Welcome to Season 17 of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Spiros Assimacopoulos, president and CEO of The Good Bread Co., shares his journey through automation, expansions and more … all to share the time-honored tradition of artisan bread. Sponsored by WP Bakery Group.
In our first episode, we meet Spiros and learn how — and why — he launched The Good Bread Co.
Learn more about this season here, and tune into Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple or Spotify.
Joanie Spencer: Hi Spiros. Thank you so much for joining me for this season of Troubleshooting Innovation. I’m excited to sit down and talk to you.
Spiros Assimacopoulos: Thanks for having me, Joanie. Always a pleasure to speak with you.
Spencer: Okay, so you have a really interesting story. I see you as sort of a tangential baker. You knew the industry when you started this company, but not specifically as a baker. I want to start this season by taking a trip way down memory lane and talking about the distribution company where this all began. Can you tell me about your dad and how he started that company, and how it grew from there and sort of brought you into it?
Assimacopoulos: In a lot of ways, it’s a classic success story of an immigrant who comes to the US with no money, no resources, particularly, and finds a way to make a living. My father, after immigrating here with my mother, I believe they were pregnant with my older brother, did some odd jobs. He worked in a meat cutting facility, worked in the restaurant industry for a little bit — that wasn’t him — and ended up working as a route driver for another Greek bread man. After about six months, he decided that he wanted to give it a shot on his own and convinced a customer to buy bread from the trunk of his ʼ71 Duster. He didn’t even have a bread truck to start. He just grinded it out, and that was the family business. My brother and I grew up Saturdays in the summer sitting on a milk crate next to dad and step van.
Spencer: I love that. I hear stories about bakers sitting on the bags of flour coming to work with their dad, so I like that you guys were sitting on the milk crates. It’s very similar.
Assimacopoulos: It wasn’t comfortable. Even when you’re 10, it wasn’t very comfortable.
Spencer: It sounds like milk crates gets you prepped for college furniture, right?
Assimacopoulos: And then some.
Spencer: Okay, how did your dad grow the business from there? Because the distribution company became very successful, and then it sort of took its own interesting turns.
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, so my dad, he kind of struggled between one in two trucks throughout the period where we were growing up. He was a great salesman, a great hustler, really never wanted to be a manager, so he would build the business up and sell a route. And that’s how it was until the mid-90s. My cousin actually immigrated here from Greece, and him and my father worked together in one truck and then grew it to two. My brother graduated from college, went back for his master’s degree, went back to working with my dad, and then by the time I finished college, they had three routes.
Spencer: If I remember correctly, you and your brother were a little bit reluctant to join the family business. Is that true?
Assimacopoulos: You can say that again. Listen, we really respected the business and how hard my father worked, but like any small family-run business, there’s of lot of sacrifice. It’s usually not very glamorous in the beginning. My mother even pulled a route for a while. She got a hernia. She got into an accident one time in the in the bread van, which we called the bread mobile. My father suffered a heart attack when I was in high school. I had to take a week off school to do the route with my mom and some other guy whose name was Chris the fish man. Just all kinds of crazy stories. No family vacations, no go up to the lake for the weekend. It was really about we all have to pitch in to take care of the customers and to keep the business going.
That being said, my brother and I both pursued courses of study which really weren’t aligned with who we were as people. I studied PR in my undergrad, and I realized close to the end of college as I was working on these projects that I wanted to be the person that was running the business, not necessarily writing about it. When the time came, I went on some interviews, nothing really fit. My dad said, “Well, why don’t you just come work with me? But I can’t really afford to pay you much.” I said, “Okay.” And he said, “What do you need?” I said, “Well, pay me $200.” So, he paid me $200 a week for about six months.
During that time, the late ʼ90s, it was a good time for business. There was a lot of independent restaurants opening, and after about six months, I started my own route. That kind of became the beginning of the four of us working together as a family. And I think at our largest point, we grew that business to about 20 routes.
Spencer: Wow. Okay, so on one hand, you’re the second generation of the family business. But then you turned around and you launched the bakery from it. I would love to hear from your perspective how this company transitioned from distribution to baking.
Assimacopoulos: Well, our base customers were mostly Greek diner operators. I think when I started with my dad, maybe 50% of our customers were Greek. Maybe even more. As different time periods, there’s different waves of immigrants, and then there are a lot of Syrian, Lebanese, Albanian customers that were getting into the restaurant business. A lot of the Greeks were either selling … their next generation was becoming professionals. I saw our base customer eroding.
