FEED Bakery & Catering Training Program began four years ago at FEED Kitchens under the leadership of bakers and food industry veterans Martee Mikalson and Jim McLaughlin. Now, graduates of the program Brendon Krueger and Amber Blumer are managing the growing business and day-to-day production with a team of five bakers, also program graduates, and counting. Mikalson, McLaughlin, Krueger and Blumer reflect on the origins of the programs and where FEED Bakery is headed.
At an event celebrating the future of food, one might be surprised to encounter sweet treats that would look just at home on a Midwestern dinner table fifty years ago. Among FEED Bakery’s signature products are their small, colorfully decorated butter cookies, an updated version of the centuries-old Scandanavian spritz cookie. The cookie’s delicate patterns give way to a dense, buttery dough that melts in your mouth.
The renaissance of the spritz cookie reflects a return to the artisan baking traditions that inspired the recipes that the FEED Bakery & Catering Training Program uses today, said FEED Bakery instructor — and creator of most of those recipes — Jim McLaughlin.
“I think that a lot of baking tradition was immigrant driven,” said McLaughlin, who began his baking career at La Brioche in the 1980s, when it was located on State Street. “People that I worked with, that I learned from, personally,” were “trained by German bakers, or French Swiss, or by other European bakers.” Somewhere along the line though, as first generation recipes traveled across generations, McLaughlin said, the baking tradition “didn’t translate.”
Social and economic changes around the country, including industrialization and technological innovation, wartime shortages and resistance to restrictive gender roles, prompted evolutions in the food industry in the United States, including the bakery industry.
“People wanted convenience,” said McLaughlin, and “were willing to surrender their skill level to a factory. You got some relatively good product, but it was all frozen.”
As packaged food and convenient grocery options became more common, so did a long list of added preservatives, said FEED Bakery coordinator Martee Mikalson. A demand for from scratch baking rose again, said McLaughlin, when people said “I don’t want a chemistry set on my label.”
Martee Mikalson started the FEED Bakery & Catering Training Program at FEED Kitchens, which was originally operated by The River Food Pantry, alongside Just Bakery run by Madison-Area Urban Ministry. When The River decided to discontinue the program, about a year before Just Bakery left FEED to move into their own kitchen space, the Northside Planning Council (which owns and operates FEED) decided to take it over to keep a hands-on job training opportunity on the Northside.
Mikalson continued coordinating the program, bringing over 55 years of experience in the local food industry; she began working in a bakery at age 15, and her career has included time with Woodman’s, Cub Foods and Certco, as well as opening her own bakery on the Northside. In addition to coordinating FEED Bakery, Mikalson is an account executive in special projects at Kessenich’s and owns Martee’s Consulting.
Now, with Mikalson working with students who enter the training program and guiding the program’s processes, and McLaughlin as the lead instructor, graduates of the Bakery Training Program manage day-to-day production of baked goods for local grocery stores and coffee shops.
Learning to bake from scratch at both the high quality and high quantities that have led to FEED Bakery’s growing sales was “trial by fire” said Brendon Krueger, FEED Bakery manager and a graduate of the training program.
Krueger and assistant manager Amber Blumer both finished the three-month training program in December of 2016. They quickly transitioned from students to paid staff as the Bakery was preparing for the onslaught of increased holiday production.
“We had a good class,” said Krueger, “and it was Christmas — the season of the year was right.” Krueger and Blumer were in class the day before Christmas Eve, watching the small staff of bakers wrap up large sheet trays of spritz cookies, when someone made the longing comment — “man, if we could do one more batch,” said Krueger. “Amber and I were like, alright, let’s do another batch quick. We just jumped in.”
FEED Bakery’s team of training program graduates, including Krueger and Blumer, work alongside current students as they mix, bake and box the products sold to support the program. It is this environment that makes the program unique, said Mikalson.
“The fact that all of the people in production have been in the class and have been going through the same things that new people that are coming in are going through currently, there is a certain camaraderie that I don’t think you see in any other workplace.”
Students also work alongside entrepreneurs operating their businesses out of FEED Kitchens. McLaughlin said that watching these business owners both find success and overcome mistakes provides its own learning experience.
“If you hang around with people who are up to something in their lives, whether it’s someone who is starting a food cart or a catering business or their own cookie decorating business, whatever the case may be, if you’re in that atmosphere it starts to become contagious,” said McLaughlin. “You start seeing that there are other things possible for yourself, too, that are bigger than maybe where you’ve limited yourself before.”
The shared kitchen space, said Krueger, “is like a community experience for the student. There are so many opportunities. It is life changing. I’ve seen people develop socially here. I think I have somewhat — maybe, hopefully.”
