:46
totally. Yeah. I mean, we've just had, you know, 911, so 20 years ago, and it's like one of the moments in a way it's like, I think everyone kind of remembers where they were when it happened and how you felt You know, first for surreal times.
Paul Zelizer 35:04
So listeners again, I just want to highlight one of the things that you said, and just just kind of honor You. And notice, listeners, this all happened in many, especially bricks and mortar businesses were kind of caught flat footed and some didn't know how to respond at all and went out of business. And what I'm hearing you say, is very quickly did an assessment and tried to think about safety, but also how you could stay connected. Part of our episode title is Community Health, how you could stay connected and of service to your community, and found a way as a lot of work. And you had to reboot and try some new things. But within a very short amount of time, you were finding ways to get bread into your communities hand and flower, right and at a time, and it was hard to find within a very short window. So just notice that listeners, I hear that a lot that none of us can predict in these uncertain times all the various things that are going to happen when we're starting a business, but just props to you and Natasha. And notice listeners how quickly that they pivoted and found a way to stay of service to their community, as opposed to letting all the air out of their sails. And for a year just kind of twiddling their thumbs, right? You guys figured out a way to be of service and to stay connected in a very short time. So good work with that.
Ed Tatton 36:37
Yeah, thanks, Paul. I mean, for us, it really is everything. And in the bakery. Like you mentioned, when we came back from traveling in Australia and New Zealand, like we we had a bit of savings, and we managed to buy a house now, that house was over 100 years old. And we had that while we lived in Wister before we opened the bakery, and we had to, you know, we had to find funds to open this bakery, they didn't just, we didn't just go to the bank and say, hey, you know, give us half a million dollars or whatever, you know, so we actually sold our house in the UK and put everything into the tree and borrowed more. And I feel like that's really our driving force, is we've put everything into this business, we haven't just been given it by, you know, mommy and daddy, not there's anything wrong with that at all, like, you know, families invest in people all the time. But I think that's just really been our driving force is that we've really started from scratch, and, and almost have everything to lose. So it has to work. And like you said, like, we pivoted as fast as we could, within 24 hours of being closed, we had an online shop open. And I have to thank, you know, my assistant Baker, Bin Daly, who's an amazing guy, he's gone back to Australia now, but he worked with us for two years. And just the fact that he was like, right, guys, I can help you do this. And it's realizing your staff's potential and being like, okay, you can help us with this, because you've done it before in a previous business, he worked for a tattoo come and help them, you know, with their ecommerce and things. So yeah, it was just, it was an interesting thing. And it kind of sped everything up because we've talked about setting up ecommerce, but when sometimes when these situations come up, it's like, okay, this is the time, this is when we should do it.
Paul Zelizer 38:30
Great. So let's talk about Instagram. And before we do that, listeners, I just want to give you morning, do not go to their Instagram page unless you're okay drilling. Really, really, really good. Where along the way did you say, Oh, I think Instagrams going to be a helpful thing to this business and like talk to us about like, what were some of the earlier iterations and then we'll talk about what you're doing now.
Ed Tatton 38:59
It's funny, you know, sometimes people like you know, obviously go on your Instagram page and scroll back and then you'll see it in your notifications that someone's liked your first ever picture. And someone did that the other day. It's got an eye like 50 likes or something like that, because it's way down there. I don't have like loads of loads of photos because I do delete and try and keep stuff fresh but it's a picture of me in 2013 holding a plate when I was head chef at a restaurant and we want to to rosettes for the for the restaurant. That was a very proud moment. But it's just funny. I look a lot a lot younger than but I remember Yes, I must have started using it in 2013 and, and used it just plates of food in the kitchen and just for fun really. And then it really grew and I got to whisk so really in 2013 So there's a bit big, big jump there. And yeah, I just started enjoying taking photos of the bread and the creations that we're making and the mountains. And then And then, and once I started bread in 2016. So that was a really good way to let the customers know what the next week's bread would be. So when I started in 2016, out of the restaurant, it was just one bread, one sourdough each week, so there was no choice. But that also was great market research, because it was like, okay, when I do a sesame and poppy seed, love the sales or, you know, 100 plus pre orders, but maybe when I do a winner, I'm raising sourdough, I only have 70 orders, because for some of the mums, they were like, well, I can't make you know, their son or daughter, a sandwich for the school with that bread. But some of them loved it for breakfast. So using Instagram was was great to sort of show the customers what the following week's bread would be. And visually when they can see, I mean, I can say it's worn out and raisin sourdough. But if they can see that this bread is loaded with fruit and nuts, and they're invested to jump on and build one,
Paul Zelizer 41:11
as they have a common saying in the business world, that if looking back, you're not embarrassed, then you waited too long to launch. Right? Yeah. And I look back on the first episode of this podcast was, you know, we're now over 200. And I think today's that we posted was 217. Going back to number one with Vicki Abbott Dasco. Vicki was fabulous. I adore her and the sound, my interviewing skills, like they weren't terrible, but you know, I'm embarrassed. So I didn't wait too long, too long. So it sounds like you didn't wait too long to lean into Instagram.