We leased a warehouse, and we started bringing in product from different cities, from Cleveland, Chicago, we started selling artisan products from local Italian bakeries … all in an attempt to bolster our value proposition to the local market. And, remember 15, 20, 25, years ago, frozen bread was not where what it is today. It was almost scoffed at. There wasn’t a lot of really good quality frozen bread out there. And the expectation from restauranteurs then was they would get four or five deliveries a week. They wanted the bread fresh.
At a certain point, I saw that you would win business based on price, service and relationship, and not necessarily in that order. And I wanted to create a scenario where we weren’t relying on my father’s reputation or connections in the restaurant community to be successful. Additionally, although I wasn’t a baker, and I don’t consider myself a baker now, I grew up eating really good bread. I got to go to Greece quite a bit when I was young and was exposed to what good fresh artisan bread is like. I was looking for an opportunity to do our own baking and to really create a brand around the products that we produce vs. just who we are as sales guys and service providers.
Spencer: First of all, that is truly entrepreneurial, that you basically said, “Okay, we have the reputation, we have the price, we have the relationships, but I need to have the product, and I think I can make a better product than what’s out there on the market.” That right there is the definition of an entrepreneur.
Assimacopoulos: I was vertically integrating before I ever heard the term
Spencer: You were. But how did you teach yourself the craft with a lifetime of experience in distribution and an education and public relations. How did you teach yourself the craft of baking?
Assimacopoulos: I understood the process and being involved in the industry, we were constantly speaking with bakers about their products and how to improve them or change them or solve problems, so I had a little bit of insight. When the opportunity did arise to purchase the small bakery that we did, I immediately enrolled to a course at AIB and went down to Manhattan, KS. That kind of provided me with a technical basis, and then I worked with the baker who sold the bakery for about three months.
Spencer: Oh, that’s good. That was gracious.
Assimacopoulos: It was good, but, but at the same time, he really didn’t show me a lot. I think he was expecting to get the bakery back. Just for the record, we weren’t the first group of distributors who tried to open our bakery. There’s a lot of people who have tried it, and it usually doesn’t work out. It’s a completely different business. It’s a different world than being a distributor.
Spencer: I mean, I can understand the mindset, like, when you’re with the product, like you’re with the product and have the relationships with the bakers, and have the relationships with those foodservice operators, and you’re talking about the product and the quality of the product and their attributes, you’re like, “I can do this. I know everything about it.” But then when you actually put your hands in dough, yeah, it’s a whole different world.
Assimacopoulos: It’s a whole different world. And one of the things that shocked me when I started baking was the heavy reliance on chemicals for most bakeries. For better or worse, everything that we made that first, probably nine months, was by hand. We had a 20-part divider and a 36-part divider rounder, so you’re touching the dough.
The only chemical ingredient that we had were vitamin C pills, and this is from the Frenchman who I purchased the bakery from. The recipes actually listed six vitamin C pills, or eight vitamin C pills, and I would grind them with a rolling pin. Vitamin C is ascorbic acid. There were no dough conditioners, no enzymes, no monos and dyes … none of stuff that helps make bread at industrial level and smooths over a lot of the shortcomings in your process, whether it’s over mixing or under mixing, or proofing a little bit too long, so on so forth. There were a lot of long nights in the beginning, a lot of long nights.
I continued to go back to AIB. I think I ended up doing four seminars in total. I went to San Francisco Sourdough Academy. I did some work at King Arthur. It’s really just doing the best I could to get out of the bakery and go learn. In addition to that, as we started to hire some people with professional baking experience, then they would teach me as well.
Spencer: That’s another sign of not just entrepreneurialism, but leadership. You hire people who are smarter than you in the parts that you don’t know yourself … like surround yourself with really smart people. That was a good play, right there.
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, by nature I’m a doer, and I’m going to jump in and do it myself. But it gets to a certain point in a business where a): you’re not going to be good at everything, and b): you can’t be in three places at once. It’s just impossible, unless you’re your goal is just to have a really small shop. And, that’s as far as you want to take it.
