Life spent in a pandemic is a prolonged search for comfort and familiarity in a sterile bubble.
While consumers are after familiar feelings of togetherness, spontaneity, and excitement, they are stuck with an online store’s promise that their selected item will arrive by a certain date.
Items have become proxies for the ephemeral feelings grown more fleeting over the last two years spent at two-arms’ length away from loved ones—and further away from dining and drinking in restaurants. At least as comfortably as we once did.
But there is something so homey, charming, and warming about bread and its delightfully sweet and savory variants that makes it a staple proxy for our longings.
One beneficiary of this yearning is The Daily Knead, an online pantry and kitchen that crafts bread and pastry free of preservatives and extenders, but packed with wholesome ingredients.
Baking the traditional way with premium ingredients
Sisters Francesca Gacrama-Herring and Francine Gacrama, who co-founded The Daily Knead, have made careers out of crafting whole experiences to sell single items.
Prior to the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, the sisters owned and operated Artesania and Caffeined by Artesania, a space that bridged the promises of comfort typically housed in a cafe and a furniture showroom.
“We wanted our clients to fully experience our furniture by means of having a third wave coffee shop that served food we enjoyed with coffee,” says Francesca, who these days fills the role of head baker while managing back-of-house operations at The Daily Knead.
Francine, on the other hand, handles marketing and front of the house. Her function includes managing the 500 weekly orders they receive, as well as creating content for their 13,800-strong Instagram account.
Taking a quick browse at The Daily Knead’s Instagram or its website, you become aware that they are in the market for a well-made product. Be it the deep, decadent greens that pervade the website or the glistening food photography used on the page, the message is clear at first click.
“My sister and I have always wanted to build a business that is based on building a community,” says Francesca Gacrama-Herring. “We keep our clients at the center of it all, and we’ve found that open communication with our community has helped us expand faster than what we had thought possible.”
And this message of high quality is maintained throughout the customer experience. You couldn’t expect anything less of a company whose first customers were family members. One caveat though—they ate for free.
“When I started baking, it was initially just for family,” says Francesca. Between ruminating over lockdown financial forecasts and maintaining a commitment to keep everyone’s job safe in the face of canceled furniture contracts, Francesca would bake bread with her children “as a form of stress relief” and “to give the kids an activity to do in between school and chores.”
As contracts and projects at Artesania were canceled, the sisters realized that the business would not be viable. “Four months into lockdown, it had completely drained every centavo we had made,” reflects Francesca.
With the closure ongoing, Francesca—like all of us—was caught in the newly difficult grocery runs that gave the pandemic that extra end-of-times feel. She realized that even food staples like good bread were difficult to procure. “And they were limiting it to two loaves per family.”
While initially she would shop for the various families and staff living in her family’s property, Francesca soon found herself baking for everyone. “When I started to make more, and daily, I started giving it away to neighbors and soon after to friends who lived outside our community.”
Catering to the needs of family members with health issues, Francesca wanted to develop bread that would allow them to enjoy their carbs without worrying about their health. It is a commitment she maintains even now. “I had a goal to ensure that every single ingredient I used would be something I wouldn’t hesitate to feed my kids and family,” she says, “[and] I stayed true to that and communicated this to our clients.”
Communication with clients is at the heart of the business
“My sister and I have always wanted to build a business that is based on building a community,” says Francesca. “We keep our clients at the center of it all, and we’ve found that open communication with our community has helped us expand faster than what we had thought possible.”
To give some extra context, initial marketing was done in Viber and Facebook groups before the neat sheen of the brand glowed from behind a logo and predominantly green website.
“When the thought of expansion started to enter, we started selling pancake batter, pizza dough, and pasta as these were ingredients that we already had in-house,” says Francesca. “My sister wanted us to try selling sweets, and so the muscovado chocolate chip cookie and chocolate brioche babka [were] born.”
“I also created subscriptions for clients who wanted a consistent supply of bread delivered to their door,” says Francesca. During these early days, they were selling about 10 to 20 loaves of sourdough bread and 10 to 20 dozen pandesals per day.
Through these initial channels, The Daily Knead team acquired more than just traction in their local community. They gained feedback as well as a better idea of what their clients were looking for.
“When the thought of expansion started to enter, we started selling pancake batter, pizza dough, and pasta as these were ingredients that we already had in-house,” says Francesca. “My sister wanted us to try selling sweets, and so the muscovado chocolate chip cookie and chocolate brioche babka [were] born.”
Expanding The Daily Knead and streamlining operations
The task of baking 10 sourdough loaves—let alone 10 of consistent quality—and 500 orders of varying pastries that are either pre-ordered or prepared for same-day delivery—is a real task. The team needed to expand its production capacity.
“When we couldn’t fit any more bread and pastries on my dining room table and living room, we knew it was time to expand our space and grow our equipment,” says Francesca. It so happened that their family operated a grocery, which also shut down during the pandemic. “This is where we moved our headquarters to,” she says.
What was a team of two ballooned to a team of 12, which now adopts a shifting hours setup to allow the bakery to operate for 24 hours. On the order taking side, the team utilizes a website built on the Shopify platform and uses their Instagram and Facebook to bring all purchasing traffic to their order platform.
Having a premium product is wonderful, but costs do rise
In line with their commitment to quality, the team also took time to source from trusted suppliers. “Baker Facebook pages and Viber groups have been instrumental in finding the right suppliers,” Francesca shares.
But now, as a global supply chain crisis reveals itself through steadily increasing prices on key inputs, suppliers simply must pass costs down the supply chain.
“We have held on to our prices for as long as we could [and] have only just increased our prices after a year and a half of operations,” explains Francesca. This was done in tandem with clear communication via their online channels, emphasizing that the premium quality of the products will remain and will be prioritized.
The future, near and far
As we race towards the holidays, The Daily Knead has unveiled its new offerings, including a Petit Babka gift set—in which customers receive a mini loaf of chocolate marbled cranberry pistachio, white chocolate almond, dark chocolate strawberry, and the original chocolate brioche babka—and three holiday croissant sets to gift those who love classic, gourmet, or savory croissants, with a range of flavors from calamansi caramel and coffee cardamom to truffle three cheese.
But beyond the holidays, the sisters will be looking to leverage their close customer relationships to understand what the market will be wanting.
“We’ve only ever known operating a bakery during the lockdown,” says Francesca, “so going into 2022 will be an adventurous and challenging time for us, as we have yet to understand consumer behavior [under changing lockdown conditions].” She adds that operating in the food business takes more than just great bread. It takes grit.
Navigating a series of lockdowns and mixed messaging from the bodies implementing these rules develops that sort of fortitude.
And while a bottle of wine can ease the sting of supply chain inflation and a mounting list of orders, there are things that bottles of wine can’t quite fix. “I guess that’s the pro and the con of being an entrepreneur: We never know when to shut off.”
I suppose operating a 24-hour bakery in the heat of a pandemic does that.