Welcome to the fifth season of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Joanie Spencer, editor-in-chief for Commercial Baking, talks with Rebecca Abel, owner of D’Vine Cookies in Taylor, MI. They’re looking at cookie production through the lens of an entrepreneur, from starting a bakery to moving into the first big facility to strategic growth into the future. Sponsored by the National Honey Board.

This episode explores people development: the big issue on the radar of every bakery, big and small. Abel shares her journey with developing her own professional skills as a first-time bakery owner, while also providing training and education opportunities for her own employees along the way.

Learn more about this season here, and listen to Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple, Spotify, Google and Stitcher.

Joanie Spencer: Hi, Rebecca. Thanks for joining me again this week.

Rebecca Abel: Hello, Joanie. Thanks for having me.

Spencer: So this topic is a big one that’s on everyone’s minds, and I’m very interested to get your perspective as an entrepreneur. So first, I want to revisit the fact that you started D’Vine, with no experience running a bakery, what has been your personal journey for professional development? Not only for you, but also for building a staff?

Abel: Well, that’s a great question. And it’s really been the hardest thing that I’ve dealt with, because people is, you know, that’s the wild card that without the right people, you can’t have the right company. So I really started in the books did as much reading as I could on management and on vision and on leadership, because I’ve always been in a leadership role, but it was on much a much smaller scale. So in my other company, I have a team of two. And so when you’re just dealing with one other person, it’s a much easier situation. But here, I was coming in and started with a staff of four, and realized quickly that, you know, it’s not always simple a to have a dynamic of a group work, but be to really find the right people to do the job that you need them to do. It was a lot of trial and error, to be honest, every quarter I evaluate even still to this day, who is on my team? And are they in the right position? And are they the right fit for the company? Because if you don’t have that as a baseline, you can’t develop somebody that’s not a right fit.

Spencer: Right, exactly. So what was it like for you, trying to learn a craft and lead a company at the same time?

Abel: It was really one of the hardest things I’ve ever known. Now, it’s gotten a little less painful, because I have some after a few years now have some good solid members of my team. But it’s, it’s something that is forever difficult, because even people in their own lives, you know, can be a great fit at one point, and then they have something come up or they get distracted, or they’re just people. And so it’s always something that I have to keep my eyes on. And really, you know, I wish I wish it was easier. But it’s unfortunately not. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve really leaned into automation as much as possible so that we can have great people, but fewer of them.

Spencer: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s what everybody’s trying to do right now. And I think you might be at a bit of an advantage because those larger companies are trying to scale back while they’re trying to increase their automation to deal with the scaling back of staff, whether it’s their choice or not, where you’re kind of coming at it from the opposite end of the spectrum, that you’re going to lean into automation to build your company without a large staff, right.

Abel: Yes, yeah, we’re trying to set it up right to be a company 10- or 20-times bigger than we are. But from right now. So the choices that we’re making with equipment and with staffing is so that we build it right from the get-go.

Spencer: So around the time you started D’Vine, we were still in the onset of that labor shortage that is now what I would call crisis level. I want to unpack that for a minute in what this labor crisis looked like from your perspective, as a small business. How did this workforce shortage, this gap, look from your perspective, as you were building something?

Abel: Well, it was something that we had no choice but to have to deal with head on. And what we found was that we might have to interview 20 people to get one person because there were so many jobs available, and fewer people than there were jobs, right? I worked with my HR manager, and we really took it as a numbers game. We could see right away that it was going to take hours and hours of phone calls and interviews. For every five people we start, one really works out. I do everything in the numbers side, so I work backwards. I said, “Okay, you’re gonna have to make 100 phone calls to get 10 interviews to get five people in the door to keep one.” So just keep that in mind. And we would figure out, “Okay, here’s how many people we need.” So those are your numbers.

Spencer: Yeah. So remind me, are you pretty much an even split between workers in the bakery and workers in office?

Abel: No, no, we have far more workers in the bakery than we have in the office. So I have four people on my management team, and then one administrative assistant. And then, at any given time, we have somewhere between 12 and 20 people in the bakery, depending on how busy we are. But we definitely have a small admin staff. But that’s where we’ve really dialed in. And my HR manager has been with me for four years now. And she’s learned with me that here’s how we’re doing this.

Spencer: You’re so lucky to have a dedicated and loyal HR person, I feel like HR has got to be one of the hardest jobs these days with everything that’s going on with labor. I asked about what the split was because pre-pandemic, it was really, really hard to find workers for the operation on the bakery plant floor, but when the pandemic hit, that’s when that sort of “life’s too short” mentality kicked in for a lot of people. And there was this mass exodus from every industry. So I was wondering, do you struggle with the administrative and office staff, keeping those employees as with the bakery plant workers as well?

