#30 Unrefined Bakery: Healthy Brilliance for Everyone

Welcome to gut check project. It’s episode number 30. I’m here with your host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. Eric Rieger here sitting now with the founders of unrefined bakery in the DFW area. It’s Anne Hoyt and Taylor Nicholson Thank y’all so much for joining us today.

You’re welcome.

Founders? We got the stars of unrefined bakery here!

The stars of unrefined bakery.

The stars!

We’re glad to be here, y’all.

I feel like every single show we just keep taking it up a notch. I’m like, how are we gonna beat this and you go I know how we’re gonna beat it. We’re gonna bring Anne and Taylor on.

People that bring cupcakes.

Yes, yes. cupcakes that won’t make you sick.

There you go.

Yeah. And that is no joke. We’re going to get to that obviously later in the show unrefined bakery being an incredible place that honestly it’s great food that happens to not make you sick. I don’t care that they feature that it’s gluten free. And that it can be soy free or corn free. They have all of the things to take care of people who have food allergies, the fact is, the food is great. It just happens to be made of awesome stuff.

Well, I’ll be totally honest Eric, Eric loves your store he’s been eating your get your food I have not heard of it. So this morning I’m in clinic and I had a bunch of people and I said well I’m unfortunately have to keep moving here I have to get to go to a show and I explained who I’m doing the show with it. Oh, I love unrefined bakery I go every time I go to a vegan conference through there every time I do this every single patient talked about you guys and I’m like Okay, we got some rock stars showing up today. I better have my game face on.

Yeah,

Well so quick. We just have to do it to pay the bills right quick. Don’t forget that. Every gut check project it’s sponsored by Atrantil lovemytummy.com/kbmd to get your discount of course it’s polyphenols created by the gentleman right across the table from here Dr. Ken Brown. Anything to add for Atrantil before we talk to the ladies of unrefined bakery,

Only thing to add is that everything that you guys tell your clients we also tell our clients which is we’re trying to develop a healthy gut which leads to a healthy lifestyle which leads to anti aging which leads to health span. It’s no longer about lifespan. It’s about health span. How do we live a happy, healthy life where we share in this with everyone? And the relationship that you two have is so similar to what Eric and I have. I’m actually Eric father, and we started a business together.

You look great!

It’s the polyphenols.

It’s an anti aging molecule.

It’s working!

Well, you want to know what’s really cool. Eric’s a grandfather also. Yeah.

You’re a great grandfather.

Great grandfather.

That’s amazing.

It’s news to everyone.

So great. Breaking news! Here we go with it.

I think that the I think that teaming up with unrefined bakery and discussing the issues of gluten and celiac disease is so close to my heart. So what I thought we could do today is I want to talk about celiac disease. We always geek out a little bit and clearly you to know your stuff on some science. Your sister’s a physician. Yeah, so so you guys talk science at home. We’ll talk a little science. We’ll talk a little about celiac in general, get people up to speed get everybody’s like, celiac. Do I have a wheat allergy? Do I have celiac disease? Do I have gluten sensitivity? Oh, it’s all BS. Who cares? That’s all just Hollywood stuff. We’re gonna get into all that?

And something to add a part that Ken doesn’t always get to see is whenever we refer a patient to visit with our dietitians here locally like Susan linky unrefined bakery is always a stop that she’s continuously recommended for the last several years because when people tried to bridge over to enjoying foods that they can then safely enjoy. Unrefined bakery has been a great, you know, beacon that you don’t have to give up things that tastes great. You really don’t. So let’s start with the science. I mean, y’all y’all been a great savior for a lot of people..

Yes, I’m gathering that. You’ve passed that down.

We’re gonna let we’re gonna let you guys go into the whole story about this talk about food but because this is the gut check Project, our whole motto is you check your ego at the door, and we can talk about anything. So today we’re gonna talk a little bit about celiac disease I just mentioned in clinic everybody knew you guys. One of the things overview, it’s a common autoimmune issue. If you’re listening to this show, and you’re like, ahhh celiac, blah, blah, blah, I’m not going to do this. Basically, what happens is your body starts attacking your small bowl, but pay very close attention to this show. Because as it turns out, the prevalence is increasing. A lot. We used to think it was like one in 3000. The most recent studies have shown that it’s like one in 184. That was an Italian study that just came out not too long ago. We now know that 15% percent of new celiac diagnoses aren’t people older than age 65. So you were quoting Alessio Fasano right before we started this, I had a patient today that said, you know, what, is it possible that you can develop this later in life and I’m like 15% of the new diagnoses are happening at age over 65. So if you think that you don’t know or you will never get this. Pay attention to this because there is a chance that you could have this. So you may have celiac not even know it. We’re going to get into that. This is not an allergy by definition. It’s and it’s a little bit different than gluten sensitivity. We’re going to talk about all that and clarify it. But before we do this Eric is a huge history buff.

Learned it from dad.

So Oh, one other quick thing we always forget to do this. Although I’m a medical doctor, you’re crna and you provide medical care. The show is not intended to treat diagnose or do anything that they should but we’re just not just this is for fun. Yeah, but you’re gonna learn a lot.

If you have a funny looking toe get it checked out.

Yeah, if you’ve got some unusual growth, go to unrefined bakery first.

Do go to unrefined bakery first. We’re gonna make you feel better. Buy a cupcake and feel better.

You know what, that’s it. Recommendation if you do happen, this is not diagnosing or treating, but it will make you feel better if you notice an unusual growth swing by unrefined bakery before you go to the doctor to get that diagnosis of it as you’re munching. Oh,

Take one to your doctor and bring some for their office. they’ll treat you better..

All right. So what I would like to do is our first ever history quiz. I’m going to sign awards and points on this one. So we’re going to do a little history quiz. So the this is going to be about the history of celiac disease. All right. In 1888, celiac was first described by this person, Eric, you get first crack at the answer. 1888 celiac was described by this person. I don’t know his name. I just assumed that it’s Oh, you’re pointing at something.

