Banking on KC – John Friend of Farm to Market Bread Company
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is John Friend, the owner of Farm to Market Bread Company. We're glad to have you here, John.
John Friend:
Thanks for having me.
Kelly Scanlon:
So often when you've got an iconic brand like Farm to Market, you go to the store, you see it on the shelves, throw a loaf or two in your basket and move on. But with so many brands like yours here in Kansas City, there's such a story behind them. And today I want to uncover some of that story with you, find out about its origin. I mean, your dad and another guy started the company. What was their vision? Why did they decide to launch into a bread company?
John Friend:
My father, Mark Friend and his partner, Fred Spompinato, were working at a commercial sourdough bakery in Kansas City, Kansas, and they wanted to go in a different direction, so raised about $10,000 between the two of them.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay. So 10,000, that's all... Even in 1993, to start a bread company-
John Friend:
They had $10,000 cash and took a loan out for 10,000.
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, okay.
John Friend:
So $20,000. They bought an oven, a mixer, and they traded bread for rent out of the back of the Classic Cup in Westport.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay.
John Friend:
Which is now a Thai restaurant, it's been a couple of different Thai restaurants. And slowly grew from there. They delivered out of their cars. Eventually were able to hire a baker. Target was grocery stores, retail, and that's where they really got going. I think Marsh's Sun Fresh was one of the first stores they got into. Another big break for them was Miner's Grocery Store, which is now a Cosentino's Market and still one of our biggest accounts today. My father had had a couple attempts at opening bakeries before, more retail focused, and so his third time was a charm.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, I remember 1993, I remember when this came on the scene and it was a big deal. There was a buzz. People were talking about it and it was a hit.
John Friend:
Yeah, there was a bubbling artisan bread movement that kind of started in the late eighties, early nineties. Farm to Market was the first in Kansas City, and I like to think of Fred and my father as kind of the godfathers of artisan bread in Kansas City. Fred went on to open Fervere, which was at 17th and Summit, and then I think later got purchased by Ibis. But there's really great bakers in Kansas City and in Lawrence there's some great bakers, but people were tired of commercial Wonder Bread and wanted bread with flavor and made with natural ingredients and integrity.
Kelly Scanlon:
How did you get involved in the company? Did you kind of grow up with it or what was that relationship like?
John Friend:
I was eight when it started, and I just always wanted to run my father's company. So I have pretty much, with a couple exceptions, have only worked for Farm to Market my whole life. So my first job was the summer before freshman year of high school. I worked as a baker, then I worked as a packer, and when I turned 16 I started delivering bread and I managed drivers, worked on the merchandising and grocery side for a while. And then after coming back from college started to take over more management responsibilities.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sure. And so now you're the owner. Tell us about that intergenerational transition. A lot of times that's not successful. Tell us about yours, if you don't mind.
John Friend:
Yeah, sure. My father passed away a couple of years ago. He was dealing with cancer, so it wasn't a sudden thing. We knew it was coming, so we were able to plan for that. I have one sister and she's never had any interest in running or really working at the company, and she lives in Chicago, so made things simple for us. She is a shareholder in the company, and it just makes things simple.
Kelly Scanlon:
So you were, because of the circumstances, you were able to plan for that transition and it was a smooth one, and there was another sibling involved. However, that sibling... Because those are all factors that often delay a transfer or make it a lot more challenging at the very least.
John Friend:
Yeah. Plenty of time to plan and everybody was on the same page.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's fast-forward to today. You have expanded from the original, well, you've expanded the footprint too. I forget how many tens of thousands of square feet you have now, but you've got a much bigger operation. But you're dealing with really a craft, this is artisan bread making. How do you preserve the artisanship yet grow?
John Friend:
We started in the back of a restaurant in Westport, moved to Waldo to maybe a couple of thousand square feet and slowly took over that space, maybe 5,000 square feet. Then we were in the Crossroads, we had 10,000 square feet. And now we are in Kansas City, Kansas, actually a block away from where my father and Fred Spompinato were working at a commercial sourdough bakery to 33,000 square feet. Before we had our last move, we only did fresh delivery. So that was one of our principles is that we wanted to make sure there's always fresh bread on our shelves because another principle is we don't want to put preservatives in our bread. We want it to be natural clean ingredients. And then another principle we deal with is to make good quality flavorful bread, it takes a lot of time so long fermentations, and you're dealing with wet sticky doughs, and so those doughs can't go through a lot of automation machinery.
