Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Grace Garay. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Grace, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
I think so – our attention to ingredient sourcing creates a clear divide between our products and what most folks associate with when they think of sourdough bread or pastry; products that are inexpensively produced and sold through grocery store chains that offer little to no nutritional content and result in a lot of gut discomfort. I wanted to make bread on a human scale with a focus on fermentative qualities that would be fulfilling, nutritional and comforting to eat.
Grace, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
After over 12 years of honing my culinary skill through various leadership roles in kitchens, bakeries and hotels around the country I landed in Orlando in 2018 to find a severe lack in access to real nutritious sourdough bread. I always intended on starting my own venture but not until the Covid-19 pandemic did I see a tangible way in going about doing so. After being furloughed from my full time position with one of that largest hospitality companies in the country, I decided that there was no better time to begin Nomad Bakehouse, solely out of necessity to make ends meet. Online food sales were skyrocketing while simultaneously in grocery stores around the city, bread shelves were empty. I was suddenly launched into the role of the village baker and began providing my neighborhood and beyond bread and pastry through an online preordering system. The popularity of the business in its early days provided me the opportunity to keep Nomad Bakehouse as my sole income; I committed to the business full time and was able to fill an important gap in necessities in a time in the world where so many were losing so much.
In 2013 I graduated from a Baking and Pastry program in San Antonio, Texas which then led me to move to Chicago in 2014 to continue my education at The French Pastry School. This was the start of what would become years of travel for work opportunity gaining valuable experience in large hotels, bakeries and resorts in Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas. But even after so many years of hands-on learning in some of the best kitchens, I felt there was another world to baking I hadn’t quite yet discovered. That search led me into the midst of an online baking community located in the Southeastern region that was working with an ingredient I had yet to experiment with – stone milled flour. I suddenly became familiar with Carolina Ground, an organic stone mill located in Asheville, NC. I tried my hand at making a loaf of bread with this new, amber colored stone milled flour filled with nuance and flavor and I realized how much I had yet to learn about baking. Now, everything I thought I knew about baking, which had previously been done with sifted white commodity flour, went out the window and my passion for my craft was renewed and energized. Those early days of my journey with this ingredient were the true start of Nomad Bakehouse. This was 2018. Less than two years later I would be embarking on one of the greatest challenges of my life, my own business. Thankfully, Florida has one of the most inclusive Cottage Food Laws in the country, so this is where I began; making cookies, scones, cakes and sourdough bread in a 90 square foot room in my home near Downtown Orlando.
I couldn’t know where Nomad Bakehouse would go when the world as we knew it had shut down. So, to fulfill orders I delivered bread to people’s doorsteps or met them in a parking lot to distantly exchange the loaf, but the demand and interest in this endeavor was genuine because unfortunately, there was no where else to purchase a fresh baked loaf of sourdough bread. This became the medium through which I connected with my community. I came to meet all the folks in my wonderful neighborhood that would learn of the business by having walked by and smelling fresh bread. In a time in which we were so distanced, I managed to still make meaningful connections with people through food and this is what I am most proud of. At the heart of any successful business has to be a strong community behind it, and I have to admit that the people that support Nomad Bakehouse are some of the most loyal and loving around.
It’s a true testament to our product that the people drawn to it are so deeply invested. Our bread and pastry is made with a lot of care, intention, passion and with a true desire to make people feel good. So much of the food we consume is commercially made with only profit in mind and true health benefits last. My greatest wish is that through education and dedication to making bread for as many folks as possible, we’ll begin to shift everyone’s mind back to having a more well rounded diet, one that includes gluten and wheat. All we’re missing is transparency and for things to be made in the purest way possible.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
During my second year of business I was approached about joining an indoor market in town as one of its newest tenants. This couldn’t have been a better offer because up to that point I had worked very hard to someday make that a possibility, and here it was right in front of me. How could I say no? Well, what no one tells you when you open a bakery business, or any business for that matter, is how many different hats you have to wear. I did the shopping, the production, the baking, the decorating, the packaging, the order fulfillment, the emails, the website development, the invoice handling, the bookkeeping and just about anything else you could possibly imagine. I was absolutely spent, exhausted and had little else to give. Since I started my business in the middle of a pandemic, it felt fine to run a business out of my home since that was the new norm. But it came at high cost to any balance in life and it became incredibly difficult to pull myself away from the work even late into the evenings. The long hours and heavy work that is required of baking led me to seriously injure my knee and I felt I was on the verge of total failure. I explained my situation and why I had to unfortunately decline because I couldn’t see beyond my current predicament. In response I was told to grab a copy of the E-Myth, a book on small businesses, why they mostly fail and what you could do to change it. In this book, the main example is woman who has opened her very own pie shop but isn’t doing much to delegate out the work because she only manages to see herself as a baker and not an entrepreneur resulting in serious burnout and loss of business. I consumed the examples discussed in the book and came out the other end understanding my place in it all more clearly. Yes, I was to start out as the baker, but this would ultimately not be my only role as the business expanded. With every step of growth the business took, so did I as an owner. I began taking online seminars geared towards new small business owners and could feel my entrepreneurial spirit grow. It helped me realize that while I loved baking, I also loved the business side of the bakery and that was the most crucial aspect of growing it into its full potential, without me doing the only heavy lifting.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
In September of 2019 I moved into a new home with the intention of starting the bakery in a front room of the house. The landlord was on board with my project and so I signed the lease with wide eyes and excitement of what was to come. Less than two months later, the landlord decided he wanted to sell the property and I was suddenly being asked to vacate because a potential buyer was seriously interested. I had to leave behind the space that I envisioned as the true start of my business but I didn’t go without a fight. I demanded financial compensation for breach of contract and was awarded nearly two months of rent in return. I began to search for a new home and came across the space I eventually began Nomad in not 10 minutes down the road after missing a turn while running an errand. I came up on a “for rent” sign on this adorable bright purple little bungalow with a 90 square foot Florida room attachment that would eventually become my baking space. I had a little less than two-thousand dollars to start the business with, so I purchased a small amount of flour, some basic kitchen necessities, packaging, ingredients and got to work mixing bread by hand in plastic bus tubs on my dining room table. The little room sat empty for a while; roughly 8 bags of flour or so placed neatly in one corner until I slowly began to fill the room with a baker’s table, a small mixer, then an oven. ingredient bins and so on. Within months, after much personal investment, I had a fully functioning micro bakery and a growing interest in my product. The rest is history. When you really want to do something, even what feels like nothing can get you on the path you need to be on. There’s no need for fancy equipment or even a lot of money. Anyone can do it if they set their mind to it!
Contact Info:
- Website: Nomadbakehousefl.square.site
- Instagram: Nomadbakehousefl
- Facebook: Facebook.com/Nomadbakehousefl
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/nomad-bakehouse-orlando?osq=Nomad+Bakehouse
- Other: Menu/Ordering Site: Hotplate.com/Nomadbakehousefl
Image Credits
Kristin of Anchor and Odyssey