How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Live with Christina Tosi and Gary Erickson & Kit Crawford

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Since March, only five of Milk Bar's 18 locations have been up and running, but founder Christina Tosi tells Guy she is determined to bring the joy of baking to the doorsteps of family, friends, and healthcare workers. Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford have donated more than 3 million Clif Bars to doctors and nurses during the COVID-19 crisis. They tell Guy about the importance of morale when running an essential business during a pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating these turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca.ca. slash host. Hey, it's Guy here. And before we start the show, I wanted to let you know about a short anonymous survey that you can take to let us know what shows and podcasts you're listening to. If you want to help, you can go to npr.org slash podcast survey. It won't take up too much of your time, and this is a great way to support your favorite shows. That's It's npr.org slash podcast survey. And thanks. So as some of you know, we've started a new series of online video conversations where each week I talk to founders and entrepreneurs about how they're building resilience into their businesses right now. And in case you miss these conversations, when they happen live, we are posting excerpts right here in your podcast feed.

And today we're bringing you two conversations. Later in the show, you're going to hear from Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, the CEOs of Cliff Bar. But first, we'll start with Christina Tozzi, the founder of Milk Bar. Milk Bar is a chain of bakeries with 18 locations in the U.S. and in Canada. And when Christina opened Milk Bar in 2008, the country was crumbling in the midst of a recession. But Christina was confident that her cookies were good enough to sell, and she was right. For $2 a piece, New Yorkers would line up to buy her cookies, even in those scary, unpredictable days. And those instincts, the ones that have pulled Christina through the recession and Hurricane Sandy have prepared her for this moment.

Since March, only five of Milk Bar's 18 locations remain open for pickup and delivery. And three of those locations are being put to work as online bakeries, where Christina and her team are sending cookies and cakes and pies to anyone around the country, including health workers. Christina spoke to us after a shift at Milk Bar's commissary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she's, She's going in every day to make sure that cookies are getting made and that her employees are taken care of. So just give me a sense. I mean, you're in Manhattan. Are you still hearing, like, ambulance sirens all the time?

Like, what's the vibe like for you when you just go outside? The vibe, the vibe is strange. It's strange. There's not a lot of people around, which for New York City is incredibly jarring in a way. there's ambulance sirens, there's not a lot of people. And at 7 p.m. every night for two minutes straight, people cheer on doctors and nurses and people that are on the front lines as healthcare professional. So there's this really interesting juxtaposition of solitariness that comes with sort of a heft and a weight

and a strangeness and perhaps a feeling of being scared. And then for two minutes at 7 p.m., you're reminded that the only way around this is through it and we're going to get through it together. And that's our reality right now. Yeah. I think a lot of people are reading that Robert Frost poem right now. The only way through is basically through it. How many of your employees have been affected and how many have you been able to keep on? Well, we've all been affected.

But from a work standpoint, pretty early on about three or four weeks ago, we, had to furlough half of our team. We started this sort of like decision tree probably two months ago of our stores. Five remain open for delivery and pickup. But for us first and foremost, it's almost like we are a business, but we don't think about ourselves as a business first. We think about our team first and foremost and ask them who's comfortable working, who needs to come in. Whose comfort and safety and livelihood actually depends on a paycheck and benefits and so on and so on. And so that's been helpful, at least in setting the tone. But we've most certainly had to make a lot of really difficult decisions.

And we've had to be really smart about pivoting. Once we got through the team element of it, then we said, okay, now let's look at this as a business. And what we've seen is perhaps where we don't have the same opportunity in storefront or delivery. we are seeing such an incredible feat on e-com that is like healthcare professionals are like, okay, if you can't get me more ventilators, can you bring me some cookies? People that are, you know, that can't be with loved ones or friends on their birthdays on graduations in these meaningful moments that are still happening because we're still living life.

They just want to send something, a tin of cookies to say, thank you. Like, thank you for showing up no matter how hard it is and no matter what else it is. that you're juggling in your life, whether it's child care or roommates or what have you, what we're seeing is that as long as our team is comfortable showing up and turning on the ovens, you know, our mentality and our mission at Milkbar is to show up for people. It starts with showing up for one another, but we have, and we don't take for granted this incredible opportunity to show up for people that are going through their own individual realities of the now.