Oh, it looks like was it Samuel? Oh, you want me to say Bernie Sanders.

But so my son is horrible at improv. Just absolutely horrible.

I thought you wanted me to guess. So I was thinking…

You probably would have guesseed Bernie Sanders…1888.

Well, he was there,

Right Trump is happy with that answer.

Tylor what would be your answer in 1888.

I’m probably going to go with Samuel Gee the English pediatrician. Sorry.

Yeah, little closer there.

Okay got it.

The English pediatrician. And what’s your thoughts on that?

I mean, Articus Decapidocious in 200 ad.

Wow.

Just saying I actually knew that.

She did know that.

And why do you Why do you know that?

I wrote a paper for the Baylor journal in 2014.

Nice.

We’ve got some Smart people on the show today Eric.

Definitely say it was a Greek physician, correct.

He was Yeah, he cut open the stomach and was looking at how wheat interacted with it and didn’t totally understand it, but knew that it definitely caused trouble called it coeliac or something.

Second century AD. They were already realizing and we have people today going that’s BS.

Right? Right.

Yeah. It’s crazy. But I mean, you know, humans have only really eaten gluten for 12,000 years, probably. And so, I mean, bernie Sanders was there too. Yeah. Poor, Bernie,

He probably invented the paleo diet.

Eric, I have a question for you. Okay. Something occurred in the second world war that allowed us to realize that celiac disease was caused by gluten. Eric, why do you think that is?

Well, Ken, is this when Wonder Bread donated millions of loaves and the Allied forces shot the Germans with ultra refined white bread causing diabetes,

It would have worked and would have delayed the end of the war. Good guess i’m not saying you’re wrong.

That was really organic.

You know, I know.

You know. And so all right, Anne I’m gonna I’m gonna throw to you.

It was the shortages, the food shortages and the incidences of gut disease went down. In the absence of eating the food they previously eaten right that cause trouble. So without eating the food they were accustomed to eating their gut troubles went away and absence of food so

yeah food allergies discovered for sure.

We’re not just Baker’s

No.

Oh my gosh, we have. So one last question before we do it, but if you have any history questions or history buff, make sure you pop into unrefined bakery, and throw out random questions,

make sure you’re asked for Anne on that one.

Alright, so it was actually a Dutch doctor that noticed that his patients were getting better during that. So the last question, this is not going to be completely academic session. The last history question, Eric, how did this Dutch doctor figure out that gluten was the cause.

I believe he locked his kids in cages and gavaged them with pretzels. And that’s just wanted to see how sick they got.

Okay, so we’ve had several shows where we described how animals have been gavaged and so Eric really likes the word gavaged.

Especially when it’s written out for me. I love it a lot.

No, you’re wrong. So I’ll throw it. I’ll throw this one to Taylor.

So pretty close to that.

Thank you.

He did. He did take these kids. And he gave the celiac children and he gave them wheat. And then he just weighed the kids poop. And he looked for fat in it. See if they were passing that fat.

Yeah. Did you know that?

I did not know this.

You didn’t know that part?

I didn’t came up. Didn’t came up.

Yeah. And then so…

that’s awesome. That was said.

He figured out that the toxic part of the food was it was alcohol soluble, and then they figured this out. So it’s very fascinating that it’s been growing for a long time. And now we’re finally at this point. So celiac disease now with it, we know the history. I just want to give a quick recap as a physician about celiac disease so we can get off the science and talk about the goodness that is sitting on our table right here.

Absolutely. So just to introduce, reintroduce again, it’s Anne and Taylor, her daughter I was exposed to walking into unrefined bakery a couple years ago in Frisco. And it was awesome. My wife is gluten free. And I just happened to stop in I grabbed a few treats. I was like, man, I hope hope this is good because you don’t always get a great tasting product whenever it’s gluten free.

That’s so true. That’s the common occurence.

When I took it home it was instant delectable delight for for her. She’s like this tastes fantastic. Are you sure it’s safe? Right? They said it was. She felt great. Came back. We’ve we’ve been customers ever since.

Great. Do you shop in our Frisco location? Mostly?

Mostly because it’s the closest one to our GI center.

Awesome.

So it’s, it’s just up the road on Preston for us to get to it. So yeah, it’s great. So Ken you want to ask them how they got it all started?

Yeah, absolutely. So celiac disease. We already kind of mentioned that. It’s super prevalent. It’s an autoimmune process that’s happening. How do you guys know so much about celiac disease?

Well, we’re kind of science nerds to the core and Taylor’s little sister Aaron got sick. In college. She broke her ankle and got got mersa in her bone marrow. And the treatment for mersa was very harsh. And once she got over that, which was awesome, she got just sicker and sicker and sicker, had strep six times one year and mono twice that year and was really failing to thrive and then began bleeding internally. took her to a doctor. He was amazingly efficient and asked her her heritage, and we’re Swedish. And he’s like, let me check for celiac disease. Sure enough, he biopsied her, and she had it and then we read about it. And I was like, Wow, you’ve been symptom taylor’s been symptomatic since birth And I’ve been symptomatic since about 18 or 19 years of age with it really increasing after pregnancy. So we just were like, well, it’s just food. Let’s just stop eating it. So we did.

And I was diagnosed with milk protein intolerance as an infant where I was taken off breast milk and put on solids by what eight months, eight and half months, roughly something like that. I mean, I had quite a few gut troubles. I’m surprised she had more children. Honestly, I had extreme colic. Right. So she’d been off a dairy for ever. And then Aaron, like said been symptomatic forever and we all went off gluten together and never truly never looked back to see what was just a remarkable change in all of our bodies.

Did you have trouble getting pregnant?

I had eight miscarriages.

Interesting.

Isn’t that so interesting? Yeah. 800-900% increase in miscarriage.

I don’t even have to kick any science. They’re gonna do all the science for me. That is actually one of the things that I asked my patients. Have you had miscarriages Have you have trouble getting pregnant? And

I did not. But I’ve been gluten free long before I had my children. I’ve been gluten free for I mean, and obviously that never came up like never came up.

