SHELBY TOWNSHIP, MI — There’s a saying that goes, “If you try to be everything to everyone, you won’t be anything to anyone.” It’s a common mistake many entrepreneurs make as they grow. They make a great product that fills a specific need in the market, but then, they start to spread themselves too thin. They make knee-jerk reactions to every consumer trend or customer request, and suddenly, they’ve lost sight of what made them so special in the first place.
That’s not a mistake Jill Bommarito plans to make. In fact, being that “something special” is baked into everything she does as the founder and president of Shelby Township, MI-based Ethel’s Baking Co. The company, which makes hand-crafted gluten-free dessert bars and cookies, is named after Bommarito’s grandmother, Ethel St. John, who instilled in her a love of baking … and the kind of love like she was the only person in the world.
That’s what Bommarito has been doing for people with celiac disease since 2011. That was the year she decided to make a career pivot and start a food business that made people who eat gluten-free feel “like the rock star of the party.” Celiac disease runs in her family, and after experiencing years of celebrations filled with more gluten-full treats than decent gluten-free options, Bommarito decided to do something about it.
She set the bar high from day one. Her goal was to create something that would be No. 1 in the overall dessert bar category, not just No. 1 for gluten-free. At the time, gluten-free options were few and far between, and those that existed were usually underwhelming alternatives to their wheat flour counterparts.
“What I’ve learned is no matter how great your product is, no matter how great your people are, if you don’t really understand your numbers, you will be highly challenged,” — Jill Bommarito | founder and president | Ethel’s Baking Co.
“The standard was, if it’s good enough for gluten-free, it’s good enough for the marketplace,” Bommarito said. “I thought, ‘If the people who were running [these] organizations had to eat that way, they wouldn’t feel that way.’”
Fueled by those memories of baking with her grandmother and a commitment to using simple ingredients and baking with love, Bommarito set out to make dessert bars that everyone could enjoy without compromising taste.
“There’s magic behind what we do,” she noted. “There’s always a little something behind pushing us forward.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges along the way. In the early days of Ethel’s, Bommarito’s biggest hurdle was learning how to manage growth and cash flow.
“What I’ve learned is no matter how great your product is, no matter how great your people are, if you don’t really understand your numbers, you will be highly challenged,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that growth is the fastest thing to shut a business down. It can happen so quickly that you take on new customers, and you don’t have terms that are proper with everyone on your purchasing side, and you can find yourself as a young business with nowhere to turn.”
This story has been adapted from the AUGUST | Q3 2024 issue of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.
