We recently connected with Jenna Legge and have shared our conversation below.

Jenna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think that successful can mean one thing to me and something completely different to someone else. I view the idea of success in a lot of ways; success is forming a community of like minded people who are passionate and care deeply about what they’re creating, adding value to others and their craft, and using the privilege you have to help others when you are able to.

A really huge point of success to me in regards to my business, and it’s always something that has to be nurtured and worked at: is creating a safe and sustainable environment for my staff. It’s hard, because I am limited financially, but truly everything I work toward on a daily basis is building toward getting my staff to a point where they are getting paid livable wages, and working in a sustainable environment where they are not being overworked and they feel valued. Again, community is huge for me, and I want the people who work with me to feel safe, secure and valued.

I’ve worked in many bakeries and restaurants where I was ridiculously over worked, treated like crap, and not valued like I should have been. I knew going into this line of business I did not want to emulate those negative aspects that are usually pretty standard in the food industry.

I only know from my point of view what it takes to be successful, and truthfully I’m not there yet— I’m still working toward that everyday. But what I do know is it takes time, passion, empathy, determination, hard work and also…rest and taking care of yourself as much as you are able, to achieve it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For the last 5 years I’ve been a business owner and I’ve been baking and honing my craft for about 14 years. I’m self taught and learned my way through the years from working different positions in bakeries, restaurants, and baking/teaching myself from home.

At heart, I’m a musician and a songwriter. I come from a musical family: my dad plays guitar and was a music teacher for 37 years. My mom is a pianist and vocalist, and has run a music & arts theater for 15 years. My brother is a multi-instrumentalist.
I’ve recently gotten back into writing music in a more serious way now that the bakery business is more sustainable. I love baking, but music runs in my blood and it’s my true passion. My mom told me when I was a child instead of watching TV, I would crawl over to our CD/tape player and bang on the glass door until she opened it and put music on. It’s just one of those things that feels entirely natural to me and I’m so glad to have that outlet.

As for the baking, I started baking in high school and then began working on farms and in restaurant settings after I graduated. I got the idea in my brain that I wanted to open a bakery one day, so I started teaching myself anything and everything. I tend to have an obsessive / hyper focus type personality, so I essentially just spent years & years teaching myself all I needed to know about baking.

I moved to Portland, OR and kept working and teaching myself, until I finally found an opportunity to quit my job and move into a small shared baking space. I started at farmers markets selling my goods and realized it wasn’t sustainable, so I switched to a wholesale business. For three years straight I worked 6-7 days a week, 14 hour days. Prepping, baking, packaging, and delivering all of the pastries myself. It was hard and extremely draining, especially once Covid hit!
Now I have an entire bakery operation to call my own, an incredible team of bakers and delivery drivers, amazing clients and a line around the block every Saturday when we open to the public.

The bakery is called Jen’s Pastries and we make artisan & rustic style cakes, pastries, cookies, Portuguese breads and so much more. We deliver to many coffee shops and restaurants in PDX & Vancouver, WA 7 days a week, and we open to the public one day a week on Saturday’s.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My business not only survived a pandemic, but it survived a toxic business partnership at the same time. I hope reading this can help another fellow business owner learn from my mistakes.

I highly do NOT recommend getting into a business partnership with someone you don’t really know, like I did. I learned a lot from it, but it ended up being one of the most stressful experiences as a business owner and as a person. I was naive, broke, and needed help and thought this was the way.

After dealing with months and months of abusive behavior, lies, and this person trying to destroy my livelihood, I somehow made it out and was able to keep the bakery and my employees jobs intact. It was hard, stressful, and scary. I felt helpless and terrified every single day of my life.

Once I was out of it, so many opportunities opened up for me and my business. I’m so happy that I didn’t just give up and quit when it was all happening, I easily could have. I fought through it and the business is better because of it.

Any advice for managing a team?

Maintaining high morale is a task that you have to pay attention to constantly. I’ve dealt with highs and lows, and have definitely learned from the lows.

On the management end you have to understand you can’t make every single person perfectly happy, and that’s ok. It’s just not realistic. But what you can do is listen to your team, be consistent, and communicate as best you can.

Listen to your staff and put your trust in them. Do not micromanage! Have empathy for them and understand they are humans that have lives outside of work. Create a better work / life balance for your team. Communication is key!

I’m learning so much everyday managing an entire team of people. It is probably the hardest part of owning a business. You’ll know you are on the path to succeeding when you trust your staff and they can trust you.

Contact Info:

• Website: jenspdx.com
• Instagram: jenspastriespdx & jennaleighmusic
• Facebook: Jen’s Pastries