So when you said that your daughter was bleeding internally, you mean that she was anemic and they were doing the workup for anemia or she was actually actively bleeding.

So, yeah, so we just took her right into it to a gastroenterologist that did a biopsy. That’s the first thing you did. So she got…

wasn’t in her infectious disease doctor first who passed her on, given her heritage. I thought he looked at her and was newly out of school and was like, you know, your doctor from

her doctor was newly out of school and asked

her heritage, you’re so blonde and blue, oh, you’re hypoxic. We need to get some air in you.

You know, Northern European.

But it’s different now. With with getting wheat across the world now it’s equally distributed across the globe.

But this is mean, right? 15 years ago. They knew a little about it.

Super interesting, so we didn’t even hesitate. We just went off gluten.

Let me let me ask you a question as a mom because I have a 15 year old a 13 year old Eric has an 18 year old and 17

almost 16.

Almost almost 16 year old. When you see a child that’s sick that it just it takes everything out.

You just see it like I see or I see kids that I’m like, Oh, you have celiac disease. Like I can just see it. I know what Aaron looked like as a baby. And her eyes were always Like terrible circles since she and Taylor always had like skin you know skin stuff and Aaron was just her hair didn’t grow right like it just she was just pale and not well, and once she went off gluten it just it just changed. It was just it was just remarkable for all of us but more so she was truly she was just wasn’t okay. She had I mean we I was symptomatic since birth but I had different different symptoms that my sister had and you had pretty much self selected already. Like you just didn’t eat bread anymore. I wouldn’t. I was kind of self selected as a kid. I was like, I don’t like that.

So you knew that it was making you feel bad.

From a very young age young before I probably could even correlate it together. I know that I stopped eating those things and she’d be like, why don’t you one pizza as I kid.

Because we lived on it before you loved pizza.

Erin and I ate more. Like a lot of people you eat. You eat more of what is making you sick because you don’t understand it. You know your body kind of craves that thing.

That’s not uncommon so Aaron and I extra bread and pasta.

We seem to we seem to see both sides of it. And with our customer base like we’ll talk to moms whose kids have, you know, are celiac but also maybe have other combined allergies and she’ll say it’s really weird. He stopped eating these things even before we knew he was allergic. And I was like, well, we kind of have used the term self selecting for that because we see it’s really frequently like kids, like my older son doesn’t tolerate dairy. Well, he doesn’t eat dairy. He doesn’t choose it. He doesn’t eat it doesn’t have an allergy. No, but he just doesn’t tolerate it well, so it’s interesting how they you already sort of know that it’s not a doesn’t jive well with your system. So you avoid it. I did the same thing without even knowing it.

Well, that’s kind of how my wife started. She She was like, I, I feel bad and I don’t know why I feel bad. And then suddenly, she starts drawing associations to whether having to be enjoying a beer or bread or pizza. Then suddenly, like what what do all these things have in common? I need to go get checked out.

But back in the day because I can remember seeing a Dr. Phil Donahue show. And they had somebody on like way I don’t even know

The other Dr. Phil.

Yes, like so long ago. Oh, he wasn’t a doctor. He was phil donahue. My bad it was the Phil Donahue show.

I put two generations together. Anyway, a long time ago probably in that

Which one had the mustache?

Donahue? No, they both do right?

Did Donahue have one?Did Donahue have one?

I don’t think Donahue had one.

He just had white hair at the age of 20

They were talking about it wheat allergy and I can remember thinking well, who would be allergic to bread like it was so not in our consciousness. You know, like I just what and with her with her colic. I was I remember for me, I was eating a lot of eggs and lot of dairy because food is good for you. Right? And, and I ate a lot because I was nursing her. And I kind of cut it out for a week and she got better. I thought, well, it can’t be that. So I didn’t keep it going. Because it just never they that was 1982 and three Like it are three and four. They just they weren’t talking about this stuff back then. I mean they were but it was, you know, there were some diagnosed cases of celiac disease than as there were, you know, in the 20s. And earlier but not, not in the mainstream.

I would say people that still don’t quite understand the seriousness that can happen from high gluten exposure to people that have celiac disease, they still dismiss it as it not being a real thing,

Right. There are patients with celiac disease who dismiss it as not being a real thing. ‘m sure you see it often. They’ll be like, Well, last week, I just say whatever I wanted. And I don’t even feel bad. I’m like, well, then you must have asymptomatic celiac disease, but your gut hates you. Right? Right. I mean, I don’t tell them that but that’s what I think.

So everybody has a story about their gluten and I mentioned mine so my researcher that helped me develop Atrantil. So, you know, our whole thing with Brandi was that she was working for me and she had enamel problems she kept going to the dentist and having teeth issues. And then we were going to enroll her in a study and her liver Tests were up. And she was in she was sick and she had his weird rashes and she’d been worked up she was came from Iowa where the Iowa doctor said, Oh, you’re fine, it’s IBS. It’s all fine. And then we’re trying to enroll her in the study she had increased liver tests, ended up testing or figuring out she has celiac disease. So then I, out of courtesy, after we diagnosis, she started feeling better, I would go to lunch with her and I’d be gluten free, I wouldn’t have these other issues. So and I checked myself with my least blood test, I don’t have celiac but then I just started thinking, Wait a minute, this whole concept of gluten you can call whatever you want gluten sensitivity, gluten intolerance, all the other things. So when you say that the spectrum, and anybody that’s listening to this, it says you know I have celiac disease, but I cheat all the time. Well, you have the risk of developing all kinds of stuff. lymphoma, you have the risk of developing osteoporosis you may not be running to the bathroom all the time. You may end up with UV itis which is an infection in the eye. This can trigger and Here’s the biggest thing that I tell all my patients, you have one autoimmune disease. Now you are at risk for every other autoimmune disease, we have to control the one right so that you don’t end up with thyroiditis, autoimmune hepatitis, ankylosing spondylitis, and all these others. So when people come into your store, and they’re like, yeah, yeah, I like your cupcakes. But I have celiac that I don’t tolerate it. My answer to everyone that I talked to is do you want lymphoma? Do you want to develop ankylosing spondylitis? And now we’re seeing in the future, that if people carry this, it leads to inflammation, we know that inflammation leads to dimensia, things like that. So protect the gut, protect your body.