So right now our Williamsburg kitchen is baking and our L.A. kitchen is baking and we're trying to be really thoughtful about that. And, you know, we continue to realize and understand and embrace like the simplicity but the power of the cookie. I mean, the kitchens in L.A. and Williamsburg in Brooklyn can't operate in the same way they normally do.

Like, how are you doing that? Are you keeping people far apart? Are they wearing masks? and things like that. So they're spaced apart. I mean, the way that we typically produced in our commissaries anyways is usually with like larger pieces of equipment. So there was already a lot of natural space.

We already always wear gloves in our, in all of our, you know, kitchens and stores. The face masks have been a new normal for us. And I kind of went through this wave of like, how do we show up for our team? And my mom and my aunt who like make all of our hands. head scarves. I said, hey, if we get you every single person's name and their color preference or what have you, will you make us face masks? Because who we are is still the same. How we might be feeling is different. So they all have like these really quirky homemade face masks. They sent them all like care packages to the kitchen. But it was like, how do we pivot it and how do we bring

lightness to it? And so we're just trying to make the most of kind of like, kind of like, a rainy day, which is how my mom raised me to think about, you know, the trying times that are going to happen in life. Yeah. And you talked about it on the podcast that we did back in October of 2019. It was so, such a cool story. We're getting a lot of questions for Christina. This is from Jessica Van Dope de Jesus. She asks him, presumably for a lot of small business owners, there are a lot of emotional challenges and furlowing employees, right? I mean, this is emotionally painful for the employees and also for the employer. I mean, you know pretty much everyone who works for you. And she asks, how are you dealing with your own mental health? You know, just going through

the agonizing process of doing all those things. Yeah. It's heavy and it's real. And I've learned enough about my mental health because, by the way, when you choose working in a kitchen as a profession, it really does test your mental health. It tests everything you know about yourself. And I have learned for myself right now that I need alone time. I need time. I call it to mourn. And I mean, I guess I call it to mourn because I have lost friends over the last few weeks.

And so part of my alone time has been to mourn the loss of life, with people I know and to mourn the loss of life of people I don't know and to mourn the personal realities of what it feels like when you have to call someone on the phone because you can't even sit in a room with them to tell them. And I have found that furlowing an employee is hard. I try to always find the silver lining of it. And what I say to myself is I have to make the hard decisions right now

to guarantee the realities of the business, right? If I don't do it now, then I can't guarantee anyone a job that they're passionate about and a company that stands for something. And it doesn't come without heft. And my personal reality is I go on really long walks and I kind of segment them out. And they're like my morning, my morning, M-O-U-R-N morning walks. And sometimes they come with tears and sometimes they come with like a heaviness. And all of those things just remind me that I'm a real person that has real feelings and that feels really connected, that my commitment to my team still remains the same despite the fact that the decision might look or feel otherwise for someone in the

moment. I mean, can you give us a sense? Like, I mean, is your given the fact that most of your stores are closed and people can't really go up there except for, you know, pickup and obviously even pickup traffic is going to be vastly reduced as your revenue just, just dramatically down? I mean, I would imagine it is. Yeah, it's in a scary place. The storefronts to your point, I'm like five of 18, 20. That's not a lot. And they're doing, you know, a percentage of what they were doing. I opened milk around 2008 in the middle of a recession.

We barricaded down during Hurricane Sandy. Obviously, nothing has been anywhere near as intense as this. But we know how to hunker down. We know how to get nimble. We know how to do a lot with a little. And this is where we dig in and say, where are the opportunities online. They're totally different margins.

So even where we can earn back some of what we've lost in stores, no matter how far we go online, our margin structure is still really in a tricky place. Our silver lining is that we have been planning this. We talked about this in the fall of last year. When we taped, we just launched into Whole Foods. And I think next week on Amazon, I mean, the grocery stores are a tricky place to be right now, too. But I'm always thinking in my head, how do I stay multiple steps ahead?

I was certainly not thinking that this is where the business would be. But in the spirit of how do we show up in people's lives, I always try and be thoughtful about being super open-minded. And so I'm grateful for some of the small wins despite the really big hits. And the business is totally different right now. This has always been true, but for some reason, it feels so much more true now than ever is like, we have no control. Everything is breakable. We have no idea. And that's not because we're not intelligent, well-researched, data-driven humans that run a business.

It's because we have no control over it. And we don't know how it will all change. And we don't know how long it will take to get back. And we don't know just even as if we take ourselves out of the business of running milk bar just as consumers, right? Like as people in the world, what will make us feel safe? What will make us feel indulgent? What will make us feel joyful? And just what will our new norms be?

