Welcome to the sixth season of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Joanie Spencer, editor-in-chief for Commercial Baking, visits with various members of the team at New Haven, CT-based Chabaso Bakery. Hear about their journey to becoming a Certified B Corporation and building a business as a force for good. Sponsored by JLS Automation.

In this final episode, you’ll hear from Reed Immer, Chabaso’s director of sales and marketing, about some of the secondary benefits that come with achieving B Corp certification. 

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

Joanie Spencer: Hi, Reed, thanks for joining me this week.

Reed Immer: Hey, thanks for having me.

Spencer: I know you had a huge role in achieving this certification. You know better than anybody what the primary and secondary benefits of being a B Corp are. The first thing I want to do is revisit that definition that I brought up in the very first episode. A B Corp is a for-profit business that has met the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. I also want to revisit a question I asked in the second episode, and that question is, “Why?” You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a B Corp, and you certainly cannot do this for self-serving reasons. That’s the “why” question I want to start this conversation with. Why can’t you become a B Corp for self-serving reasons?

Immer: I think if you’re just trying to use this certification as a way to increase the profitability or sales of the company, this might not be the shortest route to achieve that if you’re willing to sacrifice other morals likely. I think for us, as we’ve touched on in previous episodes, it was in the DNA of what the company has been up to throughout our whole trajectory. A lot of these community-based projects from us, our founder Charles Negaro wanted to build a business that reflects some of these values. I think we found that when we discovered what the B Corp certification was all about, it already aligned with many things we were already were doing. We saw it to take us to a higher level on this path that we already were very interested in going down.

One thing I would say is, even though you can’t do it for exclusively self-serving reasons, I think we’ve found fortune when you can align all these points together in an enlightened self-interest in terms of you’re still trying to do this good for the world but doing that still selfishly brings you some benefits. I feel like we’ve realized that a lot of these community projects we were already doing, if we could find a way to align them with the other operations of  the company and how we’re communicating ourselves as this leader in our region of the northeast, of food companies that are really trying to do good for the world, there were a lot of benefits in terms of differentiating ourselves in the marketplace, in terms of people starting to see us for being more than just a bread brand.

I think that’s the big challenge. How can all this good stuff you’re doing for the world not just be a side flourish of the company, but also really work into your operations and what your core capabilities are? We’ve been learning more how to align and synergize all these aspects, because it already aligned with the DNA of the company. It just made a lot of sense for us to take this on and make that commitment.

Spencer: I’m a Gen Xer, and I was really into the show “Friends.” There was an episode where Joey Tribbiani claimed that there’s no such thing as a good deed that doesn’t serve the person doing the deed, and Phoebe spent the whole episode just trying fruitlessly to do a good deed that didn’t have some benefit that came back to her. I think that’s where we are with this, that you can’t do it for selfish reasons, but you can’t not have good come back to you in some way, shape or form.

Immer: Exactly. I think the more that it aligns with the other aspects of how people understand what your company is about, there’s certain things you can be doing that align with the B Corp good things that don’t necessarily gel nicely with your current identity. But then there are certain things, like we found when we started to support emerging food entrepreneurs and focused on our hiring practices and environmental footprint, a lot of that stuff really complemented the existing idea that folks already had about Chabaso and built upon that.

It’s figuring out, from this large framework of B Corp metrics and goals, what are the handful of them that makes sense for your organization, and the ones you can adopt as strategic projects bring a lot of great stuff into the world, but also, like you said, come back to help your own organization’s needs, financial health and everything else.

Spencer: One thing I’m assuming came back to you as an immediate payoff was the moment when you got the news that you had achieved your certification. You guys hit the mark. You needed a score of 80 and you got an 85.4. Can you tell me how did you get that news? And then what was the reaction from you, who spearheaded this entire thing with Charlie and also throughout the company?

Immer: Well, personally, it was a major sigh of relief in terms of us being a small company. It took the better part of two years to get this done. I think it was a bit of a weight off my shoulders in terms of weekly duties. But of course, receiving the certification just opens up all these other tough, but great projects for us coming up in 2023. So, it was a short-lived sigh of relief. But after we submitted our impact assessment for B Corp, it then moves to a deeper verification stage with the B Lab team. They really comb through all the answers, request some updated documentation, a few other calls and video chats to really dive deep into some of our answers and make sure they understood where we were coming from. We got the heads up that, “Hey, it looks like you’re going to make it. We’ll let you know in a week or two if you’re there.” Then that email came through from the lab just a few months ago for us. That felt so awesome.