But people will come to that in their own time in their own way. You know, you can’t I don’t preach gluten.

Well, we obviously don’t. I mean, we’re not doctors. We’re not offering medical advice in our stores. They ask our experience and what we’ve seen from our customers and we give them you know, stories and tales of what has helped us or some of our other customers, but we’re obviously not going to tell them well What we may do is say, Well, you know, we have an awesome pizza crust that you can take home and make your life easier to where you don’t feel like you need to order out. And you can still stay gluten free. We tried to just let them know about the options we have, because it is very challenging. I mean, I think my mom and my sister and myself approach being gluten free from a perspective that not everyone does. I think we looked at and we’re like, Huh, well, celiac disease, probably probably the best disease you can have. It’s completely manageable. It doesn’t give you bad side effects if you do it properly. And it’s not that difficult to wrap your brain around, doing it properly, at least from how we approached it. I mean, you have to accept that it is what it is. and food is medicine to us. Right. So

let’s look at it beyond and not being the worst disease. You turned it into a pillar of a great business.

Yeah, but But even before we didn’t do this for about four years like, one guy came in he goes, isn’t this the worst thing that ever happened to you? And I said, No. I said long before we started this company. No, it was the best thing Because look at what it did. I mean, I was what I thought was just super healthy 48 year old like I was, I was in great shape went off a gluten and I was 20 within two weeks

I mean you weren’t you still shad fibromyalgia and other things and joint pain.

It all went away.

Well once you were gluten free Yea.

Yeah. right but i mean i think relatively speaking at 48 compared to other 48 year olds, I was remarkably healthy and then and I thought it was just age I’m like, Oh, I’m aging wasn’t aging at all to heck with that.

So why why would you eat something that making making you sick? Yeah, yeah, you know,

I try not to.

As I drink my Dr. Pepper still every now and then.

I mean, I know we will talk about that. We’re gonna get into that. There’s a there was a podcast that I like to listen to as a as entrepreneurs as people podcast called how I built this.

Love it.

I want to know how you guys built this

Awesome. So my background. So my grandfather, mom’s dad had a franchise of restaurants that he started in late 50s that he became a franchisee for in the late 50’s. So restaurants are sort of in our blood, but never something I thought I wanted to do. Restaurant hours were not something I had an interest in.

I’ve been there done.

I studied finance and accounting and I used to do litigation consulting. It was what brought me to Dallas. She came to Dallas shortly after I did. My sister graduated was, you know, off at college and beyond. So she moved. And well got out.

I hated my job.

I did not hate my job.

She denied her job, but it was grueling and I hated my job and I’d always begged and

what was your job?

I came down here as a banker I’d been working with my dad had been a stockbroker, previously I have an econ degree. But I hated my bank job that brought me to Texas but I loved that I came to Texas and I was like, I’d rather die than keep this job like I’ve got to do something different. And so she began making these food bars for Erin in college because Erin’s now celiac and needs food grab and go food well back then

If you believe it it was before there were bars on the market

You were making the bars?

For my sister. i always cooked.

So she was making food bars

She was tired of just eating you know, nuts and dried fruit juices all she had available. This was years ago so Lara bar did not exist.

So she Taylor then she packages them and gets this cute little gold T and then she puts a label on the back and I was like, and then she gives him to people as wedding gifts as well. What’s it called? I don’t know whatever get all. Yeah, so then I said what it was my idea to start a bakery She goes, we’ll do it. Because if you don’t, I’m going to do this. And I was just terrified to bake I had tried several recipes and they had just failed miserably. One day I did like four different recipes of cornbread and a several recipes of brownies and they were just the worst things ever. And I’ve been baking since I was little and I have been throwing away food since like 1963 or something. So anyway, I was like fine, I will learn how to bake so I just really jumped into it started reading about the different properties of the different flowers. Different flowers have different properties. And I figured out about some blends by looking like stealing some recipe ideas from a lady. And then I took that recipe and I morphed it and took some of the ingredients out. And then we just started baking, I made some bread that I thought would work and it worked. And it was a great

So we we adapted old family recipes that were passed down from grandmother’s that she had quick breads and dinner breads and things like that and just adjusted them to being gluten free and dairy free. Once we figured out how to do the flowers

I’ve always been dairy free and dairy free since I was diagnosed dairy free at like, you know, eight months. So we started adjusting all the recipes, and we realized, hey

so you’re able to take old family recipes and convert them.

That’s exactly how we did it.

Our first 19 recipes. Were family recipes.

They were sort of our original, we still have almost all of them.

That’s nice.

That is so cool. There’s legacy in this there’s tradition. That is awesome.

Like my mother baked her mother baked her mother like it’s just been my whole mother’s whole side or huge bakers and then my dad’s side are super bright, smart. Academic kind of people. And it just works. She and I are kind of the combination of both sides, which is

I actually don’t like to bake, which is comedy considering it’s my business in fact. I love. I love helping people and I love serving others. And I love our product. And I love what we stand for. But you’re the nutrition side.

Yeah. And I like to make everything healthier. And that’s definitely of interest to me and always has been so she took family recipes, and then I would adjust it, we would make it vegan or we would cut the sugar we would increase you know, whatever it is that we were doing.

So I would make sure that it tastes like if it didn’t taste good. Like it had to be good and gluten free first. And then if we could decrease, we could take out the dairy. And she got she was so good at it that nothing has dairy in it anymore, but we just got great at taking the dairy out, but it and then we lowered the sugar significantly. But if it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to eat it. So there’s that balance of Yes, it’s gluten and soy and dairy and corn free and 50% less sugar and it’s organic, but does it taste good? And so you have to draw that line and having Enough sugar that is still palatable while knowing that you don’t want people living on sugar. So we’re really good yin and yang of making sure that the nutrition is is acceptable. While it’s still really satisfying.