There's certain machinery that you can use that we will use as long as it doesn't compromise our quality. So those are a couple of principles we've stuck to is all natural ingredients and not implementing automation or machinery that would affect our quality. But since we moved to our last building, we gained access to freezers. That has allowed us to start to ship outside of Kansas City without having to put preservatives in our bread or affect our quality, and we've been super impressed with how well freezing has worked. And you can now buy Farm to Market sourdough in Costco's in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota.
Kelly Scanlon:
So fresh to frozen, you haven't noticed any difference in quality and it's really been a game changer for you in terms of your reach?
John Friend:
Yeah. Five years ago we would've never even considered it, but once we started testing it, we were so surprised how well it works and allows us to reach more people.
Kelly Scanlon:
And you are very particular because of the artisanship involved and because of the quality standards that you have. You are very particular about the associations you make with your suppliers and so forth, but you're very excited about a fairly new one that's come up, tell us about that.
John Friend:
Within the last year, we started working with Farmer Direct Flour. It is a co-op of farmers, all Kansas family-owned farms, and they use regenerative growing techniques and are committed to farming techniques that are good for the environment. But most importantly, their flour is really great quality. When we switched to them, we instantly noticed an improvement in quality, but the name Farm to Market, we always had the dream and goal of being able to have farms grow flour for us, have our own specific varieties. There is a lot of push and pull in the greater industry. Some bigger factories are looking for certain qualities in wheat versus artisan bakers who are looking for other qualities and aspects and pricing, and all these things ebb and flow, and you end up with the flour that you get. But Farmer Direct is committed to quality and it's all identity-preserved. We can actually go to the farm and see where our flour has grown. But for us, this is the closest we've been able to get to having that connection directly with the farmer, but we instantly noticed an improvement in our quality.
Kelly Scanlon:
Talk to us a little bit about some of the challenges that you've had to overcome. Entrepreneurs always make everything sound easy, but the general public only sees this beautiful swan above the water and they don't see the frantic paddling below the water. So tell us about some of the challenges that you've overcome.
John Friend:
Yeah, probably the most recent biggest challenge was COVID. In the early 2010s or so, our business kind of started to shift more towards restaurants, so we were making buns and rolls and custom products for almost every restaurant in Kansas City.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, and they were adopting the farm-to-market mantra too.
John Friend:
Yeah, farm to table-
Kelly Scanlon:
Farm to table.
John Friend:
... Was huge. And fresh... And people just wanted fresh quality bread. So that became 60% of our business leading up to the pandemic. And so when the pandemic hit most restaurants and other businesses, we lost over 60% of our business overnight. Those two years were a struggle as we tried to keep all of our employees on and pivot. Grocery business did grow, but we weren't able to pick up 60% of our business over that. But once summer of 2022, going into 2023, it was just like drinking from a fire hose. Everything came back, and then dealing with hiring had been an ongoing struggle. Luckily, we finally started to get a good solid group of bakers and employees.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's just shift that a little bit to learning moments. As you think back about your experience, really lifetime experience with Farm to Market, can you share a key lesson that you've learned as a business owner that might resonate with other entrepreneurs
John Friend:
Staying true to your principles. For us, it's not taking shortcuts, not compromising quality. So as we continue to grow, we haven't changed our sourdough recipe. We're still giving it eighteen-hour final fermentation, we're just doing it at a bigger scale, but keeping our batch sizes small. Often our bakers, they see things as hard, but we do things because they are hard and that's how we get quality. So just staying true to what got us to this point. Otherwise, we're just expensive, bad bread, and we want to be good quality bread.
Kelly Scanlon:
Absolutely. Well, speaking of that, quality bread, what are some of the fan favorites?
John Friend:
Our San Francisco style sourdough is our top seller by far. And then we do a... We call it chili cheese sourdough, jalapenos and cheddar in the sourdough. Our grains galore is also a fan favorite, and we sell a lot of baguettes.
Kelly Scanlon:
You have some specialty breads too that you only make during certain times of the year, and one that's coming up that I'm really looking forward to is the... I can't remember what the name of it is-
John Friend:
Is it Chocolate Cherry or-
Kelly Scanlon:
No, that's for Valentine's-
John Friend:
Irish soda bread?
