We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anna Harrington. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anna below.
Anna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
For 6 months I worked on my own from my home. Food processing laws go state-by-state and in NY you are allowed to home process certain items – and baked goods are among them. However! you are only allowed to sell within the state, which is obviously limiting. I moved into a commercial kitchen in the fall of 2018 and hired my first employee. I took a while to find the right fit and the baking industry really changes seasonally so there is always some fluidity with employees – even now. I have found employees in various ways – through training programs like Hot Bread Kitchen, through Indeed, posting online- but by far the most consistently successful is through word-of-mouth. My cookies/my kitchen/my sales model are pretty different from brick & mortar bakeries/cafés. My employees need to be very detail oriented across many skills and have to understand how color works.
It took me a few employees to figure out what my standards can be in terms of productivity — makes a huge difference in my bottom line — cost of labor is very high for my product. The challenge is the balance between pushing employees to fulfill their potential and yet still having reasonable expectations. It doesn’t help anyone to have unhappy employees.
Anna, 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?
The Rounds are mostly savory cookies to be enjoyed throughout the day and into night. They make the most simple gathering feel a bit elevated and they slip with ease into your more formal events. They are the perfect gift to bring along for a cocktail, a weekend, or a holiday. Rounds are bite-sized decadent treats. You do not need to serve alongside a cheese plate or with jams and items – they are self-sufficient, highly satisfying and flavor-packed. If anything, a bowl of radishes is a nice neighbor to provide a contrast to the richness of The Rounds ™. Our current offering is: Curry Cashew, Parmesan Olive, Gruyére Date, Salami Idiazabal Rosemary, Apricot Pistachio Fennel, Anchovy Scallion, Sweet, Cocoa Sweet and Toasted Sweet.
In 2017, I took two notable trips to Europe. Both times with my mother; both times for memorial services of people that had played very significant roles in my life. A few months later I started my own company.
I was partially raised in The Netherlands and have travelled throughout Europe my entire life, yet these visits gripped me — I was struck by the realization I had largely ignored an important part of my life for the past 15 years. I had become caught up in my New York life, with work, with my husband, and then with my children. I grew up cooking and entertaining along-side my Swedish mother. She trained me and my sister rigorously and on occasion even dressed us in costume (think traditional Austrian not Disney) to serve her guests with precision. While this continued throughout my childhood, I broke out on my own at an early age. My first “café” was in the back of the family station wagon: baguettes, Parma ham, tomatoes, dried herbs and olive oil made into sandwiches during family road trips through Europe with the aid of a Swiss Army knife. The years zoomed by… while maintaining an accidental career in the fashion/design/accessories worlds, I hosted and hosted and hosted and attended cooking schools. I circled around the food space: catering and food styling and teaching cooking classes for kids and pitching a cooking show.
While in The Hague, I noted just how many cheese crackers, or Kaaskoekjes, my mother bought from her favorite bakeries and how tenderly she carried them in shopping bags, exclaiming “Careful with my crackers!!!” every so often. And just as it was when I lived there, every house we were invited to for dinner served these cheese crackers with drinks. Back in Brooklyn in the months after these trips, it occurred to me that you couldn’t find divine crackers like you can at Ottolenghi in London or in the neighborhood bakeries of Holland here in the States. I had been making my custom-colored sugar cookies for years but decided it was time to start focusing on savory cookies. My Rounds are not the same as the crackers of my childhood: the flavors, texture and shape are my own and I am very committed to the quality of my ingredients. My hope is that The Rounds ™ play some part in bringing people together, in creating times to be remembered – during gatherings that embrace cultures and ideas and the joy that can be found in eating something yummy.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Word-of-mouth. I do post on instagram – but that is mostly of my Sweet Rounds because they are so visually compelling. By far, I have grown my clientele the most from personal recommendations – one customer raving to their friends. It is also very useful for me to participate in certain trunk shows… not all — it’s very specific what works. Often high-end lifestyle trunk shows are a good fit — people who entertain a lot and are aesthetically concerned. I have a lot of interior decorator customers.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
I almost didn’t make payroll a few weeks ago! I moved kitchens in the spring and brought on another employee so my monthly costs have gone up a lot. I also am stocking up on packaging for holiday orders so cash is tight right now. It was a risk moving into this kitchen but I can grow here for a bunch of years and it is not easy to find a great commercial kitchen – so it was a risk I felt I had to take!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theroundsnyc.com
- Instagram: @theroundsnyc
Image Credits
All photos by Anna Harrington
Headshot by Susanna Howe