Optimal while edible.

Yeah. Could be a T shirt and find optimal while edible. Edible while we will.

Yeah, sure. So we started we started just the two of us

What year was that?

August 2010. Well, March March, we started subleasing space of 2010. January through March, we sort of worked on the website, ordered labels, things, things of that nature.

You did what I’m sorry?

Our first customer came in and we literally went, so we were subleasing. 6 days a month. So…

We were subleasing space from him. She would like a private chef. He did South Beach diet. I mean, this is a long time ago. I don’t even think it’s still a thing. I mean, nobody even knows what that is today. But so she was she wasn’t a gluten free facility. But she was.

I mean, it was

She was free because she was happy. She didn’t do any grains. So we sublease space from her one day a week and then two weeks,

Every other Friday,

Two days. So six days a month is when we started. And that was the end of March of 2010. I think the second week we were there as somebody walked in.

Yeah. This tall thin guy and we’re like, but he’s like, I this is this where I can buy gluten free products. And we were like, what? How did you find? I mean, we have a website but..

Let’s back up a little bit. I’m super into how businesses are built. So are you guys sitting in your kitchen, making this stuff together and then taking it to this place?

I was in my kitchen doing most of our recipes and she was in her kitchen doing the food bar and we honestly thought the food bars were going to take off and that the other stuff wasn’t because she found outlets. She sent food bars or hand delivered food bars to a lot of people they weren’t podcast back then

no food blogs,

food blogs, so she wouldn’t in a food blog situation for I don’t know 15 years, right.

So we did That and then we did. We went to a celiac support group in Dallas and then we went to one in Fort Worth or North Richland hills

North Richland hills,

and brought our food. And at one of those two interesting things happen there. The first question they asked was, are you soy free? And we’re like, Huh, am she and I never had had an issue with soy and really weren’t paying attention to things besides dairy and gluten. And we’re like well no but we can be because it happened in both groups that we met with, so we figured it must be important. And then at one of the meetings, a blogger for the Dallas Morning News, mom’s blog was at one of the meetings. So then she came to us and asked if she could interview us,

and she’s celiac.

Nice.

Yeah, she’s celiac. So she came in, she interviewed us and did a story in the Dallas Morning News, moms blog, which got maybe the most hits they’d ever gotten on a story,

That’s what they said comments.

It had like 80 comments on the story. So then Nancy Chernin with the Dallas Morning News.

Well Hold up. So we were baking in our original kitchen separate on our very own kitchens, we had already quit our jobs. We quit our jobs at the end of 2009.

Is that was that a real difficult decision? You no, because you wanted it out was this for you?

So I got married the end of August Excuse me, I’m sorry.

You can always a hit that we have little we have Eric and I always do that.

Sometimes.

So you didn’t you didn’t teach me that? Now, I know

I was so much more interested in the history quiz.

So I got married august of 2009. And I quit my job in November, I think in my husband like August 29. So I mean, we’re talking like a month later. And my husband’s like, Yeah, I am. I’m not sure if I’ve married a banker. Like last I checked, he were doing litigation consulting. What happened to that?

Yeah, but your hours were horrific.

No they were there was it wasn’t something we wanted. It wasn’t sustainable to have a family. So you know, I quit my lucrative job. And now I’m an entrepreneur and I work all the time. So It’s even better,

Make less money and work all the time.

But I love it so and it does it. It fills me

Do you think like you’re helping more people suing them or feeding them good food?

Undoubtedly we are making a huge difference in people’s lives. And it’s awesome. So we baked in our own kitchens, yada yada, yada. end of March we started subleasing space. That blog came out maybe in April?

It came out was super, super soon,

Super quick. I mean, we tried to put ourselves out there but this is kind of this is before social media. I mean, Facebook existed, but it was like a college. But you know, it wasn’t even for the general public. So it was a totally different situation. Which is even hard to believe today. But so then, in June, the people we are subleasing space from

No, no, no, we came out in the Dallas Morning News on a Sunday on the back page of the Sunday edition of the of the whatever you open the newspaper up and we’re the were the full page on the back page, titled building a better bakery like i’ll never forget it. On that Tuesday, we sell out Oh my god, people were so excited. Wednesday they tell the lady releasing from that she loses her lease. And we’re like, what? They won’t let us put a note on the door. And so suddenly she’s closed. Luckily, we had already at leased a second space.

We had seen the success already. And we’re like, okay, we just want to we can do this. So we were Yeah, we wanted to just prove ourselves. So we were baking one day a week, we would bake, we would freeze.

And we were so tired. Do you remember, we were so tired. We thought it was so hard.

It was all it was. And so then we we went ahead and signed the lease and started started construction and all of that on our first location. And then we lost our sublease because they lost their lease the day after we came out in the Dallas Morning News, crazy. And we and we were closed for two months, because we had nowhere to go. So the timing was awesome.

This is like with Atrantil we get knocked off. Yeah, we’ve been like knocked off Google after we did like a big podcast and you’re like, Oh, look at that. Everyone’s looking for us and you can’t find us.

Yeah, wonderful.

I remember years. years later, somebody came in and said, Oh my god, you’re still in business. We just assumed that you’d gone out because it happens all the time in new startups, and especially like there have been several gluten free bakeries that have started and stopped. And it’s, you know, starting your own company is there’s nothing easy about it.

It’s not easy.

Definitely no easy.

There’s no rules.

So we opened our we opened our first what we call our flagship, it was called White Rock. We used to bake there, and we had a retail presence. We were open Tuesday through Friday.

No, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, at first

We’re like we have a specialty

Just You two?

Yes.

Still?

We might have hired one person by then our first girl was Anna, who came back us after 3 culinary degrees.

Anna is still with us and we love her.

She came back to us.

Wow.