I think a portion of the Chabaso team, especially those who have been around the past few years and were there for previous iterations of B Corp attempts, they really understood what this is about and how much work we’d put into it. I think for them, it was an awesome little internal celebration as well. Then the other side of things, there’s still a lot of folks who work at Chabaso who don’t have a lot of knowledge on what this whole B Corp thing is about.

After we received the certification, B Corp has a lot of resources in terms of “Okay, now what do you do?” One of the biggest things that they recommend prioritizing, and have a ton of these resources to help you do, is communicating this internally and helping all the people in the organization understand: “What is this? Why is this important? How is this going to help us further down our path?” We’ve done a few of those internal communications. Charlie, our CEO, has sent out some blurbs, and we’re working to clarify how this translates into the day-to-day operations for everybody.

But that’s still a big challenge we’re working on. Because it’s not just you send one email internally and everybody completely gets it. It’s a continuous conversation, figuring out through your different internal communication channels and external, to help educate why this is important, how this will play into your role as an individual, why this is helping steer the bulky ship that is a manufacturing organization and the direction we’re trying to go. Like I said, it was a great feeling of relief after we got it. But it just opens us up to a whole new set of challenges and projects. But ones that we’re very excited to be getting into in 2023.

Spencer: You mentioned that B Lab communicates, okay, now you are a part of a global network that’s almost 3,000 companies strong and they’re all focused on balancing profit and purpose. From your perspective and your role, what’s it like having access to some of the world’s most ethically focused businesses? And how does it change your view now that you’re in that upper echelon? How does it change your view of what it means to be a purpose driven company?

Immer: I think one of the benefits was we got access to these online forums and this whole directory of other B Corps. There’s a lot of honest, collaborative conversations that are happening in these forums and other companies, not just food, all industries, that are really mission driven and are also looking for assistance and insights from other organization of asking what they are trying to do. How have you guys approached it? What worked for you in this scenario, given limited resources and all that?

I think being able to connect with other folks that are on a similar wavelength as us even if they’re not making bread, even if they’re not making food is just an amazing resource. There is a lot of content on there, so I’ve been reading through and lurking a little bit to try and learn. I’m really excited to be diving into more of those in-depth conversations with these folks.

There also is a large, well-regarded annual meetup of all the B Corp organizations in the country. I think it happened in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. We had just received this and then there’s all this other stuff happening, so we decided to postpone attending that. But we’re really looking forward to these in-person events as well, learning from other organizations and how we can apply things we learn from them to our own scenario. Even though it’s a fraction of all the organizations out there that are B Corps, it’s still reached a critical mass. There’s a lot of good resources that are currently existing, that we hope to take on and folks that we can reach out to for assistance. We’re really looking forward to all that.

Spencer: That’s one thing I think as an industry do a little bit more of, is looking outside of our own industry for best practices in many areas. I think it’s really cool that you have access to this network to really look at best practices that you can apply to your manufacturing. Rich and I talked about that in the previous episodes, about how you look at your best practices on the plant floor and even how it changes the view of what you expect from your supplier network. I think it’s awesome that you’re able to sort of expand your view of what your resources are and what you can apply to your business.

Immer: Absolutely. I think also, as you mentioned earlier in the episode, of the currently existing B Corp bakeries that are out there, we are really excited to be increasing our relationships with those folks and figure out within those scenarios, how they’ve been working together. We’d love to put in that work to help gather more of a community. As we said, we’d love to have more bakeries in the industry hop on the similar path and the other B Corps bakeries out there. Please feel free to reach out to us and we’d love to make something happen.

Spencer: That would be awesome. I think I can even probably make a couple of introductions for you.Another thing I want to talk about, as far as the benefits to being a B Corp, is the workforce. This is a topic that has really permeated through almost every episode. We have addressed Chabaso’s workforce in one way or another. And Charlie, of course, really emphasizes the importance of the people in this company. What does the future of Chabaso’s workforce look like as a B Corp?

Immer: Like I mentioned with the B Corp resources, another one that’s within that B Corp network is a job posting platform. We’re going to be working to take advantage of that as another way to get our openings to a batch of folks that are well aligned with Chabaso. Another thing that we’ve always been very interested in is being in New Haven, CT. It’s a big college town. Obviously, there’s Yale, but there’s a handful of other universities, state colleges and private universities.

One of the big challenges with our region is there’s a lot of folks that come in for a few years to finish their studies and then they skip town to go to Boston or New York to be closer to places where they think they can build their careers. We would love to be building more awareness of, “Hey, if you’re trying to work for a business that’s mission driven, you don’t have to go north or south, you can stay right here. There’s cool stuff happening here.”