Spencer: The spirit of this season is talking about the lessons learned as you built the bakery. This would be a good place to start. We could probably spend, like the whole month just talking about the early lessons that you learned the hard way. But if you could summarize the top one, two, maybe three, biggest lessons that you learned in the craft of baking, what would those be? The ones that you learned the hard way?
Assimacopoulos: Gosh, my goodness. Where do I start? Lesson No. 1 is to ask for help. Even today, after having done it for 15 years, there’s times when my team or I get stuck, and by default, now I’ve got a Rolodex of bakers or consultants that I can call. There’s no shame in asking for help. And, we don’t know what we don’t know. That was one thing that probably a lot of times I was hesitant to do in the beginning, is to ask for help. It could be a pride thing. It could be a lot of different things going on, but that’s a big one.
And then, to your previous point, even today, there are skills gaps in the company, in myself as a leader. It’s a constant evolution to find more talent, to surround yourself with more talented people, to work together to make good bread, to make bread that’s sellable, because there was a lot of nights where it was like, “Wow, I think we threw more in the garbage than went out the door.”
And, the other thing, too, that some people have asked me in the past, it’s a blessing and a curse, that I never worked in a bakery, I never worked in a factory, so a lot of the things that you learn being in those environments as an employee, you take with you when you start your own business. I didn’t have any background to work off of, so I had to learn the job of being a baker and everything that that means from front to back. There’s no better way to learn something and to jump in and do it. But it comes, it comes with some with some cost.
Spencer: So, there’s that phrase, building the plane while you’re flying it, but I feel like you were building a plane while you were teaching yourself how to fly.
Assimacopoulos: Pretty much. And to a certain extent, it’s still the same way today, because things are always evolving and changing. And it seems every six months, it’s almost like it’s a new business.
Spencer: It feels like just even in the past, like five to seven years, it’s changed so much, just very rapidly technology, like every year, technology seems to change faster and faster, and that is a contributor to that skills gap change and that we don’t have really many traditional bakers anymore. It’s all technology experts who enjoy creating food.
Assimacopoulos: Yes, which is good and bad in some ways. And I think, I think in our organization now, out of approximately 300 team members, we have two and a half people who are trained bakers. I’m the half, so that’s not a lot to run two plans.
Spencer: No, it’s not. I do think you’re selling yourself short, but we’re going to get to that. You mentioned that you had, in this self-teaching exploration, that you have a Rolodex of bakers that you would call on and ask for advice. How did you develop those relationships with other bakers as you were developing and learning these skills?
Assimacopoulos: Some of it was going to AIB and meeting other bakers. Some of them were bakers from the local market who had been vendors of mine for years. They were very gracious. If you think about it, someone who’s been buying from you for 30 years is now going to start directly competing with you, but you’re willing to help when the phone rings. I owe a big debt of gratitude to a couple of the bakers that would answer that phone call from me, usually late at night, of course, as well. It’s not an easy phone call to make, but thank God they answered, because sometimes in baking it can be really complicated or can be really simple.
Spencer: Yeah, and you never know. I had an Uber driver the other day. She had a degree in culinary, and she hated the class that focused on baking, which is typical, like people who cook don’t really like to bake, but she said the thing that she hated the most was when she’s cooking, she can see as the process is happening, what’s going right or what’s going wrong. And she said, in baking, you don’t know what went wrong or that anything went wrong until it’s over. You don’t know something went wrong until the product’s finished, and then you have to figure out where it went wrong. So yeah, that sums it up really well. It can either be very complicated or very simple, but you don’t know until it’s done.
Assimacopoulos: Or it could be five different things. And trying to explain that to a salesperson who’s taking heat from a customer on the street is tricky, because it almost sounds like you lack credibility when it could be five different things. But that’s the reality of baking.
Spencer: When you said, the late night call was really hard to make to another baker, and it’s so indicative of this industry, and what makes it really special that you’re telling someone down the street, “I’m going to eventually compete with you. Can you help me be successful with that?” Just that mutual respect, and I’m sure, from a pride standpoint, it was probably very scary and intimidating for you to have to make that call.
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, absolutely.
Spencer: And it probably was a little scary and intimidating for another baker to receive that call as well. That’s got to be really hard to say, “Yeah, I’ll help you compete.”