Abel: No. I built that [management] team slowly, so now it’s a team of four and, like I said, it was a team of three just a few months ago, when we just brought on a maintenance and sanitation manager. But my employees tend to stay for a long time. And honestly, on the floor as well, I have good retention of once we found the right person, and we’ve decided they’re on our team, they don’t typically leave.

We moved to our new facility in July of this year. And that was a big, big challenge, because it was 45 minutes away from our other facility. So we did have some turnover with that move. But we have some people that have been willing to make that drive. We offer carpools, and we just did what we needed to do to keep as many people on board as possible. But it’s something that I have to show the right value proposition for these employees to want to stay and make it a place that they want to be. And fortunately, I think they’re excited about our growth and they believe in the product, so we’ve had good retention.

Spencer: Okay, that’s really exciting, because retention is a big part of this workforce crisis. And I hear it all the time. It’s not just recruitment, it’s also a retention. And so kudos to you for being able to build a loyal staff that you can keep, and especially with the move because that was on my list of questions. And I want to jump to that right now. The move to Taylor did have an impact on the workforce, so let’s talk about what it’s been like. You said that you’ve put carpooling in place, and you had some incentives to try to keep as much of the staff as you could. But a 45-minute drive in an era where people are like, “What’s in it for me?” when they look at their job opportunities … that’s a that’s a long drive. What’s it been like trying to keep those people and also rebuilding the staff?

Abel: Well, most of them came over initially, and we offered carpools and I gave some financial incentives to come over and a few of them with especially young children just realized it wasn’t gonna work to be able to still pick up their kid from school at three o’clock and be done with work at three o’clock. Right. So there was some turnover there. And fortunately, with some other partnerships, a lot of the employees went and worked for other businesses that we do work with. So it wasn’t that I you know, didn’t want to help them find other jobs but for the people that logistically it just wasn’t going to work long term. It was really nice of them, when we kind of knew going in that some of these people were just gonna come over to help us get established and to find new train some new people. And then they transitioned to employers back in the area that we were originally. Yeah. But this is where the numbers game came in, so that we needed to hire six new people. And it took hundreds of calls and interviews and startups, starting new employees to find the six that we really wanted to keep on our team. And were a good fit.

Spencer: Wow. Yeah, I was wondering what the labor market looked like in Taylor.

Abel: It’s actually a really good market, it’s the right demographic for the type of position that we’re hiring for. It’s a very industrial area, that was part of our decision to move there. Because we wanted to make sure that it there was enough population, and enough of the right labor pool to be able to run our company. So that that worked out because yes, there are a lot of potential candidates. You know, it’s not been easy, but it’s not been as difficult as it could have been in other areas.

Spencer: Sure, yeah. I can see Taylor perfectly in my mind from when I was there last year, and it is a very industrial area. So it’s good that you’ve got a good labor market, and hopefully not too much competition for the labor. I’m sure that can be kind of scary, too, when there’s a lot of manufacturing in the area and you’ve got to compete for those bodies.

Abel: And what I think is making it a little easier is that if people have a choice to manufacture a screw or a cookie, often you’re going to choose a cookie. It’s a little bit more exciting. You know, they can take home their work a little bit more readily than they could in certain types of manufacturing. So we get people at cookies.

Spencer: Good. I think I would probably choose cookies over screws too.

Abel: Yeah, although we do say, “Warning: This job may cause weight gain.”

Spencer: Haha, right! So next, I want to talk about training for your staff and for yourself. Just a few seasons ago, my dear friend Rich Berger referenced “building the plane while flying it” several times, and I can only imagine that’s how you must feel at times. What are some of your training and education strategies or opportunities that you’re taking advantage of, as you’re seeking to train yourself and to train your staff?

Abel: Well, one of the first things I did back in 2000 when I realized, okay, I’m scaling this company and I don’t have the complete know-how to do this in manufacturing, is I enrolled in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program. And that was really … I would call it a mini MBA. I had a lot of business skills on the financial side, but this is where it brought it all together. And it was like a 4-month overview of everything that you need to be thinking about. That was a great training program for me, because it showed me what I didn’t know that I didn’t know. From there, I got a little deeper in some of those areas. I’m an avid reader, I’m a very self-taught type of person, so every day I was reading different things on management and on leadership, just really trying to get every nugget that I can to learn how to fly this plane. It’s complicated and it keeps evolving with every growth step we take. It’s evolved into a new company, really.

Spencer: Right. Yeah, I can totally see that.