Ed Tatton 41:50
Yeah, totally, totally. I think of, I mean, I'm sure you haven't deleted any podcasts because you've got to keep all of them. But that's the nice thing with Instagram. If you go back, you know, six months later, you're like, Ah, I'm pretty embarrassed by that picture. You can delete it, you know, and you can streamline it. I mean, some people have 1000s and 1000s of photos. But I'm a I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I like the way that the grid might look together and how two photos might look together and things like that. Colors and lines. And I really do enjoy photography, especially a food and the way you can make things you know, come together? Yes, it's a it's a beautiful medium to be able to use
Paul Zelizer 42:32
photography a little bit like, if somebody is wanting to get more traction or to use Instagram, to grow a business, what would be some of the like, very tangible things? Obviously, it's a visual platform, anything you could say about equipment? Are there strategies you've learned? Or like? What about the lighting? Or like, what are some of your top tips for somebody who is really interested in using Instagram to grow their business?
Ed Tatton 43:01
Yeah, I suppose to be consistent as you can. A sense of staying engaged, you know, if you're posting then you can reply to people's comments, and answering people's questions, direct messages, things like that. Just keeping it consistent as you can, you know, for me, it's quite easy because it is just always baked goods. But then I also like to show people you know what I do on my days off, and why they should come to Whistler because it is an amazing place. So I try and sort of like sell the bakery through Instagram and lure people in to come and try our products. But also, there's a ton of other reasons you should come to Whistler as well, because we have beautiful mountains for hiking and biking and skiing and snowboarding in the winter, for so many reasons to come. So almost try and see now our page is more of like a sort of tourist engagement of luring people in, but also a lot of the local community use it to see what specials that might be. And it's and stories are really good because they only last for 24 hours. So if I've got a special you know, we've been out in the forest a few days previous on our days off and pick some wild mushrooms. I'll take photos and videos of us picking those mushrooms together. And then two days later, we'll do a special lunch item, you know, mushrooms on on sourdough with caramelized onions and herbes and things like that. And it will just pull people in if they're waking up in the morning and they're like, I want breakfast or brunch, or I'm going to go grab that for my lunch today. You know, it's we can see direct sales from that as well because people are always on their phones, either to even if it's maybe checking their emails or the weather or something if they get a notification or they quickly flick on Instagram. And they're like, Wow, Ed's doing that today. I'm going to go there now because I know this is going to be limited quantities of that item.
Paul Zelizer 45:02
I want that for lunch. Can I have mushrooms on sourdough? For lunch, please?
Ed Tatton 45:08
Yeah, they're pretty they're pretty good.
Paul Zelizer 45:10
Oh my god, it's insanely good. Yeah, lobster
Ed Tatton 45:13
mushrooms, they're like, incredible. Mushroom that starts off as a as a mushroom and then gets taken over by this. Yeah, it's incredible how it just get the changes of the mushrooms aren't always like they started one and then they change into this other mushroom later in life. We can get chanterelles, there's so many different wild mushrooms you can pick in our area, it's it's a really fun thing to do on a day off.
Paul Zelizer 45:46
So one of the things that's like happening in your world, we talked about it before we hit the record button. That is you're working on your V core paperwork. Tell us a little bit about that.
