Welcome to the third season of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Josh Allen, award-winning artisan baker and founder of Companion Baking in St. Louis, is redefining ways to think about artisan bread production. In the sixth and final episode of the season, special guest Josh Galliano joins the conversation. As a James Beard nominated chef and Companion’s innovation leader and QA manager, Galliano shares how his culinary background impacts innovation at the bakery.

Listen to Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple, Spotify or Google. Hosted by Joanie Spencer, Commercial Baking editor-in-chief. Sponsored by AB Mauri North America.

Joanie Spencer: Josh and Josh, thank you so much for joining me this week. I’m excited to have you both here today to really get a feel for your dynamic and hear both of your perspectives. I’d love to hear how you two met.

Josh Allen: Josh Galliano has always been an incredibly giving chef, super generous with his time and with his resources. And so I believe over the years after he moved to St. Louis, that we just met a number of times at chefs events and charitable endeavors and different dinners and things like that and kind of formed a relationship, just sort of within the community. We have an incredibly small, very tight knit restaurant community here in St. Louis, which is really nice. And as a kind of a micro vendor to that community for a long time. We were sort of always on the peripheral. And I was always kind of in awe of of what some of these chefs and folks have done, including Josh and so we just kind of met in those circles initially.

Spencer: Okay, so Josh Galliano, how did you sort of come to know Companion, and how did you get involved on the bakery side?

Josh Galliano: I started to know companion kind of like how Josh said, through all these different chefs event, there was one in particular that I was a part of that Josh really kindly offered to make whatever bread any chef needed. And I was blown away by the fact that, you know, here you have a bunch of creative chefs, and they could come up with anything. Companion and Josh were completely willing to make it for them from scratch. And it was just really kind of awe inspiring to see it happen. And it just kind of built in my mind from there that, you know, it was a good partnership to have. When I was creating a sandwich heavy menu for concept in downtown St. Louis, I knew that Companion could do the types of bread that I had thought would go well with the sandwiches as well as provide me the service that I needed to make sure that if I was there or not there, the bread was always going to be great. And the sandwiches would be made properly, because everything was on time and in our hands. And after that, you know, we kind of stayed in touch. And like Josh said, it’s a very small St. Louis food community. And it’s great because we all share and collaborate together. So at some point, I was making bread at a restaurant that I worked at, and kind of getting more into fermentation. And Josh saw some of the pictures I posted on Instagram, and messaged me if I was interested in joining the dark side. And I was just kind of blown away by that idea. I needed to expand what I was learning and challenge myself in a different way. And Companion definitely provided that kind of outlet for me.

Spencer: I think it’s really funny that some of the best relationships start on Instagram.

Galliano: It is true, definitely true.

Spencer: So, I’m interested about that Instagram part of it, because if I remember correctly, you were just kind of tinkering with baking just in your own kitchen and posting things that you just thought were cool. And then Josh Allen, didn’t you see those pictures and say, yeah, I’ve got to have this guy in my bakery?

Allen: Well, yeah, I mean, his his reputation obviously preceded itself as it related to the culinary arts, and then he was starting to dabble in bread. And you know, I think Instagram is a great way to see what somebody is really into, right? Because the things that they start posting personally are the things that they’re intrigued by and curious about. And I think more than anything, when we look to add folks to our team, especially folks in a leadership kind of role, curiosity is probably the number one attribute. Because we’re going to constantly get ourselves into situations that we don’t necessarily know how to get out of. And I think finding people that are curious is just a tremendous trade. And so Josh posting about things and showing what he was doing at home and on the weekends and this is a guy that I already knew to be working a ridiculous number of hours with a young family that continued to grow even after he joined us. I knew if he was baking bread that he was into it. So yeah, I think I think the direct message feature was nice. I think I just reached out and said maybe it’s time to, like Josh said, join the dark side and get out of the kitchen. And we can offer things that our restaurant community can’t sometimes as it relates to hours and days of the week. I think it can be potentially a lot more monotonous in the bakery business, because if we’re doing our job right, then everything should be the same every day. But at the same time quality of life wise it can be more intriguing and a little bit better than the restaurant world.

Spencer: So Josh Galliano, I’m interested to hear what that transition was like going from the culinary side to the bakery side and what that learning curve was like. We talked a little bit about it when I visited the bakery in terms of what urgency means relative to culinary arts and relative to baking, so can you walk me through that transition?