We’d love for more young graduates of these universities to see Chabaso, and ideally other like-minded businesses in our area, as worthy of their first steps into their career. Hopefully, there are further steps into their career after that. Another thing we’re trying to think through, and my initial hunch is that the B Corp aspect of the employer brand probably resonates a little bit more with the office folks than the production floor folks, but I would love to be proven wrong on that. I think one of our challenges is exploring to what level that currently resonates with the folks that we’re trying to hire on the production manufacturing side of things.

And again, throughout all these different department contexts, how can we be boiling down this abstract thing that is B Corp into something that makes sense and makes them feel good about what their responsibilities are and how that contributes to this larger mission that the organization is up to? By increasing our access to this job posting platform, hopefully we retain more talent coming out of the universities in our region and then explore how we translate this onto the manufacturing side of things and how it can make sense be simple and contribute to the overall quality of things.

Spencer: That does make a lot of sense. What you’re saying about the actual jobs on the plant floor, they don’t always think about “How is what I’m doing becoming something meaningful for the world?” Not that they don’t care, it just doesn’t get communicated all the time down to that level on the plant floor. I think it’s not necessarily having the B Corp certification, but being able to communicate what that means and how it can directly apply to a person who is standing on the line and maybe a second shift.

Immer: Exactly. It’s not that they can’t understand that at all. A lot of these folks are really bright. But it’s the challenge of the leadership throughout the organization and the folks that are really connected to the B Corp certification, including myself and Charlie, to figure out, “How do we translate this and how does it make sense?” That will be a longer-term challenge that we’re hoping to make progress on.

Spencer: I feel like, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like it’s an opportunity to really enhance the sense of pride that comes with working at Chabaso in any capacity, whether it’s on the line or in an office.

Immer: Oh absolutely. It feels good to be working on something that’s high quality that you believe in. Whether you’re behind a computer or behind a large mixer, that doesn’t really change. Maybe some of the vocabulary and the messaging does, but everybody still wants to be proud of what they’re putting their hours into, and we hope this kind of factors into that.

Spencer: I want to circle back to something we talked about in a previous episode, and that is the CT Food Launchpad. How will your B Corp Certification benefit the work that you’re doing through the CT Food Launchpad? Then on top of that, how does being a B Corp help you benefit other companies and brands in your community?

Immer: The quick intro of the CT Food Launchpad is it’s a side program we started at Chabaso and our sister business, Atticus, to help these emerging food brands in our region basically graduate from the farmers market to the grocery aisle and navigate all the conversations, pricing strategy and all that stuff that is necessary to succeed in a retail environment like that, and it’s something we’re really excited about. And this is a longer-term vision, but how Chabaso has been engaging to help these emerging food brands, we don’t think that this is something only a company like Chabaso could do.

We think there’s a lot of mission driven, mid-size food manufacturers similar to us that have really strong relationships in their region, that are used to navigating all of this. That could be of tremendous value to other emerging food brands in their region. If they’re able to communicate those learnings and insights, we would love to be working with other Chabaso-like brands.

Again, maybe they’re not bakeries, maybe they make cheese or beverages, but manufacturers that are interested in playing a closer role in economic development in their region by uplifting emerging brands, especially those led by folks from underserved groups. We think there’s potential, probably by giving us access to this network of B Corps across the country, to be almost boiling down what we’ve done at CT Food Launchpad into a toolkit that makes it easier for other mid-sized manufacturers to play a similar role in their own environments. I think that’s a longer-term goal, but I think that’s something that would be really cool and that we’re excited about and other ways that specifically helps CT Food Launchpad.

It all kind of gels together in terms of building more trust of the folks that are behind the CT Food Launchpad program: They’re an established manufacturer, they’ve already received these rigorous third-party certifications from B Corp showing that they are taking the steps and caring about all these things. It builds up our credibility from policymakers and potential partners from media that this is all part of a very strong and credible system.

We hope it greases the wheels for us to be doing bigger and better events and collaborations in this whole food entrepreneurship scene around us. That was a very long-winded answer to what you asked. But CT Food Launchpad is still so relatively early in its trajectory that we know there’s a lot of potential in this general space we’re swimming in.

We know food entrepreneurship, economic development and the values that B Corp align with are a lot of times very complementary aspects. We think that by combining these parts together, it can help to make the program overall more credible and can open up partnerships with other folks in like-minded organizations and partners that can help us continue down this path.

Spencer: I love that long-winded answer. I’m just listening to you, and I’m soaking it all in. There’s so much potential for this to be something huge. Did you realize that entirely when you started CT Food Launchpad? Or was it just more of an immediate, “We want to help these little emerging brands?” Did you know it had this kind of potential?

