The Bobby Bones Show - Episode 6: Starting a Business is No Cake Walk

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Like so many food industry workers, Meg lost her job during the pandemic. And instead of going back on the job hunt in this historically challenging environment, she decided to gamble on herself. She launched Das Butterhaus (https://dasbutterhaus.com), named for her love of German pastries - and now she's baking in a local kitchen and selling her delicious concoctions for pickup and delivery. Learning how to be an entrepreneur - bookkeeping, marketing, etc. - at the same time she's standing up her new business has been all consuming, but she's relishing her newfound contact with her customers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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about finding your life's work. On the Job is brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. season, we're bringing you stories of folks following their passion to carve their own career path. During the pandemic, the restaurant and service industry have changed immensely. And in the wake of these changes, tons of weight staff and cooks and managers and caterers have all lost their jobs. Well, today, we talked to a baker who lost hers. But instead of looking for a new job, she's creating her own. The sound you're hearing is the start of a new business. Just kidding, sort of. It's the sound of a standing mix. are making chocolate chip cookies.

So they're just salted chocolate chip cookies. It took me like two months to get this right. Am I allowed to try some here? They are not just salted chocolate chip cookies. They are a masterpiece, lovingly and maybe obsessively concocted in Meg's kitchen. Meg Dawson, I'm 30 years old. I am a baker and I own, operate, and bake at Das Butterhouse. Oh my God.

I know it's not good to eat in audio, but this is one of the best cookies I've ever had. Right now, in COVID, Meg is baking in a commercial kitchen where she lives in rural Charlotte, Vermont. Doss Butterhouse is her first business. She just started, selling baked goods for pickup and delivery. She's been baking for a long time, but for the first time, she is doing it her way. Cookies are so controversial. I think that melted butter in a chocolate chip cookie is, like, the only way to go. It's a consistent bake every time.

She cares a lot and it's clear when you taste her food that it just feels like this is a person who's deep in a creative process. They're still gooey in the middle with crispy edge. It's just like a perfect cookie every time and people are like, cream your butter. As we set up top, the restaurant service industries, they've taken a huge hit during the pandemic. And Meg, like many people who worked in culinary, had their career a bit derailed by the pandemic. But instead of looking elsewhere for a job, she's doubling down and frankly thriving. You really, you don't seem like you're wasting much time in this pandemic.

I'm so grateful to be able to make cookies. Like, it's like my six-year-old child's dream. Like, you can work with cookies and chocolate your entire life if you wanted to. For money, people will pay you to make cake. Isn't that awesome? Okay. To hear more about Meg's story and how she got here, taking this leap of faith with Doss Butterhouse, I sat down with her outside the kitchen. Are you going to make your mea sound? With her two black cats, Hobart and Cornishone.

Hobart like the mixer. And Cornishon like the pickle. She lives here in Charlotte with her fiancé, not far from the kitchen she bakes in. She's definitely found her place in this tight community here, but she's originally from the south. I was born in New Jersey, but I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah, definitely a weird kid. definitely have been cooking my whole life. I was like that weird kid that would like bring risotto to like a potlock in sixth grade. That's so weird. It's super weird.

But people loved it. It's cheesy. It's delicious. Meg grew up in a household of cooks. Her dad cooked, her mom cooked. But my grandmother was like an amazing chef. Amazing. Like she would watch Julia Child.

and then go into her kitchen and make that for dinner. Like, she would be like ironing, watching it, and then being like, I can do that. And then she was like a five-star chef. So she was watching Julia Child. You were watching her. Yeah, yeah, basically. So even though Meg was the weird risotto kid,

she said she went to a pretty nerdy high school and fit right in there, a school where for your senior year, you pick your own mentorship at a job in the real world. Most people would do their mentorships at, like a doctor's office or like a law office and I asked if I could do it in a restaurant and they're like sure whatever you want that was like my first intro into like actual kitchens so you loved cooking but you'd never been like in the food culinary kitchen world what was it like when you get thrown into the fire it was a total I mean when you cook at home it's a totally different experience

because you're cooking for yourself and so you can screw up as many times as you want to but when you're cooking in a kitchen, and especially in like a small, like, family-owned thing, it's like, you can't really mess up. That's their money. That's somebody's business and there is a slim margin of error. And where that might have been a daunting environment for a regular teenager to step into, Meg was hooked. I loved it. I loved being in a kitchen. I loved working. I loved, I know this is going to sound stupid, but it makes you feel important. Like, it makes you feel like you're doing something for a reason. And, like, that was kind of the first time that I felt like I was good at what I was doing.

Meg played sports in high school, but said she was never the best on the team. She was a good student, but usually got bees. But in the kitchen, she felt like she excelled. And she felt right at home and accepted. They thought it was cool that I was the weird risotto kid. You know what I mean? Like, it felt right. She started off college at BU.