And how much will they change in six months to 12 months to 18 months? And so it is a fun but scary game to play. And that's just that's reality. And so you have to just embrace it because you can't control it and you can't get stuck. duck in it and there's no rearview mirroring, you turn, look back. There's only forward. And to what we said earlier, like in frost terms, it's like, it's through it. So let's just take one step forward every day. You just totally energized me. I'm like going to run out of the studio and just jump up and down. But it's like let's rise, right? Like this is we talk about like,

those rise to the occasion. Yes. To that point, this idea of kind of just pivoting and thinking creatively. For those of you don't know, Christina does a daily baking club, I think at 2 p.m. Eastern on Instagram. It's so fun. This is from Tori Parsons. Tori says it's been such an important part of her day, helping her stay connected with her family, her friends, helping me, helping her to adjust to the new normal. So she says, thank you. How did you decide to just start that? You know, when we started closing stores and we started to realize, we realized this ahead of time, but we started to dig into this idea of, well, let's make videos and let's put them out. People are going to be at home and baking and cooking and curious more than ever about food.

So let's show up for them. And we filmed all this stuff. And after a day of it and seeing the cuts, I was just like, man, I feel like it's only halfway there. Like, I think we can do better. But in a really funny way, better means more human and better means less produced. And better means making a commitment to something to people to doing something every day because I think our reality is so shattered.

And how can I be a part of that? And I just had a moment where I was like, I'm not in an office or a kitchen every day baking. And I miss that sense of community. And so I kind of just put it out there one day. And I was like, where did all these people come from? What is this engagement about? And I pretty much overnight was like, okay, it's on.

Baking Club, 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And what I thought, what I love about it is, as much as it is for every single person out there that might ever want to tune in is for me too. Like it is my like, how do I deal with the heft of furloughs and the like scary things that make me want to crawl into a corner and cry? I go like, it's 1.45. I better get my act together. baking club is happening. and it forces me to say, we're not going to hold it heavy today, Christina. Like there's one way into it and it's going to be through it.

And it's just a fun way to be like, oh, you don't have flour guy. Do you have oats? You can grind them down into a flour. Do you have pretzels? You can pulverize them into a flour. The ingredient swap part of it is also really, really, really fun because it fuels my creativity. And it makes me go like, we're going to get through this. And when we get through it, I have like 50 great ideas about what need to go on the menu.

at milk bar. No, totally. Before let you go, in five years, like when we talk about this time period, what do you hope will come out of this for you for your business that will have built resilience into what you're doing? I think for me, my look back is that I don't want to waste it. Like my father-in-law, Frank Adaira, is like saying that he raised my partner on and that sits with me is adversity is a terrible thing to waste. I don't necessarily mean in love. like developing the business, though there's certainly plenty there. But I don't, I don't want to waste the hardship that's happening right now. Like, this is what we build on. This is what grit is. This is what perseverance looks like. It's what humanity looks like. When have we ever had the time to say, like,

I'm going to write people handwritten notes and put them in the mail. I haven't done that in a long time. And I did a whole swath of them the other day. And then for me as a person, it's like, I am realizing that my like alone morning time is an important thing. part of what I do. I was traveling around like a crazy person and doing all these things because I thought that is what being someone committed to their business, being someone that was driven and successful and hardworking looked like. And I'm realizing that I left so much on the table with that mentality. And I have so much more in me now because of the way in which I bodyguard certain parts of my being and my health and my life. And for me, it's like I will, I will not go back. I

cannot go back. I will not go back. There's no U-turn. There's no U-turns allowed and to make the most of right now. I love it. Christina, thanks for being here. It's so great to see you. I hope to see you soon. Bye, guys. That's an excerpt for my conversation with Christina Tozzi, founder of Milkbar. To see our full interview, you can go to Facebook.com slash how I built this or to NPR's YouTube page. When we come back, we'll hear from Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, the CEOs of Cliff Bar, who are donating millions of bars to health care professionals around the country. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Resilience Edition. So since the pandemic began, retail sales

have dropped massively across the country as customers are staying home. But Cliff Barr has actually seen a spike in demand because their bars are really popular among health care workers. I spoke to Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford from their home in Berkeley, California. Their company has been distributing Cliff bars to doctors and nurses while also trying to boost morale among their employees. Tell me a little bit about Cliff Bar. What's been the situation for you guys? We're lucky. You know, we're an essential food product. We, on March 12th was the day we decided to close our office. It's just in one day, all of a sudden we're like, we're out of the office. How do we run a business when 450 people are not in the office running into each other and having meetings and coffee together and trying to throw out?