Immer: We didn’t know at first. I think we’ve been realizing it more and more. Part of it is that’s how Charlie and I got to know each other. We were working for two different food organizations in town. He was still Chabaso and Atticus; I was with a new fast casual concept. We were both very involved in this local food scene of pop-up events featuring local chefs or little markets featuring emerging food products. It was just something that was so fun to us. That’s how we got to know each other. We’ve held on to that desire stubbornly to be participating in that local food scene, just because it’s been so fun to us.

I think as we’ve kept doing that, because we liked it being part of our days, we’ve started to realize how that complements the capabilities of Chabaso and how that can complement our networks, and again, this enlightened self-interest thing we touched on earlier, in terms of helping these emerging brands build themselves up, but also to be differentiating Chabaso in the eyes of some of our customers and partners, just as B Corp has, in terms of this is a brand that really cares about our region, this is somebody we can turn to even if we’re not trying to figure out our problem with bread procurement, but in another category as well. We trust that they know the quality of stuff that’s bubbling up from the local scene that has the potential to really make a difference at a larger scale.

Spencer: That triggers my next question, which is an oversimplified way of asking about what you’re talking about. But before I get to that, I must tell you that in hearing you talk about how you and Charlie have come together and how your professional relationship and dare I say friendship has grown?

Immer: Yep!

Spencer: I just had the biggest smile on my face, because it reminded me of back in 2019, when I got to sit with Charlie’s dad, Charles Sr., and have lunch with him at Atticus. He told me the story of how Chabaso came to be and how he fell in love with the breadmaking, and the bakers he developed those relationships with. Your relationship with Charlie sounds a lot like what Charles described to me. I think that is something so special and something that this industry really needs for its survival, to have these tight relationships and stubbornness that you’re talking about. Because that’s how we’re going to pass all of this knowledge and this passion on from generation to generation. I just had to say that I think that’s really cool.

Immer: Totally. It takes a lot of work to do anything, so you might as well have it be something that you care about and that is really fun. I think to us, we can work it in and have it be something we enjoy doing day in and day out, then it just increases the likelihood of us staying committed and putting in 100%.

Spencer: I want to go back to the concept of the enlightened self-interest. One thing, as you were talking about with what this means for the Chabaso brand, this question really comes down to people can’t do it for this reason, but it is a second benefit and that is the sort of marketing benefit. What does B Corp certification do for your brand? What does having that unmistakable B Corp logo on your package say about the food that’s inside of it?

Immer: I think there’s still a lot of learning to do on how that translates on the individual shopper and consumer level. We know there’s an increasing number of shoppers out there that really care about that. And they are also the ones who are most vocal and likely to be strong promoters of our brands. We know there’s a lot of value there. It’s hard to quantify that at this moment, in terms of the tools we have and how scrappy and tiny we are.

There definitely is a lot more awareness on the wholesale purchasing side of things. Obviously, those are the folks we work with in terms of helping to get our products into stores and build our business. There is a ton of interest at the top executive level and a lot of these grocers and organizations we work with want to be furthering their sustainability goals for their own retailer brands and be chipping away at being seen as a better for the world brand for their shoppers, which also often is one of the ways they can justify a premium in their stores and not have it be seen as just a commodity experience.

The past few years, we’ve seen a lot of shifting in major grocers setting these top level sustainability goals, whether it’s for diversity of ownership, environmental footprint of products or local sourcing. Having us achieve the B Corp certification, just a lot of stuff that’s required to get that, you end up furthering your environmental score and caring about your workers score just in that same process.

But then also, there’s a lot of interest in,”Are you a Certified B Corp?” We’re seeing that more in these supplier surveys that we see coming out annually from our customers. It’s even in the short-term conversations we’ve been having over the past few weeks with our customers. It’s a very easy way to communicate, what, in the past, was a million different messy projects that Chabaso was doing that were good but weren’t super bite-sized and snackable in terms of being able to communicate to some of our customers.

The B Corp thing is just kind of a shortcut to get all that stuff communicated in a simple way to our wholesale customers and for them to communicate internally. We’re seeing a big shift in the tone of the conversations we’re having with folks and them starting to see us as more than just a provider of commodity artisan breads. Then, for new product opportunities, whether it’s in the Chabaso brand, or prospective owned brands for grocers, that’s also a big concern that they want to also be able to communicate in their annual sustainability reports.

