We recently connected with Dinah Grossman and have shared our conversation below.

Dinah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I founded the predecessor to Spinning J in 2010, a pie business that I operated from my apartment in Chicago. It was the height of the cupcake craze, and, well, I’ve always hated cupcakes. They take almost zero skill to create, and total sugar bombs, and usually contain cheap ingredients. By contrast pie, my favorite dessert, requires skill, passion, and finesse to pull off well. I felt pie, as a product, was the perfect antidote to the cupcake mania that was sweeping the country.

I started selling whole pies and tarts online, driving all over the city to deliver to people’s homes. After a. years long search for a brick and mortar location, our currently space became available, and happened to be in my neighborhood on the West Side. I felt I could make the best pie you’d ever had, and I hoped that people in Chicago would agree that it was the best, and make Spinning J a destination.

Dinah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I studied Creative Writing and English Literature in college, but I had always loved to bake. I worked in commercial bakeries and restaurants from the age of 15 on, even while I was in college. Once I moved to Chicago I hoped to find a position using my degree, but in the end a chance request for a wedding cake opened the door to what is now a 10 year old business.

Spinning J is a bakery, cafe, and vintage-style lunch counter. We make classics with a twist, think a BLT with tomato jam, or key lime pie made with tart hibiscus tea and blueberry compote. We blend nostalgia with innovation, so our recipes are creative takes on classics. We make everything by hand, from scratch, from the bread our sandwiches are made on to the syrups we make our sodas with.

More than our products, though, we have become a Chicago institution. We are a meeting place, an anchor in the community, and aim to be a source of comfort for all who walk through the door.

The consistently high quality of our product, the friendliness and dedication of our staff, and our unique aesthetic continue to set us apart as we enter our second decade in business.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I always believe that I had to train people to do things exactly the way I would do them, that my way was the best way. In truth your employees often have better ideas, or have ideas on how to improve upon a process you thought you’d already perfected. Staying open minded to new ways to doing things and asking for input from your staff is crucial. There have been many recipes that I meticulously developed, but that only worked when made at a certain (small) scale. As the staff has been asked to increase production, they have without fail come up with ingenious methods to improve upon the original way of doing things that wouldn’t have occurred to me.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Covid for sure. Going from a sit-down breakfast and lunch business to a dinner delivery model kept the lights on, but it meant a total shift in how we operated, the foods we prepared, and how we marketed to our customers. We were fortunate to have an incredibly loyal following that trusted us enough to pretty much buy whatever we were selling. But those days were not without their dark moments. When you drastically shift course you have to drastically adjust your expectations0–that goes from customer response to management to cash flow. It can be jarring to say the least.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.spinningj.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spinningjchicago/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spinningjchicago
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinah-grossman-a9622a33/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/spinning-j-bakery-and-soda-fountain-chicago-4

Image Credits

Headshot courtesy of Clayton Hauck. Key lime hibiscus pie with blueberry compote courtesy of Clayton Hauck. All other photos by Dinah Grossman. Postcard art by Sarah Bogosh of Bad Ponies Illustration.