| With Bowery Bagels, Madigan Brings A Little New York to Portland
So it had always been a passion of mine, and the year I took off I spent a little time doing pro bono consulting for some friends of mine. So I came up with what I believe is a superior-we're calling it a Cinnamon Raisin Spice bagel. For instance, when you're using a forty or 60 quart Hobart mixer, the low speed on that is pretty different from speed number two on a house kitchen mixer. Q: So what gave you the idea to start a culinary incubator? Did you see someone else do it that you wanted to model your business after? A: Actually, I was only familiar with one other one down in San Francisco. So just for us, the entire shared environment made more sense than saying "Okay, you have this 500 square foot kitchen for however many hours you need it. Her implementation strategy was a little different-she had three different kitchens and you would rent out one kitchen for a certain amount of time. And their mission is to have Latina women develop small food-based businesses. " And then when they went forward and said they were going to change the recipes, it became a no brainer. If Einstein came in and said "We're not changing a damn thing but the name," you know people in Portland are going to be like, "it's not a Portland product, therefore I'm not going to buy it anymore. So, I got my hands on a few old bagel recipes from some of my mother's old cookbooks, and over time, came up with a pretty good bagel recipe that we'd make three or four times a year, just at home on special occasions. We had our weekly pop-ups we only advertised on social media, and had a fantastic response. Last year when we opened KitchenCru, one of the things we wanted to do was use the infrastructure to spin off one of our own ideas. As a New Yorker, did you feel like it was a niche that needed to be filled in Portland? A: I moved out here 25 years ago, and there was not a good bagel to be had. One reason we decided to go with Stumptown is that they're as fanatical about their coffee as we are about our bagels. So again it became how do I combine what I'm good at with what I love: well, I have that love of food and wine, and what I've enjoyed and was good at was when I was a startup, and helping other startups and launching businesses. I've seen others do it, but I'm not jumping into that at forty-five, especially in this town, with all these talented folks here. Even if I did have that idea, my wife would probably beat it out of me. I wanted peopleto have access to the equipment. It was in Houston, Texas, called The Kitchen Incubator. We have some fairly large equipment over here that they didn't over there. You look at what's available, and there's an opportunity here. I generated some bagels and went out and actually booked two wholesale accounts and planned on doing it in May, and then all of the sudden in June, word got out on KitchenCru and we just got really busy signing up clients and learning how to operate a shared use kitchen. That's what melded it all together. As a purist, I did not plan on making a cinnamon raisin bagel, but the demand in wholesale was too high. It should have a tangy malty sweetness to it without being over powering. You shouldn't have to toast it unless it's a day old or more. I took in a catering chef to taste the bagels and he opened the box and said, "Is that whole wheat flour?" and I told him, "No, the color is the malt extract,' and he said, "Well, I've never bought a bagel that color," and I told him, "Well you've never had a bagel from New York then. I know what's going to happen. I had to tweak the recipe-not ingredients, but in time and things like that, and make use of what this equipment could really do. " And I did exactly that, and I went through what everyone goes through- learning that the equipment has a big impact on the recipe. We still had the bagel idea in the back of our mind. And it's a not for profit with an endowment. " That was the only one I was aware of then. She was really helpful on the telephone about what she had planned. I only found one that was truly an incubator when I researched it (that was not just a commissary) and it was a woman who was about four months ahead of me. It's a shared kitchen, but it's a different model. I looked at that as a potential model, but the space was too limiting. That's type of what KitchenCru was, on a little bit of a larger scale. Or, if it's been frozen. Then, back in December the news about Kettleman's happened. It's been gratifying-it's one of the things that keeps me excited about it. So, we have one client who uses Jacobsen Salt in his product, because they make their salt here, lots our clients are using Tails and Trotter's pork products because they make all their charcuterie here. In terms of what changed in a year-the thing that's happened that I didn't expect to happen so rapidly was the sense of community that formed among our client base. The one thing we did encourage that was important was getting everyone to use one another's products. And we did, but it type of happened organically. I thought that was going to really be something that I would have to work at and encourage. For instance, when PieKu Pie came here, [she] was using shortening, and has now developed her recipe around the lard from Tails and Trotters. Q: How has KitchenCru changed in the year it has been open? What have you learned about your customers/process since the opening? A: One answer is that I didn't really know what to expect. That kind of thing goes on at all times. Partly because people were working next to each other who have the same schedule. That sense of community, it's a little food ecosystem contained inside these walls. . With Bowery Bagels, Madigan Brings A Little New York to Portland |
Friday, 8 June 2012
With Bowery Bagels, Madigan Brings A Little New York to Portland