So we have been adapting ever since. Yeah. It's interesting because we have like sort of two businesses going on. We have our office business. And then we have our essential business, our two bakeries, one in Indiana and one Twin Falls. we're making sure that everybody's safe and healthy. It's really different to have to do this right now. It's crazy.

So your headquarters essentially in Emeryville is closed down right now, but you also, your manufacturing plants are still operating because presumably there's a demand for Cliff Bar. People are kind of want to keep things that are shelf stable and last for a while, I guess. Have you seen a big increased demand for Cliffbars? We did. And we did. There was a pretty good spike.

at first. We were maybe in third place behind toilet paper and sanitizer. But it's calmed down. You know, I think the uptick has mellowed out a little bit, but we're still, there's demand. Demand is high. And also, you know, we know that our product is a really essential food for health care workers. So far we've given out in the first part of March, 3.6 million bars to food banks and health care workers on front line. And then we're on another, we're on. the second round, we're now committed another $3 million through a program we're calling Bake with Love and Sent With Gratitude. Gary, when you have been in crises in the past, certainly with this business, and when you

think about it from a leadership perspective, what kind of advice could you give to somebody who is a leader, even if it's a small business, and they're kind of dealing with what's going on right now? What's helped us are a couple things. One is don't be afraid to ask the question that has no understanding. answer. That's off of a Wendell Berry mad farmer manifesto poem of his about four decades ago. I mean, we are asking questions every single day that we have, we don't have an answer

to, but you can't be afraid to ask those questions. And then if you don't have an answer today, maybe you will tomorrow. And we've, I can't even count how many of questions we've had to ask that don't have an answer. Maybe one could be like, what are we, what is it going to look like when we go back to the office. Like when we first step back into the office, when is that going to happen? And are we going to be walking around with face masks on? And are we going to be social distancing when we're back in the office? And how's it going to work when people, you know, eat? And, you know, like we don't have an

answer for that right now. But we're talking about it. And then the other part of it is just being attentive. You have to be hyper attentive to everything, every day, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day and if you're attentive to something that comes up and we get people emailing us saying, have you thought of this? What about this? How come this is? How come we're not doing this? Then you kind of figure out, then you have to go to like, how are we going to adapt? And then as soon as you can, take some action and don't sit on things because we don't have time to sit on things. We've been making decisions where we have to act now or tomorrow. And if we wait three days, sorry, we're screwed. So adapt and take some action. I'm curious. I mean,

Obviously, you are a bigger company, a much bigger company than a lot of the vast majority of businesses in the United States. But if you think about this crisis, and this is a little bit tricky because it's a sensitive word to use but as an opportunity, are there ways to think about opportunities or to kind of focus on the other side? Like how would, I mean, because even with your business, you're going to change. There are there going to be things about even your products that change when we come out the other side of this? Yes. Yeah. That may be a question we don't have an answer to. Yes.

No, go ahead. You try. Well, I mean, to take a shot at it, I think, you know, you double down and refocus on the things that matter. For us, I think it's refocused us to consider what's really, really important, like taking care of our people, but also how we work, being efficient with our time, being creative, looking at a problem, imagining scenarios that don't exist yet. Like, well, what if this happens?

How are we going to react? It's really made us much more nimble in some ways. Yeah, for sure. This is a question about supply chain, which I think is interesting. How are you dealing with your supply chain? And are you looking ahead to, you know, because I mean, you rely on nuts and on oats and on a variety of ingredients, mostly domestic, but some imported.

So how are you kind of dealing with the possibility? Supply chain will be disrupted. That's another question that we don't have a full answer to because we don't know. We're hoping that we're on getting close to the other side, but it's still going to be probably months. Right now we're good. And because we're in that essential category,

so we're not super worried about supply chain, but we're daily back to bay being daily attentive to it and always kind of asking our suppliers like, we're good, right? We're good, right? Yeah. And we do have our procurement team, our supply chain. Every morning we meet together with, we call it the COVID-19 task force. So we're meeting every morning with this task force made up of, you know, our manufacturing lead, our legal team, our HR team, our community team and our communications team. And we're doing that so we can keep track of all of these things. And so we have teams under them that are tracking supply chain,

all the cliff bars that are going to, the stores are going to want in the future and sort of balancing that out. Is this a big rush or is this going to happen, you know, slowly? And then, you know, what level are we going to be at and all that? But it's interesting that this is a time, this is the first time that, our business model is put to kind of a full test. Like, it's easy when you're like, not easy, but so we have this five bottom lines business model, you know, sustaining our business, our brands, our people, or our community and our planet.

