We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Catie Cohen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Catie below.
Hi Catie, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Demeter’s Kitchen is a cottage bakery in Denton, Texas that stands for nutritious food, connection with the community and\ purposeful employment opportunities. We aim to recreate people’s relationship with bread by making whole grain, naturally fermented sourdough with organic, locally grown and milled non-gmo grains. We utilize the products and byproducts from our North Texas producers in our breads and spreads to create nourishing food with unique flavor. We aim to cultivate a workspace that allows for purposeful employment to flourish. This ensures that our employees, as well as our customers, are enriched through experiences with our foods.
Our business takes its name from Demeter, the Greek goddess of harvest, wheat, bread and agriculture. She guided the fertility of the earth, which helped the Greeks understand planting and harvesting throughout the seasons. Demeter’s persona as a peaceful, nurturing goddess and her story’s immense symbolism is foundational to our bakery’s vision of bread becoming a daily staple again.
Demeter’s Kitchen is the culmination of my experience as an engineer and years working around the country in various bakeries and kitchens. I transitioned from a stable, corporate job into the food industry because I was dissatisfied with the career I had chosen and struggled with an unhealthy relationship to what I ate and my body. Through learning to make nourishing, wholesome foods and cultivating patience for the process, I found an untapped well of energy and a newfound creative drive.
Demeter’s Kitchen collaborates with local growers, makers and creators to bring customers the most nutritious and unique bread experience. We incorporate spent grains from local breweries into our whole wheat loaves to sustainably use this nutritious and flavorful byproduct. The grains that makeup our dough are milled fresh by Barton Springs Mills in Dripping Springs, Texas and sourced from organic, non-gmo growers throughout the state. Our sourdoughs and spreads shine thanks to cheeses from local dairies, produce from nearby farmers and honey from our county’s bees. We collaborate with local bottle shops, wine bars, coffee shops and apartment complexes to offer customers a convenient way to access and experience our products. This also gives customers a chance to check out or frequent some of the best drinkeries in town. On weekends, we attend multiple farmer’s markets and host monthly classes to give folks hands on experience making whole grain sourdough.
We strive to utilize our business and its revenue to support people at the edges of our food system and causes that are important to us. This year, we participated in a bake sale with many other DFW female bakers to create the morning after box and raised $2000 for the Texas Equal Access Fund. We have raised money through merchandise and product sales for Shiloh Farms, a community garden that provides produce to hungry families in our community, OUTReach Denton, an organization that is developing resources for the LGBTQ+ community and the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, a collaboration between families of wrongfully detained Americans overseas engaging in campaigns to urge for their immediate release.
The foundation of Demeter’s Kitchen is built on purposeful and enriching employment. We provide humane working hours (no 2am start times here!) and a purposeful employment interview to every staff member. We create a sustainable work week for each individual and want to understand where their skills, talents and interests lie. Rather than be a placeholder, we are committed to boost resumes through their roles and responsibilities at Demeter’s Kitchen. Most employees that grace our bakery have a vision for their career that does not include the production of bread. Each member of our team contributes to our envisioned future where those who create the food we enjoy have sustainable and fulfilling careers.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
I was working as a chemical engineer in the oil and gas industry when made the switch to the food industry in 2016. Within 1 year of working for the Houston-based company I had been with since I was a sophomore in college, I knew I wasn’t in the right place. I spent the next 2 years tracking finances and exploring my interests, planning how and when to make the move. It wasn’t until 2 years later that the right opportunity at Pondicheri Bake Lab came up. I started at the Indian bakery as a barista and worked my way up to manager. I was able to help create a food blog, india1948.com, increase their class offerings and learn about the “magic of spices”, as owner and chef Anita Jaisinghani says.
Working for Pondicheri, I was fascinated by the many dimensions that went into people’s experience of their food. It’s about more than what arrives at the table. It’s the atmosphere, the way you are greeted (or not) and what you see when you walk in. I was interested in how a place was perceived from the customer side, but became even more interested in understanding what went into crafting a workplace that could be an excellent springboard or a lifelong career for the people who worked these jobs.
Food service is often exceptionally transient. It is infamous for burnout, small profit margins, stressed out workers and bosses. I do not have the magic bullet to solve these things, but it is a major focus of our day-to-day operations. We want not just the people who consume our food, but those who make it, to be enriched by their interactions with it. I am proudest of the team environment that we have at Demeter’s Kitchen. We serve the kind, hard-working and supportive souls that work here as much as we do our customers.
This is the foundation of our food.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn (and am still unlearning) that rest is shameful. There is an equation I have learned from my upbringing and years working in kitchens that hard work equals success. To some extent this is true, and there are way more variables than I can’t even get into here.
One of them that I will discuss is rest. This is something I should have known as a competitive runner for many years, rest allows those periods of hard work to become part of your “fitness”.
This year, I have been focused on finding those breaks, enjoying them and unravelling the shame I feel when I am not “productive”.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Consistency. Consistently delivering high quality goods, showing up to markets and being a producer that the community could rely on to be there and/or communicate when we cannot be.
Contact Info:
- Website: demeterskitchen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/demeterskitchen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/demeterskitchendtx
Image Credits
Deborah Savarese Kizewski