And for McLaughlin, Mikalson, Krueger and Blumer, those opportunities are exactly the point. The training curriculum emphasizes not only the technical skills of baking, but the soft skills that can help people seek meaningful employment.
Before the class, said Blumer, “I was not someone that would be up at five in the morning to go to work. It helped me get a schedule set and actually work through that. I’ve also seen other people that come in and like a routine. They may not always end up being a baker or a chef, but that routine helps them end up getting another job somewhere. It’s not just food oriented, it’s getting a sense of what you want to do.”
FEED Bakery & Catering Training Program is intentionally designed to be cost accessible. While the cost of the program is $3,000 per student, Mikalson works to cover those costs for students who can’t afford it through partnerships with like the Vocational Rehabilitation Division (DVR) of the Department of Workforce Development and through scholarships. The cost covers training, ServSafe classes and certification, and materials over the course of 90 days, part-time for three days a week.
The program meets both “a need in the industry and a need to provide something to people” who might not be able to afford another culinary training program or is seeking experience outside of a traditional school setting, but are “committed to doing something great that at the end of the day they could be proud of,” said McLaughlin.
While FEED Bakery & Catering Training Program emerged to meet the needs of people and businesses within an evolving food industry, the program itself — and the people in it — have undergone evolutions of their own.
The program is aimed at supporting underemployed and unemployed people, and many of the students have experienced challenges to maintaining employment at some point, including mental health status, addiction and homelessness, McLaughlin said. Understanding those challenges and the impact they can have on students as they undergo the training, is critical to offering a program that provides more than technical training, but also a supportive environment where students feel welcome and comfortable as they learn.
“I grew up in an era where dealing with people’s life challenges was not part of what my life was about,” said McLaughlin, “because I was just sort of middle class and never had to even deal with that.”
“I would have my opinion, right, like oh it’s your fault, or whatever the case may be. Now I really see that sometimes people, even with their best efforts, that they’re kind of caught in a vicious circle of life, and no matter where they turn, they find more of the same and people that probably had the attitude that I had, like oh well, they’re responsible for how their lives turn out.” Over time, his attitude has changed, said McLaughlin. “I can now be with someone who has an addiction issue, as opposed to having an opinion about whether it’s their fault or not, and if there’s someone who lives a different lifestyle than I do, or has had a different upbringing or a different political view than I do, or a different economic set of parameters of their life — that I can be with them for who they are, as opposed to their circumstances.”
Although the Bakery program might not solve the root issues behind those circumstances, it can provide a pathway to stable employment, and, McLaughlin said, it offers an alternative. “Not that we already have the answer, you already have the answer, but let’s help you find your answer to make a difference in your own life by giving you an opportunity.”
While Mikalson has helped connect 48 graduated students with local jobs both within and outside of the food industry over the last four years, she is aware of the challenges that employees face when entering positions with historically low wages.
Not only does the community need to provide training opportunities for potential employees, said Mikalson, “We have to train employers to understand that they need to pay that person making that product — they have to pay them well.”
“The cost of training an employee” and then losing them, said McLauglin, “is way higher than just paying an employee what they’re worth from day one and having them be able to keep their lights on, and have food in their refrigerator, and have some reasonable access to healthcare, and all of those things that are the difference between a J-O-B and a career. Employees are not disposable, they’re human beings, they have aspirations, they have expenses, they have families — all of the things that the business owners have as well.”
When asked about their thoughts on what comes next for FEED Bakery and for the future of food in Madison, Mikalson, McLaughlin, Krueger and Blumer saw the Bakery’s unique, locally made and socially conscious products dovetailing with consumer trends.
Blumer would like to see FEED Bakery continuing to narrow and focus its recipe list so the products they bake stand out — “keeping up quality on everything that we’re doing.”
Krueger sees more and more people thinking local. “In the food industry, dealing with food locally makes sense to more of the mainstream of the country. We don’t need to be transporting things 2,000 miles and back that we can just work within our communities.”
People want to buy something with a backstory, added McLaughlin. “There’s a zillion freakin’ chocolate chip cookies that you could buy.” McLaughlin included a pitch for FEED Bakery’s chocolate chip cookies in particular — “you’re buying a chocolate chip cookie that supports people locally, that supports the training program, that uses high quality ingredients. I think that people want that. They want to be able to say, yes, I’m eating this chocolate chip cookie, but this chocolate chip cookie — and it sounds cliche and stupid — but this chocolate chip cookie made a difference in these people’s lives. It’s a company that’s turning what income there is into something that’s socially responsible and socially innovative.”
Any final predictions? “More butter cookies,” said Blumer. “So many butter cookies.”