We recently connected with Daniel Koester and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

At the beginning of September, Dan the Baker turned 4 years old so I’ve been reflecting on my growth over the past four years. One thing that I think I’ve realized is that growth is about both setting your goals for the future as well as staying grounded in the present. Yes, it is important to set goals for yourself, wether is monetary goals or staffing goals or how much free time you wanna have, but at the same time you need to continue to be mindful of where you are now, and I think the most realistic example of that for me is figuring out where my skillset was and where I needed to improve. I love technique. I love tackling technical problems and finding a solution to that and the more I can do that with myself and my team, the better we are. At the end of the day I knew that if I continue to put out at great product that people will show up, and they will tell their friends and they will tell their friends and some people with larger audiences will take notice and so and so forth. That’s exactly how I have been able to scale up and grow. There hasn’t been any marketing secret or or going viral on instagram. It’s simply just been showing up day after day, week after week and putting in the work to improve my food.

Daniel, 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?

I got into the food industry by failing as an actor. After about 5 or 6 years of going on auditions I realized I wasn’t happy with my situation and it needed to change. I had been baking at home quite a bit and for whatever reason, sourdough really seemed to grab ahold of me. I dipped my toes in the water by working at a bakery one day a week and even though I wasn’t really learning anything I still loved it. 6 months later I was enrolled in the French pastry School in Chicago, a six month program that get’s you in and get’s you out. From there I worked at restaurants, hotels and bakeries for a few years. In 2020 I was sent home along with the rest of the world. I realized that I wasn’t good at doing nothing so I started baking bread for my neighbors, then anyone that was willing to pick up. I decided to start selling my stuff and after the first weekend of doing that, I knew that this was the path for me. I sold bread, pastries and tarts out of my condo for 6 months until Soho house, which is where I worked at before the pandemic hit, reached out to see if I was interested in using their kitchen in exchange for supplying them with bread and pastries. I did that for almost two years building up a following, growing my team from just me to two other bakers. Eventually, my contract ended with Soho and luckily I was asked by another hotel, the Emily, if I was interested in using their kitchen space. I’ve been baking out of there ever since then.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve had to pivot a few times in with my business. First was when I moved into Soho house. Going from my house this was the equipment dream. They had beatiful mixers, deck ovens to make bread, combi ovens to steam my pastries, a sheeter to laminate dough and walk in coolers. Space and equipment were no longer issues like they were in my condo. Now I got to make the food I wanted to make and I needed to figure out if people actually wanted that. There was a lot of growth when during that stage when in came to focusing on my menu. My next hurdle came when I moved into the Emily hotel. Their kitchen was a little more bare bones. No mixer, no freezers, basic ovens, small coolers. I had to figure out how to make this space work. What I needed to purchase and how could I set up the space in order to maximize my space and my time.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think what helped me build my reputation is quite simply the work. That’s my focus 100% of the time. All I care about is putting out the highest quality pastries and breads. I think Instagram has a big part in my success as most of my business is coming from IG. For me it was super important to just put out great looking photos that actually represent the pastries that I’m selling.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://danthebakerchicago.com
• Instagram: @danthebakerchicago

Image Credits

Headshot is by Will Blunt and all other photos are by me.