Fancy and Delicious Baking Company
Location
Fancy and Delicious Baking Co. is a small-scale (and currently underground) bakery that emphasizes affordability and the quality of homemade goods. We will use as many local and organic ingredients as possible. We taught ourselves how to build clay ovens and bake bread and we want to share this information with our community, so that good, healthy food can be in everybody's hands, and stomachs.
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Maura
Last Name
Pellettieri
Website URL
Organization
Fancy and Delicious Baking Company
Country
United States, NY
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Fancy and Delicious Baking Company
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(716) 994-8340
Organization Address
153 Eaton St. Buffalo, NY 14213
Is your organization a
Not registered
Organization Country
United States, NY
Your idea
Name Your Project
Fancy and Delicious Baking Company
Country and state your work focuses on
United States, NY
Describe Your Idea
Fancy and Delicious Baking Co. is a small-scale (and currently underground) bakery that emphasizes affordability and the quality of homemade goods. We will use as many local and organic ingredients as possible. We taught ourselves how to build clay ovens and bake bread and we want to share this information with our community, so that good, healthy food can be in everybody's hands, and stomachs.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Instead of a storefront, we want a yellow room with stacked bookshelves and couches. Instead of worrying about the competition, we want to teach our customers to do what we do. The foundation of our venture lies in our belief in sharing the information that has made us, and will continue to make us successful. An educated community is a strong community. We want to see the Buffalo economy open up, and not just open up, but change. If you give us money for bread, we’ll be very grateful. But if you don’t have money, we will take helping hands, skilled and unskilled alike. We have bartered our bread for business cards, help with electrical wiring, and even back massages, and we are richer for it.
We all need to eat, but a community that can feed itself is doubly strong. Fancy and Delicious knows how to bake healthy, delicious bread and build earth ovens to bake it in. We want to share that information with our community. The way we see it, the more well-fed kids there are, the more educated adults there’ll be. And, the more well-fed adults there are, the more energy there’ll be to fuel good work, fight the good fight, and fight despair, which is even more dangerous than unemployment and the cold. We’re not just talking about enough food; we’re talking about good food with good vibes. We want more than the minimum. We want hope.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
A lot of people are already starting to think about alternative food choices--moving away from the chemical filled stuff available from the supermarket, or the produce that travels to us from halfway across the world--but they don't always know what the next step is. We are offering people a space to explore and talk about new options--to join in working on our ideas, and to explore their own. Each time we sell a bread-share, we are engaging people, and helping them think about options and choices. Farmer's markets are a great alternative food option, but they are not always accessible to people--because of distance, time, transportation, and even a lack of knowledge of their existence. But the people in our neighborhood don't have to seek us out--we are already their neighbor. The smell of our bread travels, and especially in the warmer months, a lot of people stop by to see what's going on. They seem rejuvenated by the presence of the oven and the garden. Plus, we are give a few people who wouldn't otherwise travel to the east side (or at least, not very often) a reason to visit, crossing over the economic wall that is our sad Main Street. We can't know this--we just hope--that what some of our middle class customers see when they cross that wall to get their bread will deepen their empathy just a little bit, and widen their understanding of the special circumstances of the city they live in.
When our shareholders come to pick up their bread, they are continually bringing us new ideas, many of which we are using already, or have plans to implement. You can eat a whole loaf of gooey white bread from the supermarket and still feel unsatisfied (or sick). We are providing people with food that makes them feel strong and helps their brains work more efficiently. Food is a really basic need that's been taken out of our hands and replaced with a sub-par understudy. Well, we're taking it back.
Problem
First, good bread (bread that is hearty, that stays with you and gives you energy, that is baked with love and filled with fiber) costs upwards of $5.00 in the city of Buffalo. Bad bread (bread that is gooey with preservatives and high fructose corn syrup) only costs $1 or $2, but you can eat the whole loaf in one sitting and still be hungry. However, if I go to the store, and buy flour, yeast, and salt, I can make a very delicious, satisfying loaf of bread for the same cost as the unsatisfying bread. Baking is a skill to be learned--it is not difficult, and not expensive--it just requires a little practice. Like many cities, ours is segregated, with divides along lines of class and race. In the area we built our oven, there are no cafes, no real meet-up points, nowhere to sit and sip a cup of tea and read and be warm and reflect. But people naturally come together over good food, and we are working on a space--literal and symbolic--where that can happen--where everyone can feel like there is a place for them.