A lot of them have already set these goals that by 2030, we want to shift more to suppliers that have third-party certifications are based in our region. This is the trend that’s happening, and we see it as it is better to get ahead of that and reap some of those benefits as being seen as a relative leader in our space than having to catch up because everyone’s going to be ending up there anyway, if you’re trying to be seen as a specialty premium brand.

Spencer: Those specialty premium items are usually the first to come with an expectation of better-for-you means better for everybody. You sparked this thought for me, your customer demands, the retailer demands that they come from the consumer demands, because obviously they’re trying to meet what their customers are asking for. Consumers are always driving everything. They are driving these sustainability related expectations.

But it almost feels like what you’re saying is that actual certifications like B Corp that feels like it’s more recognizable on a B2B level than on a consumer level, that it might have more meaning for your customers right now than it does from the consumer side, because consumers are just more like overarching.

Immer: That’s been our latest thinking. We’re scrappy and busy, and we rely on hunches maybe a little too much now and then. I think the actual B Corp logo and program, that seems specifically to have more awareness within the B2B. But then all the stuff that’s required for you to become a B Corp, basically making progress in any of those in itself is a story that your shoppers and consumers are interested in hearing about in terms of … one of our big things that helped us get over the line for being able to receive the B Corp Certification in terms of the minimum points was our program of partnering with resettlement agencies to hire displaced peoples and refugees from Afghanistan.

Even though our shoppers don’t know everything about B Corp, that initiative we did that helped us get those points that in itself was a really strong story that local media outlets and our community was really interested in hearing and sharing. Even if it’s not the B Corp-specific logo, all the stuff that contributes to it is still all very much of interest to your everyday shopper.

Spencer: That totally makes sense. Okay, Reed, I have one last question for you to close out this conversation and close out these five weeks that I have enjoyed spending time with the team at Chabaso. We are going bring it full circle. It was the first question today, and it was one of the first questions that I asked. And that’s why? We’ve talked about why Chabaso sought to become a B Corp. You get to speak to the baking industry, why should any company, but specifically, baking companies in our industry seek to have that B on their package and in their logo?

Immer: That is a tough question. We’ve touched on there’s these benefits in terms of differentiating yourself in the marketplace that just come naturally from pursuing this. I think also, in terms of us realizing this was already part of our DNA and a way to formalize and amplify that. By figuring out the value of these more rigorous third-party certifications to help you work in some of these aspirations into your day-to-day operations, and then also make it easier to communicate. That’s a benefit to the industry.

Whether it’s specifically the B Corp thing or a different third-party certification, I think just that practice of, “What do we really stand for? What are we trying to do?” and then seeing the value of a third-party external certification to increase your credibility in terms of your commitment to that. It doesn’t have to be B Corp. There’s some other stuff out there that maybe goes in a slightly different direction, but it’s a similar way of increasing your credibility and communicating that.

I think that process is very valuable to helping organizations really double down on what they’re trying to do and establish measurable goals for that. In terms of the B Corp, there’s more interest from shoppers on, like we said, better-for-you, good-for-theworld foods. It seems like a lot of these other categories, like healthy snacks and other food items, are usually a little ahead of the curve in terms of jumping on those.

I said in a previous episode, the baking industry is a little old school, which is great, but that also is the opportunity for bakeries to be still seen as that leading part of the industry. Because overall, there’s this interest in good-for-the-world food. Because the baking industry is a little bit behind in that, we’d said that on the B Corp directory, there’s only like 30 total certified companies in the industry, that’s a big opportunity to be seen as the leader of your respective pack in your category, but still in line with the certification and values. That is proving itself every single day to be resonating with individual shoppers and contribute to differentiating your company in the marketplace, but also energizing your team and helping them to understand what the heck are we doing and why are we doing this.

Spencer: I think it is a wonderful and meaningful and very important call to action for our industry. Thank you for that. It’s a great note to close on.

Immer: Oh, awesome. I did it.

Spencer: Reed, thank you so much, not only to you, but also to Rich and to Charlie for spending these five weeks with me and just taking me and our listeners on this journey with you into understanding what it means to be a B Corp certified baking company. This has been incredible. I think it’s just good education for our industry. So, thank you so much to all of you for taking time and sharing your story.

Immer: Thank you guys so much for having us. I mean, we love sharing our story. Like we said, it feels like to us we’re just getting started, even though we’ve been around for a little bit. But it’s a really exciting new chapter in the company. And like I’d said, we’re always happy to be sharing our both learnings struggles and stumbles. We’re happy to continue the conversation with any folks that that are interested. So, thank you so much for having us.

Spencer: I can’t wait to see what’s next for Chabaso. Thank you for listening to the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast.