Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leah Lonsbury. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Leah, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

As a nonprofit, Just Bakery of Atlanta is not in the business of baking to make money. We need to do just that, of course, to support our partnerships with our new American neighbors, but it isn’t our top priority. Our real “profit” is found in our people. Each payroll may cause some worry and hand-wringing, but we’re rich in success stories that make it all worth it.

Take Bhima for example. I’ve been getting requests from our customers and supporters to share an update about this Just Bakery of Atlanta beloved, so I did just that in short form via our social media today. Here’s a more detailed version–

Bhima was one of our first 2 trainees back in 2017 when we were just getting started. After spending 16 years in a refugee camp in Nepal, Bhima resettled in Atlanta with her extended family. She graduated from Druid Hills High School and then dabbled in different fields of higher education, never really finding her sweet spot. In the community, Bhima helped start small businesses, started a Bhutanese dance group, and formed a soccer team for Nepalese girls. She also tutored in after school programs and volunteered with the Center for Pan Asian Community Services. If you spend any time in Clarkston or the surrounding communities that are rich with new Americans who resettled as refugees, you’re bound to bump into someone who knows and loves Bhima. She’s a community rock star. This is probably why Bhima’s fans at the International Rescue Committee recommended her to Just Bakery as we got started baking and training.

Bhima is super smart and she learns at lightening speed. She’s also a natural leader and artist– two gifts that are important in baking and the work we do together at Just Bakery. It didn’t take long for Bhima to rise up in the ranks as we grew. Just a couple years in, our Head Baker position opened up, and Bhima was the natural choice. With this promotion came more guaranteed hours and a pay raise, and soon Bhima had used those extra earnings to purchase a second car to get to and from work independently and her first home with her husband Nabin. This was a first for Bhima’s extended family too.

Bhima trained our new American staff, helping them study for ServSafe certifications and teaching new techniques and recipes in the kitchen. She created our gorgeous and popular Valentine’s cookies, royal iced heart cookies covered in designs that mirror another one of her gifts for henna art. Then in May 2021, Bhima delivered her best work of art, a daughter named Anshima. She went on paid maternity leave from JBA and then moved to Ohio to be near extended family and start a Bhutanese restaurant with her brother.

This week we celebrated baby Anshima’s first birthday and all the ways Bhima continues to make Just Bakery of Atlanta’s dreams come true. We see this with all our trainees in different ways. Just Bakery of Atlanta opens doors of opportunity, and our new American partners build lives full of love and impact, beautiful and healthy families, and financial security as they continue rebuild home in a new place. They make what we do valuable and profitable in all the ways that matter.

Just as an aside, Anshima’s name means “limitless” in Sanskrit and “without borders” in Hindi. What could be more fitting?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started Just Bakery of Atlanta after dreaming about working at the crossroads of feeding people and making change for over 10 years. I had just returned to Atlanta after living in Madison, WI for 7 years, where I got to see my friends at Just Dane, an organization that helps neighbors returning from incarceration rebuild their lives, launch a very different but powerful version of Just Bakery. It was the first time I saw an organization or business use the marketplace in creative ways that work for a more just life for everyone and resource participants to make their own change and impact. That’s what I set out to do with Just Bakery of Atlanta.

A little more backstory…
In 2016, I had the privilege of coordinating a group of volunteers that was sponsoring a family resettling as refugees from Afghanistan. This family and I became fast friends, more like chosen family within a matter of months. I fell instantly for their kids, their cooking, and their hospitality and love. While working with this family as they got connected in the community, I found myself sitting in the lobby of the International Rescue Committee waiting for a meeting and watching ads for jobs scroll across a screen. They were mostly for shifts at a chicken processing plant an hour and a half away– long and physically strenuous days, gross and sometimes dangerous conditions, long commutes, and pay falling right about at minimum wage. That’s a pretty accurate description of any job that was available to new arrivals with limited English and work experience and credentials from their countries of origin that the U.S. doesn’t recognize as valid. No one can pay their rent in the metro area or even begin to pay back their resettlement debts on such a wage even if they can figure out a way to make the logistics of the job work. This all stuck in my head and started to cross paths with my dreaming about feeding people and making change. it seemed there had to be a better option for new Americans in our community.