Actions
We've built three clay ovens: one small prototype, which we still use occasionally, one large oven for our own use, and one for a neighboring grassroots project. We have run two three month share sessions (one beginning in fall of 2009, and one beginning in January of 2010). Our shareholders are very happy, but still too few to support all the work we want to do. Beginning this spring, in 2010, we will begin regular baking workshops in our neighborhood, and in the summer we hope to begin small oven-building workshops. With the start of the third share, we will introduce our Share-sponser program. Shareholders will have the opportunity to anonymously sponsor a share for someone who can't afford it. Alternatively, they will be able to voluntarily add some dollars to the cost of their own share in order to offset the cost of someone else's. Delivery is available for those who cannot pick up their bread. Volunteers will deliver the bread by bicycle in exchange for bread, so that delivery is free. We have located gardeners who want to garden for bread, and a web designer who will design our website for bread, and a printer who will print our information for vegan cookies.
Results
As with many problems, the solution for fixing one is tied to the solving of others. And, in Buffalo, where there are countless empty lots, we are just giving an example of one way to clean and use a lot, (and simultaneously feed a large crowd of people). We hope that our neighbors will start to see those vacant lots and properties a little differently, and start their own projects, and generate more ideas. People will be given hope by the visible activity in their neighborhood, and more concretely, maybe others will follow suit, bringing more prosperity. The seeds of our project started while we were chatting over a simple root-vegetable dinner one March evening. If there was a place on the east side of Buffalo, where people could go to drink a cup of coffee or tea, and eat a muffin, and sit with a book like A.S. Neill's Summerhill, or Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard, and stare at the snow, or talk to their neighbor about what they just read, there might be some more seeds born, ready to propogate. We don't want a busy cafe with espresso machines--just a simple place to sit, and feel warm and welcome, and watch a baker bake, or help a baker bake, or, the possibilities are endless.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
We are one of only three "artisan" bakeries in the city of Buffalo, although we don't really like the term "artisan," because it makes bread sound difficult, which it's not. Since it doesn't describe Fancy and Delicious, let's say, "good bread" bakeries instead. Of these three bakeries, we are one of two using local ingredients, and of these two, the only one with a clay oven or flexible payment plans. This is our advantage and disadvantage: we are unique, and our bread has a very special flavor because of the oven, but we also have a lot of limitations that conventional bakeries don't have. We will need a significant increase in shareholders to make enough money to keep the project alive and kicking and to support ourselves. This spring and summer we will need to grow a lot, doubling the number of our shareholders. Our products will change seasonally--we will do pies and a pumpkin roast (with shareholders) at the oven in the fall. Around the holidays we hope to have community bake days--where community members can come to make their special holiday foods in the oven, and everyone will share around. In the summer, we screen inspirational movies (Garbage Warrior, Wall E) onto a sheet and feed our friends and neighbors pizza. The toppings come from our garden. Eventually, and this may be way down the road, or sooner than expected, we would like to work with public schools in the area, which are in desperate need of attention and better food. Some of the schools on the east side of Buffalo. (We were very inspired by Alice Water's book, Edible Schoolyard). It is very difficult for us to do a three year plan right now--we have a lot of ideas that we are trying out. We don't yet know what is working or not, but we are just plugging in and moving on them.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
We are currently underground, which makes happy because the only people who have bothered us so far are the ones we like. It also makes us a little nervous. We would like to be (and plan to be) a legit business, but are concerned about the legality of our clay oven. How do you get a clay oven certified? So far, the city hasn't noticed us, along with many other things they haven't noticed--Buffalo is a little anarchic on street level--but this also means we rely entirely on word of mouth (mostly our own) to sell shares and spread information. Vigilante-style works great, but it also means that we cannot accept interviews from local food blogs and news sources, which we have been offered. It also keeps us from joining farmers markets. So we would like clay ovens to be legal in the city. This is the main concern right now. For our oven building workshops, we are going to be upfront and explain to everyone involved--the workshop hosts very early on, and at the workshop, any attendees--that the ovens are not yet legal. By building one, they incur a risk. If any of these people were to get fined, we would do anything possible to help them out, but we have very limited funds, and cannot promise we would be able to help financially.