She then transferred back home and went to University of Virginia while working at two restaurants. Basically worked like 40 hours a week at two different jobs and went to school. And then I graduated and immediately moved to New York. What you got there. She applied for about 25 jobs in restaurants before she even got one break. I got a job working with a really amazing pastry chef. I never wanted to do pastry. Like I was always a cook and I never.

thought pastry was where I was going to go. I thought, like, I'll take this for a couple months. I'll figure out what I want to do. And turns out I loved it. For Meg, this was a new medium she could express herself with, like cooking, but more organized. It made it really fun to be creative. I could take these very specific ratios. It's like, you know that, like, this plus this plus this makes this.

Like, it's very specific. It comes out the same every time. From that, you can kind of morph it into what you want to do. So she kept working in different kitchens, each time picking up on more aspects that helped her understand the business more and more. And she eventually found her way to Vermont, where she ended up landing a huge gig running the bakery and an esteemed farm and restaurant in Charlotte, where she could only make a menu based off of what was seasonally available at local farms around her. To have to think like that is so great for your brain, and it's so great for creativity. You thrive when you have constraints to work with them. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like having parameters where it's like, okay, like you only have rhubarb for two weeks. Good luck. By the time she got into the swing of things at this farm restaurant, Meg already had a decade of experience. This was a great job, but by this point, she knew enough about baking and about the business itself to start concocting her own ideas. I felt like there were parts of myself that I was like tamping down constantly. Which is just what you do when you work for someone else. It's like you're constantly doing what other people tell you to, and that's part of the job. Meg was running the kitchen here when COVID hit in 2020.

And like most restaurants, hers pivoted to pickup and delivery, and they were slammed. It was especially now when she got overworked that she started squirling away ideas for Das Butterhouse. A dream bakery where she had the freedom to make what she wanted to make. Which had like sprinkles and like salt and. all of these things that like I loved. And especially like during COVID, it was almost like a coping mechanism of like being so insanely busy that I wanted to cry. And then coming home and like thinking about what I would do better if I did it myself.

And then late into 2020, she got hit by a rogue wave. Even though the restaurant had one of the best seasons it had ever had, they started letting people go. Yeah, they laid off a huge part of their staff, including myself. There were a lot of really amazing people that I worked with. It was really surprising and really sad. Yeah, it kind of sucked. What were your initial feelings when you, I think I can comfortably say a workaholic, was suddenly without a job and a job that you were very intimately tied to running this entire kitchen. I kind of, unless I don't, I know that a lot of people wouldn't do this.

I basically within like three days was like, okay, I've been thinking about Doss Butterhouse. I guess I'll just make Doss Butterhouse a thing. She did make Doss Butterhouse a thing. And in case you're wondering, the awesome name is inspired by German pastries and her love for pretty much all things German. I was really inspired by like Grimm's fairy tales. with like the gingerbread house where it's just like a big

playful house full of butter instead of candy because I don't like candy I like butter Meg was laid off in October of 2020 so she was looking down the barrel of starting Das Butterhouse in the holiday season.

I knew that the big thing I wanted to do was Thanksgiving though because I knew that Thanksgiving was like is a huge thing in Charlotte it was a huge thing at the farm. The farm where she had just worked sold about 60 pies

that last Thanksgiving which is a lot for this little community. I just kind of started putting the word out that like, there's still going to be pies in Charlotte. Nobody worry. This is going to be fine. Das Butterhouse is here to save Thanksgiving. Suffice to say, it did.

And so we had 130 pies. You as yourself, Das Butterhouse, sold more pies. I sold over double what we made at the farm the year before. A full restaurant that you'd worked out before. She started doing events, gathering equipment, and researching licensing, learning quickbooks, all the things you've got to do to start a business. And the whole time, baking like a madwoman, posting up at a local restaurant that lets her bake in the kitchen and set up a table for pickup at the front door.

So what was the initial response? I think people loved it. I have a lot of repeat customers, like every week repeat customers, which is really, really nice. Besides loving her community and wanting to serve them on a personal level, She was making her first awesome decision as a business owner. The farm she worked at was known for their pastries in Charlotte, and that went away. Meg was now filling a gap in the market in the best way possible. Yeah, when I started, it was like, I want everybody here to know that, like, pies are going to be fine.

You're going to have pies and you're going to have cookie boxes. Like, no one is going to forget about you. We'll get back to our story in a second. First, a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is you. But to get an honest day's work, you need a response, you need a callback, you need a job. Express employment professionals can help because we understand what it takes to get a job.

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Get to No Express. Find your location at expresspros.com or on the express jobs app. Now, back to On the Job. Back in the kitchen, where we started this episode, Meg is finishing up baking and putting together some orders for pickup. During the holiday season, her pies blew people away, and the community is really rallying around her now, even six months in. And the variety of pastries she's putting together today is mouth-watering.

These are like a nutty and current Rougoloff. This is the Lemon Poppy Rocata cake. These are the chocolate brownies with hazelnuts, and there's like hazelnut praline kind of throughout it. She's, of course, got those insane chocolate chip cookies from earlier with big flaky salt on them. She's got a crazy, delicious banana bread cake with milk chocolate buttercream and hints of coffee. Oh, the pecan tart.

There's candy, it's two more oranges in it, a little bit of time, and a little bit of honey. And these nice little cardboard boxes tied up with, thread, they look like you're giving only little presents. Yeah, people treating themselves. It's hard right now. Yeah, it's hard out there. It's hard out there. Just as we're talking, a woman comes in to pick up her order.