I know she’s massively overqualified. But she’s awesome.

But it was us for quite a bit and then Anna came on and then we gradually started just hiring people. And then a year later, we doubled that space.

We took over the lease next door and expanded ourselves. So then we had, you know, more retail, more seating

That’s when we add coffees and tea’s and smoothies and sandwiches.

We doubled our freezer capacity so something we do which is no secret within about an hour of production every product we make is frozen. It’s packaged and frozen. So gluten free products on the market are sold frozen This is no mystery. If it’s not sold frozen then it has a lot of stabilizers in it which is not something we believe in so we don’t do that.

say that one more time because…

So if it’s sitting on a shelf…

It’s full of junk.

It has a lot of stabilizers in it. stabilizers preservatives

chemicals

bread is bread, you know bakery sell day old bread, bread is not meant to sit around for weeks because it’s it molds it has

or it gets dry and it’s hard and nasty

they sell and they sell daily bread for a reason. day old so we freeze all of our product as soon as it’s cooled so it’s perfect for you. It to enjoy for you know we say a year. I’ve definitely found product in my freezer from several years before that that we consume in my home.

Now do I say that to our customers should you eat your product three years later? I mean do what you want. We say it’s great for a year. So, but we freeze all of our products so by then we needed another freezer so we doubled our space. And then…

Sure.

From a business perspective, sorry to interrupt but I love the idea of the entrepreneurship. No No, no, I just, it’s as somebody who’s an entrepreneur that is in the throes of it I just bogged down by the like, I want to know like what the relationship was, did you have to have somebody analyze the food after a year to say this is safe for a year.

No, we did our own I’ll take this part when we we used to bake something we would put it on the counter, we’d wrap it and put it on the counter, we’d put it in the fridge and we put it in the freezer, we would date it and then we would watch to see how how it landed you know and see how long it stayed soft and whatever on the counter and it always got hard long before it molded. Now like now, a sweet bread pumpkin banana bread. It’ll mold before it gets hard because it’s so moist, but we figured out how it would hold. And that’s how we know like we found something in my freezer three and a half years later that was dated and we knocked the ice off of it and ate it and it was amazing.

It’s just sort of a interesting trial personally i mean

but we did so we haven’t had anything like we’re not gluten free certified because we’re dedicated gluten free and like who was it that said well I mean they say they are. We’ve just developed this reputation where people know that if we say it’s this then they believe it is.

But we also don’t have cross contamination in our space with gluten and soy. It doesn’t exist.

It’s dedicated.

we built out. It used to be like a retail facility that is our production facility. And every product we buy is a certified gluten free product and by product i mean a raw gradient like organic brown rice flour, organic almond meal, like these things are already certified gluten free on their own, and that’s everything we purchase. And we’re in dedicated gluten free facility and what most people don’t understand these certifications for organic or non GMO or or gluten free our per product they’re not..

I was gonna have eric comment on this because this is the stuff we would would you just tell the audience really quick, so you don’t have gluten free stamp on it. And there’s a reason you don’t have the non GMO paleo friendly keto. explain to the audience what these mean,

You have to pay a license to even have those monitors applied to your label

Per product.

And then some of them if it’s what does it do the wheat foundation of celiac Foundation, not only do you pay the license fee, you pay 1% of all of your sales on top of that, because they..

I mean it’s prohibitive for us,

especially, especially with the number of products we have if we if we were just trying to distribute five products across the US. Absolutely, they would be certified gluten free. And if and when we ever go that direction, they will be as well. However, am I going to certify all 15 types of cupcakes we sell on a daily basis? Absolutely not.

Or all 8 sandwich breads.

We’re a dedicated gluten free facility. We will never have an issue of cross contamination with gluten, gluten, it’s never going to exist or happen and we have literally Not had an issue with customers caring about that. Yeah, you know what I mean?

Or getting sick?

Well, they never could get so we only purchase certified gluten free raw ingredients like it. We have strict protocol, we have signage it on our doors that asks you to not bring in gluten containing items into our stores.

We ask customers to leave Sure.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

Because of customers are sitting there at one of our kids tables, and they Oh, and they are their kids might not be gluten free, but they open a package of goldfish. It’s going to make my next customer sick. So…

And it could make somebody like we’re like, it would just make me sick for a couple of weeks. But it might it could send somebody to the ER like people can have huge reactions to it.

So we just ask people to be respectful and they absolutely are. I mean, they look we have people especially in some of our center, our locations that have like sort of a real walkability factor. If they’re coming in with a sandwich as they’re walking and shopping. We’ll just politely ask them to leave it outside because we’re gluten free facility and we take it very seriously our cars our staff cannot eat outside lunch.

So I just want to say One thing that I love the fact that your reputation precedes you and you are above these, these different labels and stamps and things like that, but these labels and stamps had to come about because people were skirting the system and they were lying. And that’s what the supplement industry and that’s what the food industry will do. So another industry was built upon it so that they could at least monitor it and you guys are like, No, we got it figured out.

Every so often they share facility right? Most people don’t build out their own production facility. So some gluten free cracker on the market is being made and another packed cracker distribution facility. So they have to test for parts per million because they’re using the same machinery because that machinery is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. So they go through a rapid cleaning process, whatever they do, and then they test parts per million to make sure it’s under 10 to certified gluten free because it’s on shared equipment. That’s that’s not something we’re dealing Right because we’re our own facility.

I would also say that I’m not sure that I think that people are skirting the system or lying. I think that like if I’m let’s say we don’t have this great business and I’m wanting to buy gluten free stuff because my kids are super sick I probably wouldn’t have done it for me but I would actually do it for my children right which is a lot of what we see at our stores is that’s for the their kids often. I would I would need something that said it was certified because Am I going to trust blow Joe from you know, whatever town in some state that I can’t get to, you know, we’ve earned this reputation because we grew organically pardon the pun, from area to area to area within the DFW area. So we’re still in a small area even as we ship nationwide.