Abel: So that’s how I’ve really dealt with myself, is trying to continuously learn and read and take programs that are available. And there’s also programs that I constantly see popping up through different organizations I’m in. But on the employee side, we do a lot of mini trainings and I try to take employees kind of one at a time under my wing and focus on training them in what I need to then let go of doing myself. It’s time consuming, and it’s frustrating because it doesn’t always happen right away that, you know. I can let go of something and train somebody and say, “Okay, now you’re dealing with this.” So it’s happening slowly, but it’s something I need to focus on. Because I have to get more and more off of my plate and train the people to take things over for me.

Spencer: That’s a hard sweet spot to hit, because you’ve got to make time to train people to take things off your plate. But there’s no time because there’s so much on your plate, right?

Abel: And that’s where it’s a fine balance between finding somebody to come in, that already is trained and knows how to do this. And the cost of that employee vs. finding somebody that you can grow and build with. So that’s where I’m at right now is with a few positions that I need to fill, trying to find, I feel like I can no longer continue to find people to build. I need to bring in some additional people that already have some know-how and skills to help me get to the next level. That’s what we’re looking at now: this next hire. I can’t build them from scratch.

Spencer: You are answering my questions before I have a chance to ask them because I did want to pick your brain on that, with your team-building strategy. Are you trying to hire senior level experienced people that you can then build a team under them? Or is it just getting bodies in the door, and then everybody kind of learns as they go, and then you build people up that way?

Abel: That’s most of what we’ve done so far. Although we had a maintenance person come in recently that had the know-how to run every machine that we have. And that’s been a beautiful thing, because that can be a very long learning curve. Yeah, but I’m at the point that it’s too challenging to take everybody on your team and train them for the job. So our next hire is somebody that we can’t necessarily afford the most senior level person, but I do need them to have more experience to be able to help me, so that I don’t have to learn it first and then train it. I need somebody coming in and saying, “Okay, here’s how we do this. Here’s how I did this in my last company. And let’s roll this out here.”

Spencer: So as you lean into automation, are you getting any help from your equipment suppliers in training on the equipment at all?

Abel: Yes, we definitely rely on our suppliers and their tech support. There’s also different programs locally. So there’s the Michigan Manufacturing Tech Center that I went to a course recently with different community organizations and different equipment suppliers kind of combining together. You know, I’m piecing things together.

Spencer: Right, right. So as you’re building the team, what does onboarding look like? What does it look like now vs. a couple of years ago? And how do you envision your onboarding changing as the operation grows?

Abel: Our onboarding is a lot more structured. We used to bring somebody in, and they would shadow and go through a couple of food safe classes. But now we finally recorded an entry video, so the first thing they watch is a half-hour video about our culture and our values and about where we’ve come from. We’re getting things together so that it’s a lot more professional when somebody comes through the door vs. saying, “Okay, somebody’s here, what do we do now?” But that’s been the effect of so many people having to come through the door before finding the right fit. It feels good to have this structure. Now, the moment somebody comes in, they go to the conference room for two hours, seeing onboarding videos and getting to know our company and what we stand for, what we do, then having all the different very specific trainings about the items that they need to know. And then they go onto the floor and have other trainings. So we have a structured program now.

Spencer: Okay. Now, you mentioned culture in the onboarding. That’s one of the first things you talk about, knowing that you’re doing a great job of retaining loyal employees. I imagine culture is a big part of that. So let’s talk about that. What is the culture at D’Vine? What is it that you’re telling your employees, “This is what we stand for”?

Abel: Well, we start out with the fact that we’re still really — in our minds — a startup, and what it means to work for our startup. Most of these employees have not worked for any type of startup environment and what it means: that we’re pivoting constantly and we’re still changing things. A lot of employees get stressed out by changes, but I help them understand that this is not something even to consider a stressor, like when we’re changing a recipe or we’re changing how we’re doing things, that’s just part of what we’re going to do every day. So if you view it to be something stressful, you’re going to be stressed. But if you view it as something like this is just part of what we do, then it can take the stress away. I want to help frame things into what they’re going to experience on the floor, and what they should see as stressful, and what they need to remove from that category altogether.

Then from there, we really try to develop our people, so our values are based on the acronym of P.E.O.P.L.E.: professionalism, excellence, optimism … We have this P.E.O.P.L.E. acronym that we go over, and we really try to live the acronym. We do training for employees, because I have a financial background. And I love entrepreneurship. This is really where this company comes from. We attract a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs as well. So I do classes, I try to do them on a monthly basis. For the employees that are interested in their own businesses, I do a class called “Side Hustle 101.”

Spencer: Nice!

Abel: I try to help employees understand if they’re thinking about their own business, or some of them have these side hustles already know how to think about scaling, because that’s really my passion: mentorship and entrepreneurship. So we try to help take our employees and make them feel a part of this bigger vision, this bigger goal, to be this really big company. We’re at baby step No. 2 of 20 in the process, but I think doing that work upfront really helps solidify their relationship with us. And that’s hopefully contributing to our retention of employees, that they feel part of something bigger, a bigger goal.