Assimacopoulos: I think so, but I think a lot of bakers, if you ask them their story, they will talk about acts of kindness that were bestowed upon them when they were starting, when they had a problem. I think at their core, bakers are usually a little bit stubborn, simple but, but really good people. We’re making food to feed people, right? Bakers are hardworking,
Spencer: Yes, and that’s a good thing when more people are able to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a practice of paying it forward and helping other bakers or other entrepreneurs when you can?
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, first and foremost, moving forward from just the first year of getting started, I’ve probably toured over, I don’t know, maybe 80 bakeries around the world, and not all bakers will let you in, and that’s fine. I don’t hold that against them, but the vast majority of bakers will open their door when it’s time for you to look at equipment running or ask them questions. I’ve always reciprocated when someone asked to knock on our door or asked to borrow one of my texts for a day or just with general questions. I think one of the bright silver linings from Covid was that bakers, through a process of streamlining production, started working together and collaborating more than they did in the past.
Spencer: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Assimacopoulos: I think we’re all baking for each other now, and I think it just makes us all that much stronger.
Spencer: I like that sentiment.
Assimacopoulos: Additionally, internally, we do a lot of work to train the staff. The company is the people. Without the people, we have no company, regardless of how much money we spend on capex, or how big of a building we build. We’re constantly trying to teach and elevate what, oftentimes, are unskilled hourly laborers. And we’ve got, we’ve got a long list of people who joined the company never having baked loaf of bread in their life, and they are operating lines or in supervisory management positions. It’s great to see that.
Spencer: That’s awesome. I remember you telling me that the bakery started like there came a time in the distribution side where it became very transactional, and that was one of the things that sort of drove you to change. If I remember correctly, if I were to drill it down, the bakery started so that you could return a focus to relationships and then make the product sort of the star of the show.
And though, obviously those are two solid reasons for starting a business, but what were some of those unexpected challenges? We talked about some of the challenges that came with becoming a bakery, but what were some of the unexpected challenges of going from a distribution company to a bakery? Because then we’ve got the you’re going into competition with other bakers now, but what about getting into business then with other distributors? What was that transition like?
Assimacopoulos: To your comment about the product being the star, the challenge was when the product was the star, but not in a good way. “You switched me from a product that I wasn’t dissatisfied with, and I’m doing to support your bakery, but it hasn’t been good the last three deliveries. What are you going to do about it?”
You can’t pass the buck when you’re producing the product. Additionally, as a distributor if somebody would call me at midnight for two loaves of L-shaped rye with seeds, no problem, I’ll call the bakery and make it their problem. But when customers are coming to you asking for product modifications, tweaks, new products, there’s only so much you can do as a manufacturer and be successful.
Some of it was managing expectations from customers, managing expectations from our internal sales team and ourselves, really understanding what our capabilities are. Additionally, managing a manufacturing facility is completely different than a distribution company. With the distribution company, we had drivers that were all 100% commission based, so they’re all almost, in effect, independent contractors motivated to get out there and sell and service our collective customers for their own benefit.
But a manufacturing environment is different. There’s different people that work there. There’s different motivations. That was a big change. Just the X’s and O’s of running a bakery, there’s so many things that you have to do, and I’m getting, I’m getting PTSD, thinking about it now, making schedules, payroll. No, I’m joking, but it’s a lot. It’s a lot when you don’t have a staff, and you’ve never done it before, but once again, it’s trial by fire and great lessons.
Spencer: One thing that I did not mention that I probably should have said at the beginning, at this point, when you started the bakery, it was called Michigan Bread. What was your dad’s role in Michigan Bread, and how did you rely on him as the bakery got started?
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, actually, there was a name before Michigan Bread. We didn’t know what to call it. At the time, I was partners with my brother Andy, my father, George and Mike. We’ve been partners in the distribution company since 2006, so for about four years before we purchased the bakery. So we called it George Anthony Baking Co. in honor of my father and Mike’s father. Then it was GNA Baking, and people would confuse that with Assimacopoulos Bakery Distributors. And then we came up with Michigan Bread, and that was another wrinkle. I have a marketing minor, but clearly I didn’t pay attention in class, because I really goofed up a lot of the branding and naming activity in the organization over the last 15 years.
Spencer: We are going to get pretty deep into that in a couple of weeks. Was your dad a part of the bakery?
Assimacopoulos: Well, my dad was my biggest supporter, for sure, and it really was a dream of his for years to be able to have his own bakery and control over the products that he sells. He was very proud. He would come and help a little bit here and there, but at that point he had worked hard and standing there for eight hours packing buns or helping to unload an oven was a little bit past what he was physically able to contribute. He would bring me lunch a lot keep me busy and watch while I overproof bread.