And it's worked. But now we're in the crisis trying to keep this model alive. We're not just a successful company over here, supporting our community and giving thousands of hours of community service and all that. No, we're in the fire. And we're trying to continue keeping those values. in tap and living by those values. So, so far so good, but it has not been easy. Yeah. There's a question from Claire Murashima. She asks about the, you know, you mentioned that the bars are going to health care workers. And, you know, she asks, well, how can a small company that

doesn't have the resources or financial stability of a cliff bar to give away their products, how, what are some thoughts or ideas you might have about ways they can? can contribute. Wow, it's a really good question. That is a great question. I mean, I don't know if we have the answer for everything like that, but there's always some way you can give, whether it's supporting someone who can. It's something that it's an introspective question rather than us giving the answer

to. It's kind of like everybody can help in some way. Maybe it's an encouragement. Maybe it's a note you send to the hospital workers. Maybe it's, you know, sending someone in just a little love package. You know, there's always ways we can help and it's kind of the individual to figure out how they can do that. To that point, too, this is the time where, you know, you can do things with your business, but you can also do things for your family.

My mom turned 97 last week and I baked her a lemon chiffon. cake. And fortunately, she's not in a senior living facility. She's with my sister. So I could take it to their home. You know, we at a distance saying her happy birthday. She kept wondering why we had these masks on her face and what was wrong with us. But, you know, it was like just stuff like that. You know, so that's like on a really personal level. There's, there's a way you can do something. That's awesome. Do you have any advice? I mean, I'm just even thinking about for me and other people listening who work with, you know, with small teams, how do you, how do you, how do you, making sure that, you know, morale is kind of, at least at a certain baseline. It's, it's going

be hard because morale is dropped probably across the board. But what are some strategies that you're using just to check in on people? Yeah. Trying to be, trying to ask them personal questions a little bit, you know, is how are you doing? Like, really, how are you doing? Not just how you doing, don't really tell me. But no, how are you doing? Right. That goes a long way that some, you know, some people are struggling with health issues. Some people are, you know, doing different things that are really difficult. Trying to work and have children next to you is extremely hard sometimes. So, you know, trying to support people on a real human level, I think, in business, I mean,

business isn't really separate from our humanity. It's just all tied together. And this is just a big magnifying glass on that situation. I think when this first happened, it happened slowly and then all at once. You know, it was sort of like, where is this going? Where's this going? Where's this going? All of a sudden, boom, we're out of the offals.

But we are communicating every day with our people. I sent out a Monday email. She sends out a Friday email. On Thursdays, we have an all-company Zoom meeting. So we have like 530 people on Zoom while we're giving every. everybody an update. We have several people in the company give updates on different things we're doing, whether it's our donation program to healthcare workers or we read customer letters. We do all this stuff. So there's a community there. People really appreciate that. And I tell you, people are just stepping up.

They're just stepping up during this time. Yes. Amazing. And I don't think leaders can lead on their own at this time. I think you really need each other. That's our dog. Our dog. But you need to rely on people. And even if you have small teams, there's something that all of each of us can do, right? And it's the little and that's a little and a big thing. This is about a long-term journey, but it's about the people that are moving us forward. Gary Erickson, Kit Crawford of Cliff Barr. Thank you so much for being with us, for joining us.

Thanks, Guy. Guy, thank you. Hope to see you in person soon. Yeah. And your family. Give them our best. That's an excerpt for my conversation with Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, the CEOs of Cliffbar. To see our full interview, you can go to Facebook.com slash how I built this.

And if you want to see all of our past live conversations, you can also find them there or at YouTube.com slash NPR. We're going to be putting these episodes in your feed every week and hosting the conversations in real time at noon, eastern, 9 Pacific on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. If you want to find out more about these conversations or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Candice Lim with help from John Isabella, Julia Carney, Jeff Rogers, and Neva Grant. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and we will see you next week. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.