But I also think there’s a lot of trust within that dedicated gluten free facility I believe somwhere that’s dedicated gluten free.

Definitely.

I will not eat a cupcake from somewhere that just sells a gluten free cupcake. Nope.

Because it’s probably next to the gluten cupcake.

I’ve been burned on it so many times.

You should see what our facility looks like. Like we’ve built out a dedicated room in our facility now to do the mixing because flour goes everywhere. And after one recipe, there is a…There’s just a shrowd of flour all over everything within within Oh 20-30 feet

Her point to that is that if it’s a traditional bakery they’re getting that flour everywhere you can’t you can’t all of ours are gluten free so we do it for cleanliness and right various other things. What did you get out of the machinery? You’ll find gluten everywhere.

Everywhere. It just it just goes up in the air. You can’t help it. Like, people sometimes get upset that we have sprinkles, right? But some kids they can eat it so it’s no trouble so if they can’t eat gluten, soy, dairy, corn, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, but they can eat our cookie and our cake. And they want to feel like a kid by having sprinkles on it because you know, Sally gets sprinkles on her cake from whatever bakery. By golly, we’re gonna have sprinkles. It’s not going to cross contaminate. Just don’t we won’t get sprinkles on your stuff like it’s okay. But gluten and it flies. It flies. Yeah.

So ya’ll have the first store and it’s now August 2009. We’ve gone…

2010.

2010 and then suddenly, when did you start to realize hey, we’ve got something successful. And we might even grow to a point where we have more than one location.

We knew it from the get go.

Right. So I think it’s more of could we keep up?

Oh Okay,

So we knew that the demand was there immediately.

Sure.

So we doubled up our location, we built up a triple size freezer than what we initially had.

This is at the White Rock location?

And then as soon as we doubled up White Rock, we then were like, okay, a lot of our customers are coming from the north.

Hour and a half away.

Why are people driving from so far north from McKinney, Frisco? You know, now it’s little Elm and prosper, but then it was like Alan,Richardson, McKinney, Frisco. So we started looking up north, and we opened our Frisco store in September of 2013. So it was our second location. Now we’d already doubled our initial location, but it was our second location. And then we opened. We opened our third location in November of 2013. But that was unusual. He would traditionally never open a store that quickly Back to back

But now we’ve done that two more times.

Not two months apart.

Yeah, we did we opened medallion in in March and we opened Fort Worth in in June.

So are you guys? Are you are you all self financing this whole time?

We are that we’re all self funded.

So that is that’s bold.

Impressive and awesome.

We are crazy. I like to say we are just crazy.

That’s part of what that’s part of what our I wouldn’t say delay, but it’s not like we have immediately bombarded the whole market, but we see companies do this all the time. And it happens constantly, especially in this healthy eating space. There’s multiple name brands that you can look at across DFW that have done this they have popped up 25 stores and they close 22 of them close in three years so it’s happened time and again in this healthy eating space. I mean happens at restaurants especially but in retail

When you expand it just out of curiosity obviously going from whiterock up to the Plano Frisco McKinney area probably made sense because you could tell what People were driving from like you said.

Plus we were trying to spread it out. We didn’t want to monopolize ourselves

within a doable distance. Like we didn’t go to Austin because it would have been too hard to control.

I understand,

You know, but we felt like we could control from and whiterockrock to Frisco and we could.

And we didn’t feel like the Frisco market would cannibalize our White Rock store either. So that was our initial goal in our growth kind of market and we looked at some of these other healthy eating space brands that have popped up all over and we looked at where they were and we looked at where our customers are coming from, do we pay and have studies completed? No, we didn’t. But we looked at our our customer base and where we would want to shop because we are our own customer.

That’s interesting, because there’s there’s a friend of mine from my hometown and he started taco casa. And the way he decided on where he allows people to have a franchise and open up the places he will look for a taco bell and or a McDonald’s and then see what the traffic is.

They’ve already done their due diligence.

So I’m thinking your store in fort worth if I remember right is on Hulen.

Yes.

Is that correct?

It’s underneath Central Market.

Yeah. So not far from Central market, but it would make sense off of hulen to be in a place, so is that kind of how you piece that together because your Frisco location makes sense.

We grew up in the business, we’ve watched, I’ve gone with my dad to look at site selection with the National franchise group. So we and she grew up running the stores. So we kind of knew the brains behind that. But also, we’re a destination location, whereas most restaurants are not most restaurants. It’s a cluster location, but we’re more of a destination. We’re very unique so that that’s why we could open up our first location was probably in an ABCD spectrum. It was probably a D location or a C location.

I think it was it was technically classified as a C location.

But it didn’t matter

Like never like today, we would never put a location in aC location, but it was our original and our Flagship.

There are things that we look forward to had parking, which is a huge thing to us, like

Parking is huge for us are, you know, soccer moms are a huge part of our clients. Oh, I am my own clientele. My kids are both gluten free.

So I just want to comment on this because you said something really cool. We could have paid the money to have market analysis, but we knew who our clients were,

We know our customers. We are our customers. So that’s we have we have baked for ourselves the entire time, which I also think is why the quality is different than most gluten free places. We’d literally eat our own food. And if I don’t like it if I don’t like it, we don’t make it.

Love that.

Because I’ve got she calls me a super taster. Like, it’s gotta have enough sugar but not to much.

It’s actually really annoying. But it’s great and you know, both sides.

Yeah, I just asked if it doesn’t taste good. Why are you going to eat it like it’s baked food is comfort food. It makes you feel good. Like the first gluten free bread I had after we got diagnosed was a I’m just Can I say that? No, don’t say the brand. It was a white hamburger bun. See look I filtered filtered. That has never happened. Put it on the calendar. Never happened. It was a hamburger bun that was shelf stable for a year and it was on the counter. And it was just like almost like eating styrofoam.

How delicious Do you think that was?

Not very.

You know, and I was like, so we didn’t eat bread like I literally none of us ate bread till we really started baking because we just let it go. Because it wasn’t worth the calories like to me like carbs are a happy calorie and if it doesn’t taste good, then why are you going to eat it?