Galliano: The change of pace and the work life balance were definitely big for me and my family. And then the part that didn’t really change so much was the the feeling of a sense of urgency,  but it was the timing of the urgency that that change. In a restaurant, you have your five o’clock deadline, and your mise en place needs to be there or the nights going to go down in a bunch of flames. But in a bakery, you don’t have that because it’s this very deliberate rhythm and flow. We’re making a bread and it has two hours of fermentation. And then we’re going to do makeup, and then a little bit more fermentation. So it was a much more timed existence as I moved into the bakery. But what didn’t change was when things started to kind of coalesce together. So you know, if summertime hit and it was a warmer day, things might ferment a little different. So there would be that sense of urgency there as far as we have to tackle a, b, and c, and if not, things are going to turn into a big ball of flames. So that urgency was still there, it was just in a different form and a different mentality for something I wasn’t quite used to, but at the same time felt really familiar.

Spencer: I’ve always heard that, and I kind of grew up with this. My mom was really great in the kitchen, but she loved cooking and not so much baking because there was a little bit more room for interpretation when you’re cooking versus that precision that’s required with baking. So how was that for you? Are you one of those who can easily use both sides of your brain? Are you a little ambidextrous in that way?

Galliano: I feel like in one sense, it is kind of the right left balance of our brains that really helps to make things flow in a bakery. Sometimes you would see this baker is adding a little bit more flour if they thought that the starter was a little more moist that day. But, I think the thing that helped me was the movement in the past decade or so where so much of what we do in restaurants is weighed out in grams. You look at some of the cookbooks that are out there now. And they’re great, because they’re all in grams. And they’re easily scaled up. And they’re easily replicated in your home kitchen or your commercial kitchen. And so that that kind of structure really lends well into baking because we are so weight specific, we have to be right. If we’re going to put a nutrition label on to a piece of bread or a dessert, we have to be exact on what we’re putting into it so that the customer knows this is how many calories I need to have for my nutrition or this is what’s going to need to be adjusted in the rest of my diet so that I can enjoy that croissant. Those things were already in me, it was just a matter of moving from grams to ounces and moving from sub gram scales into a bigger scale, so to speak.

Spencer: Right. So Josh Allen, from your perspective, how does having Josh Galliano’s chef background and that chef’s perspective on your team give you an edge? You both said, you know, come over to the dark side, he was a customer and he came over to the vendor side. So how does that experience in the kitchen give you an edge for your product development, but also with customer relationships? Because as we know, in this season, relationships are everything for this bakery.

Allen: Having Josh join our team gave us an instant level of credibility. I mean, not that we didn’t have any we because we were old enough, probably. The business was well into its teenage years when Josh joined the team, we were actually almost 20 years old when. But it just really increased the level of credibility we have when it related to chefs. I’ve always been somebody that knows we have to go into the kitchen when we meet with somebody and really see how they’re using the product and the equipment they’re using. And I tried to spend a lot of energy learning that over the years, but obviously never having really worked in that space, I did a little bit of a restaurant work when I was in college, but I was mainly a baker not having that knowledge and that expertise. So I had to try to get it on the run, as I was calling on folks over the years. But Josh had a really strong understanding of kitchen flow and of equipment and all kinds of different ways in which these folks are going to abuse our product once it gets into their back door. And I think him being able to talk that talk and walk that walk with the customers leads a level of credibility that we didn’t have before. Then internally, he’s just a tremendous resource to bounce ideas off of. And again, we’ve been doing it for an awful long time, the bakery is approaching 30 years old. So we have a lot of experience with product development. But Josh brings all of that together. And it’s really nice to be able to bounce ideas off of him and see his perspective and see other products that he’s used before. He’s worked in other parts of the world and in other parts of the country, and has a lot of experience in a lot of different stuff. I think it’s been equal in terms of the internal and the external piece. And that just speaks a lot to him. He brings a tremendous amount of humility to the process, which is what I always tried to bring, and we talked about it in the first couple of episodes that we’re looking to help the customer tell their story. We’re not necessarily trying to push our story on to them. And Josh really got that right away. And he’s cool with that. I mean, it’s hard for a chef. I didn’t expect that to be easy for him, but it has been easy for him and that humility to the process really is incredibly valuable and has helped us really drive the business forward. Josh, I apologize. What’s it been? seven years, eight years that you’ve been on the team?

Galliano: I’m working on my seventh.

Spencer: I’m just kind of imagining the ideation process with customers. And it has to be really cool to kind of have Josh Galliano in your corner. I said that when we visited at the bakery, Josh Galliano, you’re kind of a ringer, because when your whole core is telling someone else’s story, and you’re trying to develop these products for your customer to use and make their own. What a great resource to have Josh Galliano to be able to say, yes, that will work with this type of sandwich or no, we need to sort of tweak the bread to do this or that in order to create the sandwich or to work with the sandwich the way it should, right?