Ed Tatton 45:57
Yeah, so we we know of B Corp, companies, Patagonia, Burton, and these big companies, you know, that we all know they're striving to, you know, be better companies, for their staff, maybe the materials that they use, you know, like Patagonia making T shirts out of recycled plastic bottles. But also, if you've read any of Patagonia books, you know, how they look after their staff. And then the smaller companies local to us. There's a brewery brewery on the Sunshine Coast, who are Beco and how they put money back into their local community and how they look after their staff. And that's something we really strive to, to become, we have great benefits for our staff health benefits, we do staff outings once once a month, where I might be going on to a movie together or hiking or, you know, going on some ATVs together. And then we pay our staff percent above the the living wage sort of thing. So we try and look after them financially. So that's something that we weren't really wanted to focus on. But where we source our ingredients from how much of it is organic, how how far away it is when we say shop local, but where some of the grain is coming from. So Natasha did a did a course getting to 80 to really hone in and find out if we could do this and what we needed to change to become a B Corp or improve on. So we're very close to handing in our application. And then we're hoping some time next year, I think it takes about six months for them to go through your application. So hopefully, you know, we'll be able to announce that next year. And and we can just strive to be better and better as the years go on. For for the animals for the environment and for our community.
Paul Zelizer 48:00
So exciting. Hope that comes to pass for you soon.
Ed Tatton 48:04
Yeah, fingers crossed. Yeah, I think with Natasha as the driving force, we'll definitely get there.
Paul Zelizer 48:12
One of the things I didn't know about you all and I probably need to hire you all and do this as you do consultations to be totally transparent listeners. I love sourdough. I've totally dialed in sourdough pizza. I dialed in sourdough to parties and other things, but my bread, a little bit like a brick. Sorry, that's just how it is right. One of the things I didn't know until we chatted before we hit the record button it is you somebody like me if like on my sourdough bread looks like a brick, you're actually available to help with that, aren't you?
Ed Tatton 48:46
Yeah, absolutely, if you head to our website, Ed's bread.com. So it's EDS br ed.com. And there's a baking and business and vegan business consultation, links that you can go there and you can book either myself on attached or both of us in for an hour consultation. And we can go through, you know, your personal business where you want to get to how we can help, because we're just always trying to sort of help and increase the amount of vegan businesses that are succeeding in this very sort of, you know, tough, tough environment. So, anyway, if we can, if we can help in any way and give our experience and any advice that we found works from from doing then, you know, physically working at our bakery every day. And we've had some really good success rates with with people that we've helped out. And we've helped out people, you know, in St. Lucia, in the States, in Europe. So we've, we've managed to reach a few people in the short time that we've been offering it
Paul Zelizer 49:51
and I can hang out and talk to you all day, but I wouldn't do that to you and I wouldn't do that to our listeners. listeners. There will be links in the show notes. to the bakery, website, Instagram to the consultation, etc, etc, will be in the show notes. Head if there was something you want to leave our listeners with either we haven't talked about yet it feels really important to this topic, or as a way to say goodbye, just want to leave our listeners with something you have learned about growing a values based business, particularly in these very chaotic times. What would that be?
Ed Tatton 50:30
That's a very good question. Therefore, there's so many like pieces of advice I could give. But I guess if you're passionate about something, and you really believe in your concept, then just go for it. And when I say go for it, like I don't mean investing, selling your house and, and, and moving country and doing everything like that, but just start small. And try not to have any regrets. Because if you've been thinking about it, that it could work, and you really believe in it, then just just go for it. because life's too short, like we always say, and and if you do it and it doesn't work out, then at least you know that you've tried. So just say that, and don't be scared of hard work. You know, I work far too many hours. I think a lot of people see Instagram and think that it's like this very glamorous life. But at the moment, I'm working 14 hour shifts, because it's very difficult to find stuff. But I do it because I'm passionate about what I want to achieve what we want to achieve, what our mission is in improving vegan baking. So don't be scared at the hard work. It will be hard, but I know. Eventually it will pay off.
Paul Zelizer 51:45
Thank you so much for being on the show today. This is just a fabulous conversation.
Ed Tatton 51:50
Thanks so much for I've really enjoyed it. So
Paul Zelizer 51:53
that's all the time we have for today's show listeners. Before we go one quick request. We love listener suggested topics and guests. Matter of fact, that's how this episode happened. Thanks again, Josh. If you have an idea about a topic or a guest that you think would be really interesting to do an episode on, please go to our website where printers.com Go to our contact page. And right there you'll see the three criteria that we use to kind of that is this a good fit? If you see those criteria, and you say this absolutely fit, please, please send an email with your idea. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care and these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.