There is definitely a market for what we are doing, and so far we have been lucky enough to find a lot of people willing to help us through trades, but the current shallowness of our pocket hinders us somewhat.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$1000 - 4000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for less than a year
In what country?
United States, NY
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
If yes, provide organization name.
How long has this organization been operating?
Less than a year
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Our friends at PUSH Buffalo (People United for Sustainable Housing) have been encouraging to us. Several of our shareholders are PUSH members and staff, who spend their days working hard in hand with the community. They are a constant source of inspiration, and several members of the staff have given us innumerable nuggets of gold advice. MAP (Massachusetts Avenue Project), a local urban food organization, has allowed us to use their space as a second distribution location, and in the future, we hope to collaborate with them more, as their goals overlap with ours quite a bit. Five Points Bakery is a bakery dedicated to using local ingredients. It is through them that we buy our local flour (which they mill on site). They have been completely open with us about the process they went through in establishing their business, and talked us through every step, so that we might learn from their experiences. We have a very healthy relationship with them. Although our markets overlap, there is plenty of space for both of us--our creativity takes us in different directions.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
We need to develop our workshops, which are at the heart of what we are trying to do. The workshops need to be regular occurrences, perhaps monthly--a stand by to let our neighbors know we are always there. We also need to establish our neighborhood sponsor programs. Right now we have run two successful shares (our shareholders are happy), but we haven't yet reached our target group. Thirdly, we need to take steps to get a permit for our oven.
In order to sustain ourselves, we also need to sell more shares. We currently have 40 shareholders. We aim to double this number for our third share, which begins on April 19th and runs to the beginning of July. If we double this number one more time, we will be in a pretty good place to support our programs.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Our innovation was a gradual, but whirlwind affair. We were two friends, baking our own bread at home, because we like to eat well but couldn't afford to spend $5 on a loaf of bread at our local co-op. We realized that we were baking more and more bread because our friends were eating all of it. So we decided to go into business together, just selling to the people we knew off our bikes in the summer ("just for a little extra cash and for fun"). Matt had been farming in Europe, where he saw a lot of clay ovens, and we thought, why not bake out of a clay oven? So we had to find a good location for it. A friend of ours was fixing up an old house she had bought on the east side. She was running DIY workshops in the house, with an emphasis on green retrofits, and encouraging local women to take up tools, rather than leaving their fix-it jobs to handymen who didn't always show up. She offered us her garden as an oven location, with the requirement that our project would find and maintain a commitment to the community. So there we were, on the east side, completely isolated from commercial strips. Some of our neighbors had been growing beautiful gardens for many years: Buffalo's unsung heroes. They had a lot of stories for us about the changes they had seen on the east side in the past twenty or thirty or forty years, and the changes that were happening now, some for the better, and some for the worse. They were all really happy about the oven we were building. We thought, selling bread is good, but let's not stop there. Let's teach people how to bake it too. Let's build more ovens. So I don't know if there was one defining moment. Instead, the spring and early summer, when we were building the oven and working on the house, served as a kind of idea incubator.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Matt is from Olean, NY and has a B.A. in History. After completing his undergraduate at SUNY Geneseo, he worked on farms in Austria, and Spain for eight months. In addition to baking, he works as a substitute teacher in the Buffalo public schools, and loves teaching, especially in the bilingual and refugee schools. He hopes to go back to school at some point and become a certified ESL teacher. He loves basketball, and you will have to look very hard to find a bigger Lebron James fan.
Maura grew up in Kinderhook, NY, and graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a B.A. in English. She never wanted to come to Buffalo in the first place, but it has charmed her against her will and trapped her. She has been involved in a number of social activist projects in Buffalo since she arrived in 2004. She loves to play the piano and ice skate (separately).
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Journey's End Refugee Services, Inc.
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 | mgmcnal said: Knowing the thousands of vacant lots in Buffalo, I'm just wondering...have you considered expanding not only shareholderwise, but also ... about this Competition Entry. - 664 days ago read more > |
| Fancy and Delic... updated this Competition Entry. - 689 days ago |
| Fancy and Delic... updated this Competition Entry. - 690 days ago |
| Fancy and Delic... submitted this idea. - 691 days ago |