Galliano: In many ways, I think you’re spot on. You know, so much of what we try to do is let the customer lead the conversation as far as what they want and what they’re envisioning. And I try not to jump in and say no. I try to always keep an open mind and keep a yes mentality so that they don’t have to hear about anything that we would have trouble with in the bakery or in the makeup. Instead, I want them to understand that we’re going to do our best for them and for what they want to have happen on their plate or on their sandwiches, so that we can kind of take some of that stress off their shoulders and concentrate on that beautiful creation that happens within their restaurant. So in many cases, it’s really us helping them but it’s also us helping them through collaboration. And we really try not to say that we have all the answers for them. But we’re going to work super hard to make sure that we do give them the answer that’s going to work best in their restaurant or in their club setting.

Allen:  I’ll just add to that and say that it’s really who Josh and I are in terms of how we approach the process. And at the same time, it really is a wonderful sales technique, not that we really look at it that way. But if a customer gets to play in the development piece and really take ownership in the product that we’re bringing forward, it’s very difficult for them not to be super excited about it and interested in moving forward because it isn’t us laying product on the table and saying, “here’s what we think your story should be and here’s the products that we think fit.” It’s really them playing a role in that, and when they can take ownership in that and when they can feel that they played a part in the fruition of that product from bag of flour to their backdoor, it really does solidify the relationship in a way that’s that’s really incredible.

Spencer: I mean, I just love the two perspectives that you both bring together. It’s just it’s such a perfect pairing. And you guys are the Starsky and Hutch of the baking industry.

Allen: That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to us, I think.

Spencer: So taking this beyond just what you two are able to do together. Josh Galliano, I’m interested with your seven years in the baking industry, what kind of partnerships have you been able to develop outside of the bakery to sort of guide the r&d process? How was working with supplier partners contributing to the innovation that Companion brings to the table?

Galliano: I feel that we’ve been really lucky in our relationships and that goes towards our vendors for the fact that they’re very personal. We have a wonderful kind of history with some of our vendors for ingredients, and we have a wonderful history with some of the vendors that we’ve used for equipment. Whenever we have an issue, they’re really just a phone call away. And in many cases, we see those kind of issues pop up kind of cyclically, and they are right there for us every time. And then other times, you know, we found new relationships and new partnerships that really have expanded what we do in the bakery for our customers. So I think AB Mauri is a perfect example for us, and we’ve used some of their products for years, but we never knew them personally. And so once they had located into a new development area of St. Louis, we got to know them and what they were capable of. And they brought us into their facility to kind of show us around and show some of the possibilities that we could work together on. So I guess the best example would be getting in there, and actually them showing us how they test breads and test some of our breads in particular, because when we looked at developing different breads, it was always about did it hit the right flavors for us? Did it function well in our system, and in our process? With AB Mauri they were testing breads with equipment that I’ve never used before. It was kind of like a geeky kid who just really got excited, and they played with me on that. They showed me how I could improve the breads and make it to where the function wasn’t just did it perform okay, it was “did it really excel in our in our facility did it hit all the marks that we needed to make sure that it was great bread going to our customer?” And that kind of relationship has been something that I’ve been able to utilize over and over again, some of their scientists are just so fantastic with their depth of knowledge and how I can make what we do here even better. It’s really unmistakable how much they’ve helped us to improve.

Spencer: Would it be a fair assumption to say that by having that resource sort of right there at your fingertips, down the street and going into their innovation hub, that can broaden your perspective on r&d and product development on a bigger scale? So then you know what you need from other suppliers, maybe other ingredients suppliers, or how the product is being machined so you can have deeper conversations with equipment suppliers? Is there sort of a ripple effect?

Galliano: I would say absolutely. And the ripple effect goes in so many different directions, right? In one sense, the ripple effect goes down to our customers. I saw how they would present me with information from testing. And I loved it, it was great. It was all the information I needed to understand the bread more. And from that, I was able to create different cutting and scoring documents for us to use internally as well as to help me speak to customers in new ways that they understood better when they asked us to do testing. And then kind of to your question, yeah, we definitely were able to take that information and go back to our make up of machinery and say  “I want our bread to be more like this.” I need x y&z out of it. And because of what I was able to tell them in more specific terms, other than I want a more airy bread, they were able to tell us, okay, try these different settings and see how it performs. And then let’s do a little bit of variable isolation and work through the different possibilities. It was really eye opening to me, but it was also right in our wheelhouse of always being curious.