Kelly Scanlon:
It's the Irish soda for St. Patrick's Day. I love that.
John Friend:
Yeah. That is a fan favorite too. Irish soda bread typically does not have a lot of flavor. It was made by poor Irish people during the famine with baking soda, and it didn't have a lot of flavor. Ours is souped up a little bit-
Kelly Scanlon:
It's got some raisins in it.
John Friend:
Raisins and turbinado sugar. So it's the modern-day version.
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, it's really good. I'll have to tell you that. But you mentioned the chili cheese or the-
John Friend:
Yeah.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, during COVID, we were having some groceries delivered by Chateau. And they used to feature that, and that's how I got introduced to that. So talk to us about some of the collaborations you have with other businesses here in Kansas City.
John Friend:
So Chateau has been a longtime partner of ours. Their business really took off during the pandemic, the grocery delivery side. We've done some partnerships with them in the past. We've worked with the Roastery in years past. We kind of got started around the same time. Boulevard, we used to make a Boulevard wheat beer bread. That was really fun.
Kelly Scanlon:
Farm to Market is deeply rooted in Kansas City. How has being a part of this community really shaped your business?
John Friend:
We wouldn't be a business without the community. We kind of started in the Midtown area with Westport, Brookside, Marsh's Sun Fresh, Cosentino's, Miner's Grocery Store, which is now Cosentino's Brookside Market. We would be nothing with our community. We do everything that we can to give back. We have soup kitchens and food pantries that come by seven days a week to pick up our overrun and our day old breads. Farm to Market is nothing without the community, and it's an honor to be able to feed Kansas City.
Kelly Scanlon:
You mentioned that at one point coming out of COVID that it was very difficult to find employees. So how do you do that? Put COVID aside and put the employment situation aside that we were throughout the country, it was hard to hire in many cases there for a while. You've got a special qualification though, but is artisan bread making a dying art? You hear about that with artisan craftsmanship in so many different forms, you hear that they're dying arts. Has that been an obstacle to hiring your bakers and creating a team?
John Friend:
Yes. Most of the bakers we hire don't have experience, so we do most of our training on hand, but we do need the experienced bakers as well to be able to do the training. But for the most part, even our production manager, he's been with us for over a decade. When he started, he had no baking experience, so we were able to do most of our training in-house. But anytime somebody applies with experience, we usually try to hire them whether we have an opening or not.
Kelly Scanlon:
Exactly. Well, as you grow, as this business becomes bigger and bigger, at some point every entrepreneur has to let go of certain things and then let the people that they've hired do those things. But one of the things that is hard to transfer at times, it's not always a skill, it's the passion. It is the passion for what you do. It is the commitment to the quality standards that you have. How do you manage to transfer those kinds of... People might call them intangibles, but they're so relevant to the success of your business. How have you been able to keep those types of things afloat?
John Friend:
You try to develop a strong culture, let people know from day one what you're about, what makes us successful. It's hard. We struggle with taking shortcuts, whether it's letting the bread only sit for two hours and 40 minutes instead of three hours. All those little things will add up, and so you just have to instill a strong culture and remind people every day what we're doing.
Kelly Scanlon:
Where do you see Farm to Market Bread Company going from here?
John Friend:
Our goal is to become America's favorite sourdough. Five years ago, I don't think we would ever think that was possible, but it's amazing how things change, but that's where we're headed. In addition to our relationship with our suppliers, we have a great banking relationship with Country Club Bank. Super fortunate to work with them. They've been awesome.
Kelly Scanlon:
And we're so glad to have you here to tell your story. John, it's an amazing business, an amazing group of products that you have, and we're so excited that you found a way to share this with the rest of the country. So thank you for coming and telling your story and for being here today and for all you do in the community to help. As you said, feed Kansas City.
John Friend:
Thanks for having me.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to John Friend, owner of the Farm to Market Bread Company for being our guest. On this episode of Banking on KC. John's story highlights the dedication required to sustain a family-owned business, the value of maintaining quality and preserving artisan craftsmanship, and the importance of building strong community connections. At Country Club Bank, we take pride in supporting Kansas City entrepreneurs like John, who enrich our community not only with their products and services, but also with their passion and commitment. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.