About the same time, the International Rescue Committee pinpointed access to continuing education and vocational credentiaIing as the largest gap in the longer-term refugee resettlement process. Without a foot in the door, a chance to gain experience and training, and an opportunity to earn a living wage, resettled refugees were struggling to regain financial security as they rebuilt home in this new place. So, I pulled together a proposal and received a grant for these dreams, and Just Bakery of Atlanta was born. We aim to be one, creative way around that gap, and we purposefully build community between new and native born Americans that bridges similar holes in understanding across differences, community resourcing, and opportunities towards financial security and thriving.

So, our baked goods don’t just taste amazing. They also do real, tangible good in our wider community.

And, what we do is really expensive. Turns out there’s a reason most bakeries and food businesses haven’t historically paid their employees a living wage or offered prolonged paid training. This is why I also wear the Development Director hat for JBA while chasing grants and inviting supporters to give in support of our work. It’s stressful, but it also makes way more sense and drives me harder than any work I’ve done. Everywhere I go, people ask me how JBA is doing. What I’d rather tell them is what we could do together with some additional, regular funding and a storefront. We need a spot of our own where we could gather and grow community as well double or even triple the number of our new American partners who could change their own, remarkable lives while working with us. It’s one of many reasons I don’t watch professional sports or follow celebrities. I can’t think too much about what our kitchen family could do with even a fraction of their bazillion dollar contracts.

I guess all of this is driven by my desire for others to have the same chance that I have had to know, be amazed by, and be changed for good through knowing our neighbors who resettled as refugees. It’s made me far richer than those professional athletes and celebrities and fundamentally changed my understanding of myself, my place in the world, and my belonging in our larger human family.

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

Just Bakery of Atlanta’s challenge has never been with reputation. Our handmade small batch baked goods speak for themselves. They’re made with locally and sustainably sourced ingredients whenever possible and by new American bakers who are dedicated, hard-working, intelligent, flexible, and resilient. They make the delicious magic happen each day.

Our story also tells itself in many ways. Customers care that their purchase from us enables what we do together and changes lives. It’s a grassroots way of investing in their new American neighbors, reaching across lines of difference (real or imagined), and making meaningful connections in a world that seems to grow more and more divided. And, everybody wins when what they get for their dollars also tastes really amazing.

Growing our reputation or brand awareness is another story. That’s more our challenge. Without our own spot where people can find us regularly, point their friends, and hang around and develop a sense of belonging to our story, it’s tricky to spread the word and grow. I’m also not a business person or marketing expert by training or experience. I have a lot to learn.

Whenever I’m at a JBA sale or event, I get asked the same 2 questions–
1. (Usually asked with mouth full of baked goodies and prefaced with “ohmygosh!”) Where can I get more of this?!
2. Why haven’t I heard about JBA before now?! (Always delivered with the same enthusiasm and fear that they’ve been missing out as, “Where have you been all my life?!”)

Those repeated and passionate questions definitely shape the decisions I make about JBA’s operations and future. I’m always trying to improve our customers’ and the wider public’s access to our baked goods and seeking to turn up the megaphones through which we tell our story.

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

Just about every small business owner or nonprofit director would probably answer this question the same way as the pandemic lingers and continues to throw kinks in the works.

We had to make a major pivot from in-person pop-up sales to all doorstep deliveries in March of 2020. And weirdly, it was our most profitable month since we got started in 2017– by a whole lot. We must have made this decision right as all of metro Atlanta scrambled to figure out how they were going to eat while stuck at home during a pandemic. The word seemed to spread like social media wildfire.

That burst of profitability didn’t linger long, though. As everyone spent more time at home and seemed to grow more and more disconnected from organizations and movements they once cared passionately about, our sales took a big, fast slide. And, we pretty quickly shut down completely for about 3 months while we figured out what COVID was going to look like and how we could operate as safely as possible. It was a very slow restart, and we’re still fighting our way back. I have wished many times that I could have bottled some of that March 2020 excitement and serendipity for harder times.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://justbakeryatl.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justbakeryatl/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justbakeryatl
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJg3ro9B2k

Image Credits
Some food shots and the full staff shot– Andrew Hetherington All other photos- Leah Lonsbury