Spencer: I love that. And I love the idea of being curious. I think we talked a little bit about this throughout this season, that it’s not just about asking why, it’s about asking why not as well. And that all comes down to curiosity. And that’s really where innovation comes from. This podcast is called Troubleshooting Innovation, and you both are such experts in your field. I think you’re bringing such good information and ideas and things to think about for everyone in our industry. And so as we’re nearing the end, one of my last questions is really what advice do you have for bakeries that might not be so lucky as to get a Josh Galliano. How can bakers develop culinary relationships in order to get into the mind of their customers? And I think that goes beyond just foodservice customers. I mean to get into the mind of how a consumer is going to use bread that they make as well, what advice would you have?

Allen: I can try to tackle that one. You know, I think the biggest thing like I mentioned, you know pre Josh, to look at the bakery in those terms, you know, it was me getting into the kitchen and spending time with our customers in their kitchen, and really making sure that I understood how they were going to use the product, what they were looking for from the product. Was it plate presentation, was it holding time was it “is the product gonna sit above a line with high humidity?” All of those things play a role in what ways we can meet their expectations. And so I think to really understand the customer was to be with the customer. And we love bringing them in here for a tour, but sometimes going in to see them and to see how they operate makes a difference. And we have a sales team that, going back to that word, is super curious about how folks are using our products as well. And so whether it’s Josh or myself, or one of one of our team being out in the field and being inside of restaurants, that makes a huge difference. We always kind of talk about that, if our only job was to make bread, it would be easy, but we’ve got to figure out how to get it in the right box, to the right customer. And then make sure that it works for them inside of their restaurant all the way through to consumption, that it doesn’t just end at our door. And we’ve got to have a team of people curious about how to do that. And over the years, especially early on, we participated. Josh and I met at chef dinners and different events and farmers markets and selling markets where we had a chance to directly converse with the customer, and also we mentioned in the first episode we have a couple of cafes, which is a great learning opportunity for us to see how product performs and to see what folks think of certain things on on certain sandwiches. Is this bread too hard, too crusty, too soft, not sturdy enough, whatever those things are, that we have a chance to work through. I think we have all those different opportunities. So as Josh mentioned, experimentation becomes a big thing, one in the trial and error process of developing a product for a new customer, but also inside of our own cafes and at selling events or markets or things like that. And then just getting in to the back door and doing it and getting into the back door of the restaurant and kind of seeing what’s happening. But that curiosity is a big piece. And then the last thing that I will say is that, you know, one of my goals is always to bring people into the organization that are smarter and more experienced than I am and certainly fill the gaps of whatever knowledge and expertise I might have. And you know, Josh certainly did that for us. But we have others here who have done that from a distribution operations, logistics, sales, all of those different things. So I encourage folks to constantly bring people into their organization that make their organization better with a broader range of experiences. And I’m going to learn from those folks every day. And so that curiosity continues as we continue to move forward.

Spencer: I love that it comes down to culture and having that culture of yes that you have, and providing the opportunity for people to be curious, Josh Galliano what would you say as someone with culinary experience, what would you say to a baker who doesn’t have someone on staff with culinary experience? What do they need to be thinking about in their product development?

Galliano: I feel like Josh really covered a lot when it came to the product development and how the innovation relates to the customer. But I think we also have a lot of internal customers. And that’s one thing that I kind of love that Josh touched on is that we have a very bright team of people. And it’s not just in the upper management, it’s really throughout the whole organization. And so I really tried to keep a very open mind and open ear to a lot of what is being experienced and talked about from our production floor or back in packing, it really comes down to a lot of little big breakthroughs. And those breakthroughs are phenomenal for making life either easier for our bakers a little bit better for what they’re experiencing, or even just a little bit better for the breads to where it improves the the experience for the customer. And it could be just as simple as how you’re fine tuning the settings on the machine, or how you’re scheduling the dough to be produced for the day. And those little breakthroughs really begin to add up. They add up over time to not just improve the experience within the bakery, but they’ll start to improve the experience on the bottom line. And whether that bottom line is because we’re reducing trash or whether it’s that we’re actually seeing an increase in sales, those all add up to make it a successful business. And those things then lead into that culture that we’re really trying to keep supporting here of curiosity, of being always improving and always working toward making it a little bit better than the day before.

Spencer: Okay, you two, I could not think of a better way to end this season of Troubleshooting Innovation. What incredible insight and great advice from a truly innovative bakery that looks at the world through a very unique lens. I can’t thank you enough. This was an incredible conversation and Josh Galliano, thanks for joining us on this last episode and bringing your perspective. It’s really eye opening.

Galliano: Well, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

Spencer: And Josh Allen, thank you so much for sharing your insight over these six weeks of Troubleshooting Innovation. I think that you gave our audience a ton to think about and a lot to learn. So thank you again for your time and your wisdom and sharing your experience with us.

Allen: Thanks, Joanie. It’s been a real pleasure for me too.