Her name's Charlotte. She's getting the lemon poppy cake and the banana bread cake. My family's addicted to Meg's baking. So inventive. It's like I can't even fathom how delicious everything is and how creative. I would say my favorite was Thanksgiving, Meg made a chocolate silk pie that is literally the best thing I ever ate. She also raves about the scones, which she says live up to the Doss Butterhouse name. Like, you know there's like a stick of butter in each one, but it's so worth it. Yeah, you don't care. Yeah, exactly.

It's that good. Really good. Do you pick up every week? I do, I do. This is such a great addition to the area to have this quality of pastry and cakes and inventiveness. You know, there's nothing like this around here. So what Meg is doing is fantastic. Charlotte really lingers for a few minutes,

box in hand with endless compliments. Meg is standing about 10 feet away while Charlotte turns from me to her, raving about her food. I'm from the New York area, and this is the kind of stuff, like you go to New York City and buy and pay $60 a cake for. I can see that Meg is kind of rubbing her hands together,

smiling at her mask and saying thank you. It's kind of obvious that she's a little uncomfortable. It's like I really recognize like not only you're so talented, but the quality and what you're doing is amazing. Thank you. Amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. How do you feel now that you're finally making these things you've been creating in your head this whole time and seeing people buy them? It's so complicated. It's such a complicated emotion because I have. always worked in a basement. Like, I would meet people that would be like, oh, my God, you're the baker. Oh, that's so exciting. And, like, that's really nice to hear it. But it's like, it's really overwhelming.

Oh, what you mean is you were removed from the customer for all these years. Yeah. And so, like, it's like the face-to-face interactions. I mean, I get really uncomfortable when people, like, even say, like, I like your shoes. So when it's something that, like, you've put your heart and soul into, like, your whole life. Yeah, I mean, like, even Charlotte earlier today. Yeah. She was, she was telling me how much she loved all your food and she was very emphatic about it in front of you. Yeah.

How did that make you feel while she was saying all that? I don't know if you saw me, but I was like, basically, like, up against the wall. Yeah, I almost cried then, too. It's hard. It's, like, really great. But it's also, it's scary because it's, I think it puts a lot. lot of pressure not to fail and I'm somebody who really, really tries hard not to fail. So it just like adds on this other level of like, now they know who you are.

Your business is you. What do you think? Will you buy my stuff? Like what do you, do you like my stuff? Do you like me? Because my stuff is me. So it's like you need that. You need that. response, like you, in order for your business to continue, it's like, you need people to be like, yes, I like your stuff and I'll buy it. So like, it's not just putting yourself out there. It's so much more than that. Meg Dawson has taken a huge risk. Venturing off on your own and starting a business in any time, COVID-aside is kind of a crazy thing to do when you look at it on paper. There are so many new skills you need to learn just to do the thing you started the business for in the first place. And then, still, anything can happen. But Meg, that's what working in

restaurants has always been for her. Chaos. Except this time, it's hers. I have never felt more creatively free. I've never felt more connected to the farmers that were, like I'm using. I've never felt more connected to my other friends who have businesses. So far, I haven't screwed up too big, but like I know that that's on the horizon. And I just have to be like ready and okay with it. Maybe it's not surprising she's got such a good star. Meg's always thrived under constraints, figuring out how to express herself within the parameters she's been given.

That's just her personality. But I think there's something in that we can all take a piece of. This pandemic has totally changed our fundamental understanding of work and what we do. It's put a lot of us without work or made us see that those jobs we thought would always be there could go away at any time. That's scary. But the reality is jobs aren't going away. They're just changing inevitably. And that leaves each of us with a choice to be afraid of this big scary changing world or figure out how to evolve and thrive within it. A lot of us, maybe even you listening, we found ourselves out of a job and thinking about doing something totally

different, making your own job, and then immediately thinking it's too risky. Who knows what the world will look like even a year from now? But the thing is, doing what you love for work has always been risky and always will be, and anything could always happen anytime. Yeah, that is what owning a business is. You're just constantly pivoting and constantly looking at what worked and what didn't and moving forward. Like, you have to move forward. Life is just uncertain and stressful.

And even with all the stress of starting Doss Butterhouse, when Meg is feeling overwhelmed, to remember something she was told during her first big pastry job back in Manhattan, words of wisdom from her baking mentor, Caitlin. The first time I burned an entire batch of cakes, she threw it away and she goes, it's a lesson in loss, it's just cake. And I think about that like every day. Anytime anything is going bad, it's like, I'm like a child. I'm playing with cookies all day. Like, this is the best job.

Like, how many people get to do that? For on the job, I'm Otis Gray. To see all of Meg's amazing pastries and follow her business as it grows, find her on Instagram at Das Butterhouse. We'll put a link for this in the description of the show. Thanks for listening to On The Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season of On The Job is produced by Audiation. The episodes were written and produced by me, Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smollins.

The show is mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at the loft in Bronxville, New York. music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on IHeartRadio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time for more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work.

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