Spencer: Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I see where you’re coming from. And I feel like we have here at Avant have been very similar. We were a small business; we were a startup. And that was part of our culture, that we wanted to bring people in who were very entrepreneurial and thought it would be cool to be on the ground level of something that they could help grow. And we’ve been very successful in building our staff that way. I’m curious, as you bring people in with that entrepreneurial drive, do you get a lot of people who are like, yes, I want to help build this company into this big thing that we know it can be? Or like, I want to learn how to be an entrepreneur, because I have a vision to do this type of business, and I’m going to really learn how to be a startup by being here and participating in this? But you’re sort of training them to spread their wings and fly to do the entrepreneurial thing that they want to do.

Abel: I mean, it’s definitely a little bit of both. But we do have a lot of employees that are in that second category that are here to learn how to do this. You know, this is like I went into Michigan Bread to see, okay, this is where I want to be. I have employees that are just very honest from the get-go that start with a side hustle — a couple already in the bakery field — that they’re where I was maybe the first year and they want to see, “Oh, how am I going to do this?” And you know, hopefully, they’re not in cookies. But we had somebody making bagels and just different bakery businesses, and we’ll even go as far as letting them use our facility on the weekends to build their own businesses. Because I really want to work with that second group of people that want to learn how to build bigger and spread their wings. And that person is really committed to helping us because we’re helping them, and they view it as a learning experience. And yeah, they might leave in a few years when they’re ready. But you know, what I do tell people is don’t quit your day job for at least a few years. You can’t take an income if you’re really looking at scaling. You need this other income source before you can afford to go out on your own and take an income from the side hustle that you want to build into a bigger business. So I know that they’re going to need to be there for a few years and I want them to eventually though spread their wings. Nothing makes me happier than somebody going out and being ready to start their own business. And that has happened a few times now.

Spencer: Okay, that’s amazing. You just don’t hear about that very often, especially these days when employees are so few and far between, that you want to try to like get them in and keep them and not let them leave. So I think that’s really something special, to have a culture where you’re here to learn a craft that can be good in your life in whatever direction you want it to take.

Abel: I really want what’s best for people and I want to focus on what do these people want for themselves. I mean, that’s how I really have always led — and been led — is, what do you want for yourself and let me help you get there and show you really what it’s going to take. And if this is a place that you can learn? Great, that’s awesome.

Spencer: So I guess the only other thing that I want to ask you, Rebecca, is again, the whole thing that attracted me to having you as a guest this season is that you’re an industry newcomer. You have such a different perspective. And I feel like everything that you just said is a really fresh way at looking at how to retain talent in this market. But have you learned — and if so, what? — from the veteran bakers? I know you’ve gotten to meet some other bakers, and you’ve got your guys down the street at the Good Bread Company (formerly Michigan Bread). What have you learned from them, that you can apply to workforce retention? Are you learning any best practices about training? Hiring? I feel like you’re bringing a lot to the industry as it is. But are you getting anything from what’s established?

Abel: Yes, where I’m really learning from them is on the management side. That’s where I’ve really struggled with that balance of finding somebody with industry talent, or bringing in somebody new. For me, I have not struggled as much in finding the employees that are going to work on the floor in the operation, because I do feel like we have a decent value proposition, and maybe even a more attractive one than a much bigger company because we’re small. We’re a family and we can really offer this place where people can come and feel a part of what we’re doing. But where I’ve really sought advice from some bigger companies is how do I help myself in the jobs that I’m personally doing to be able to get something off my plate? Because it is really difficult. Everything I’m trying to do … it’s a 24/7 endeavor for me. I want to avoid completely burning out. But I need to find people that I can bring in at my level to help me with the job. And so I’ve had a lot of conversations about that type of employee. And that’s been really helpful of finding some avenues to grow and find that type of employee.

Spencer: It’s really smart that you’re looking at what the bigger companies are doing when you’re so successful as a small business and as a startup, and you plan to be something much, much bigger. You’re looking in the right direction. And that is a good segue to what next week’s topic is going to be, and that’ll be our last episode for the season. Next week, we’re going to talk about that strategic growth in your operation and what your vision is for the future of D’Vine Cookies. We’re also going to talk about your key learnings and discoveries from your trip to Vegas when you got to visit a little show called IBIE. So this week, Rebecca, that’s all I have for you. Thank you so much for sharing this incredible insight and your philosophies on how you’re developing your workforce there at D’Vine.

Abel: You’re very welcome. I love sharing.

Spencer: I will talk to you next week.