#GREAT HARVEST BREAD COMPANY FREE#
The business was growing an average of 25 percent a year, fueled in part by the habit of giving walk-in visitors a free slice of whole wheat bread-accompanied with butter, if desired. In early 1992, however, Potter and two other trainers left the company in an event company COO Tom McMakin refers to as the "great upheaval." Great Harvest later sued one of the three for allegedly starting up a competing bakery using the company's trade secrets.īy 1995, Great Harvest had 93 outlets in 33 states. After a few years of assisting with all the store openings themselves, the Wakemans hired Ray Potter, who held an M.B.A., in 1988. In 1982, the couple sold their Great Falls store and moved south to Dillon, a three-hour drive, to live and work as franchisers.
In 1978, someone asked the Wakemans for a franchise, beginning the proliferation of Great Harvest bakeries across the country. To market their bread, the Wakemans gave out samples, warm from the oven. The dough was kneaded by hand and sweetened with honey or molasses instead of refined sugar.
This helped give the bread a shelf life of up to 12 days at room temperature. The Wakemans' started with spring wheat from Montana, stone ground every morning. However, it was the traditional, even anachronistic baking practices they followed that proved the most effective way of drawing customers. They also addressed the problem of burnout early on by not working weekends and keeping time cards to prevent themselves from working too many hours. After three weeks of getting up at 3:00 a.m., they allowed themselves to work later in the day, which put the sights and smells of making fresh bread in front of the delighted customers. began to take shape.Ī cardinal rule of conventional baking they abandoned was the early starting hours. There they bought an existing bakery in Great Falls, and the unorthodox methods of the Great Harvest Bread Co. After graduating from Cornell, Pete and Laura married, settling in Montana after hiking 500 miles between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Pete worked for a year on a dairy farm during his Laura's last year in school. Pete graduated with a degree in agricultural economics in 1974 Laura earned a degree in nutrition a year later. The Wakemans' studies at Cornell University were ideal for the career path they would later follow. They called the operation "The Happy Oven," Pete recalled in Tom McMakin's book Bread and Butter. Pete and Laura began baking bread for money in 1972 to help pay for college, using an antiquated, water-driven stone mill to grind the wheat.
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There he became the school's resident baker, having learned how to make bread from an aunt. As a teenager Pete was sent for two years to finish high school in Deep Springs, California.
Great Harvest founders Pete and Laura Wakeman met as children in Durham, Connecticut. There are about 150 franchised Great Harvest bakeries across the United States, and much has been made of the company as a "learning organization," its network of franchisees free to innovate and communicate.
Today, they have reopened their store in my hometown of Holladay, and they are still handing out those slices.Great Harvest Bread Company is known for baking great whole wheat bread and for following unconventional business strategies. This free slice of bread meant the world to me on many occasions. Luckily, there was a store in my neighborhood near the school that would give every hungry child a thick slice of bread smothered with loads of honey and butter - no purchase necessary, and no questions asked. This meant that on an average day, if a bully had taken my lunch money, I was left all day without breakfast, without lunch, and with a long wait until dinner. This sometimes meant that she was gone before breakfast and not there to pick me up or let me into the house until a few hours after school. My mother worked long and unpredictable hours as a single, entrepreneurial parent trying to raise a precocious little Paul.
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