Spencer: Was his business acumen helpful though in starting your business?
Assimacopoulos: Yeah, all of the basic business principles that I had were from my dad, watching him. He was a very charismatic guy. He’d walk into the back of a restaurant, and he was like a superstar, smiling, jokes. Everybody loved him. He could get away with just about anything, but, but really, he was very committed to his customers and providing service. And that really stuck with my brother and I, that just kind of became baseline for us
Spencer: You started this bakery with three employees, and the last time I was in Taylor, MI, there were more than 150 but then you just mentioned that now you have more than 300. How big is the company now? We’re going to get into this in a couple of weeks, but starting the bakery was just sort of the first big entrepreneurial step. You actually made an acquisition in 2021 as well.
Assimacopoulos: Right now we have, depending on the time of year, about 300 employees. We flex, usually in the summer months, when we get busier, and we trim down a little bit, usually in Q4 and as we continue to automate the plants, the goal is to create more value add type of roles and positions, vs. rack pushers and panhandlers. It’s not a goal necessarily to add a lot more positions. It’s how many really good positions can we develop in the organization that people actually want to do and are more fulfilling for them?
Spencer: That makes sense, and that’s smart. Also, when I was at the bakery a few years ago, you had distribution into 18 states. Where are you now?
Assimacopoulos: With the acquisition, I believe we’ve got customers in 28 states, so it’s still growing, and we’re always working move on to that next level of business. We’re working with some national retailers now. Hopefully in the future, we can say that we’re in even more places across the country.
Spencer: That’s amazing. So you’re in retail and foodservice?
Assimacopoulos: More heavily into foodservice. In retail, we’re kind of graduating into co-packing and a lot of commissary work for sandwich makers that are distributing product across the country.
Spencer: All right, so you have said twice whether you’re a baker, and so I think I got you to admit that you’re half a baker, but I do feel like you have a lot of monikers, a baker, a salesman, an entrepreneur, a businessman. Am I missing any?
Assimacopoulos: Gosh, I don’t think so. I think No. 1 is a small company grows and evolves. We also grow and evolve, and we take on different roles and in different parts of our life. We have different titles. But I would say, my dad was known as George the bread man. I was called bread boy in high school, so bread man kind of encompasses what my career has been about, not so much just about baking, but being in the industry and providing service to customers.
Spencer: If you could sum yourself up in a word or phrase, then I guess the answer is, bread man, or you’ve matured from bread boy.
Assimacopoulos: With some people, some people still call me that.
Spencer: That’s pretty funny. Do you think you’ll ever consider yourself fully a baker?
Assimacopoulos: I really don’t think so. I really respect bakers. I think to really consider yourself a true baker, it requires a certain commitment to the craft. What is the expression? Some of these guys have flour in their veins. I am, by nature, a generalist, and usually I get to a certain point of understanding and a subject, and I move on. I can formulate, I can troubleshoot, I can do a lot of things in the bakery, but I don’t think I’m ever going to be teaching a baking class. I’m not that good. Put it that way, but I’m good enough to really understand and respect the craft and the people who do it 40, 50, 60, hours a week.
Spencer: I have several friends who I consider bakers, and they don’t consider themselves a baker, and I’m always trying to convince them that they are actually a baker, and that’s because I have so much respect for what they do, and I include you in this group.
It always comes down to respect. They say they respect the ones who are formally trained or lifelong bakers. It’s out of respect that they don’t want to call themselves a baker because they don’t think they deserve it. But I’m still going to try to convince you you’re a baker.
Spiros, that is everything that I have for this week. It was really great just hearing your story again. I’ve heard it several times, but just helping our listeners get to know you a little better and how what used to be called Michigan Bread came to be and is now The Good Bread Co., and we’re going to hear more stories about that in the coming weeks.
We’re going to talk a lot about growing pains, early growing pains, what it’s like to make an acquisition and really grow and expand outside of Michigan, and more growing pains. And then look at we’re going to close out this month with a look at the future. I’m really excited for these next few weeks, and I’m very grateful that you are taking time to share your story with us.
Assimacopoulos: Thanks, Joanie, always a pleasure, and I look forward to next week.