But it’s true, like we will dine out and my kids will say I’ll ask them all ,buddies. Do you guys want a hamburger bun today? And my oldest boy, he’ll say, well, who makes it? Who what brand is it? And he’s like, discerning He’s like, well if it’s that bad I want that one. He doesn’t want to he doesn’t like it. It’s not his it’s not

it’s just not worth the calories.

Well, that’s not how a 9 year old thinks.

That’s not how he says it but that’s what he’s thinking it’s just not worth it.

He’s like, I don’t like it. I’d rather have more french fries.

So he’s already made but he’s making those choices without knowing that he’s making those choices.

By right we so back to your did we pay for market analysis but we’re also not necessarily answering to anyone either. We are we are our board of directors we are bank we are loving we have the ability to make those decisions where you know the larger companies they might have to answer to their investors or whoever else and

Well they would have to.

Right this is why they want to put something somewhere and this shows that.

So when I when I read about different successful companies one that comes always pops into my head is Southwest Airlines. And the CEO you know the name of the CEO I always forget.

Gary Kelly.

Just keep her around. She knows everything.

It’s a because we have to deal with this real like you cannot please everybody. And it’s the whole story where a woman was complaining and would send an emails about how she didn’t like this, this and this, which are all standards for Southwest like you’re gonna wait. You’re going to get in Group A, B or C. And he wrote back. Thank you for being our customer. We hope you enjoy the next airline you fly. Basically we’re not catering. This is who we are. You don’t have to cater The people that want to come to unrefined bakery, they know what they’re going to get. They don’t need a stamp on it. And you built this with your model with your convictions with your money and so you don’t answer to anybody. And you can do this unapologetically. If somebody says that the super taster did a bad job tasting doesn’t matter, she’s the super taster.

There you go. But, but on the flip side of that we do very much listen to our customers. And that I think has been probably our most pivotal point of our success, right, is that we listen to what our customers want. Do we listen to their complaints? I answered them all personally,

She doesn’t let me come close to those.

Every single one of them. We have very, very few complaints are our customers love us people cry in our store. It’s actually part of our training for Front of House staff is how to deal with the crying mom, because it happens.

Really?

All the time. weekly in every store.

Give me an example of how that would go down.

Okay, I wanna give one.

Sure you give one and i’ll give one.

A lady comes in years ago her husband’s with her she’s got, it’s from when we were in White Rock,

but you can repeat this like every week in the store.

Every week. Yeah.

Kids in tow and they’re all like got Cheshire Cat grins and she walks in and she goes, What’s gluten free? Happens all the time. We said everything. And her husband and kids knew that she didn’t know it was like their gift surprise to her. And they brought her because she I’m gonna cry. And she just started crying. She did. And normally it’s the parent crying for the kid. But this was the mom that was celiac. And the family had done this for her and brought her to us. And it’s just, it’s why we do what we do. Like it’s why it’s why we’ve grown. It’s why we’ve put the money back into the business to get into the market as best we could to make sure that we’d be successful. Because if we didn’t grow like we did, somebody else would have come in and grown

People have come in and some people have already left.

But we needed to saturate the market as best we could with our own limited funds. Because we we think we’re the best in the country. What we do, we’re we’re organic, we pay attention to the ingredients we do as little sugars we can’t we do as the least harm that we can with the best ingredients that we can to bring you the best product that we can. And I think that we succeed. I mean, I think it’s good food.

As a customer, I could say, I trust everything that you’re saying delicious.

And we really care,

We won’t ever make sacrifices in terms of the quality of our ingredients. If anything we have we not acknowledging we have simply improved the quality of our ingredients. We never started being as organic as we are. We’re basically 98% organic. There you know

We started off being about 50 or 60%. Like when they were kids, I tried to buy healthy food as best I could within the realm of what I knew back then. We started off being gluten free and then immediately went soy free, and then quickly started taking the corn out because people say can you take the corn out? And we’re like, well, even and we didn’t even use organic corn at first. And then we’re like, well, we can use an organic corn. But even then it’s just a starch and doesn’t really add value. So what’s causing people trouble?

But it just snowballs. I mean, the more you The more we know the better we do. Like that’s how we have grown

And we’re better at making recipes now like everything’s better.

How hard is it to when somebody says can you do something without soy I can do something without corn? How hard is it to redo these recipes, the familial recipes.

Oh it’s hard.

it was very hard but it’s it’s complete. So we’re not there’s nothing more to change at this point. Today we we’ve kind of focused more on growing our Kido line that’s been our largest so these days not only are we a gluten free bakery, and and, you know, an allergen bakery in general that’s sort of how we’re known but we’re also known for just catering to special diets. Whether that’s and I don’t mean diet isn’t Oh, you’re on a diet. I mean, diet is in this is how you fuel your body. So whether keto,vegan,paleo, those are all diets, we cater to tremendously vegan because by eliminating dairy and eggs, such common food allergies, we have vegan products, and then keto because we already it’s difficult keto baking is intrinsically Difficult as is paleo baking paleo baking is easier than keto baking.

We need to back up paleo baking is no grains, no sugar, no dairy, no legumes. Keto takes it further they don’t want even this sugar from say the bananas that we would use in a paleo muffin to sweeten so they want an alcohol sugar to replace the sweetener. So the body doesn’t take it as a sugar and they want

and no starch

And no starch so you can’t use the tapioca or era root.

20 total carbs per day.

So you’re baking predominantly with eggs and seeds, nuts and seeds and a lot of people do keto in a very 1990 Atkins way where they’re supplementing with cream cheese and other things that they’re baking with but our keto was all organic and dairy free, which is highly unusual

Super hard because when I tried keto it was basically do cheesy eggs in the morning cheesy eggs for lunch and cheesy eggs for dinner.

Butter bombs, you know, little butters cream cheese and

don’t eat too much avocado because you know it has too many carbs.

You have to Be really careful.

It’s awesome because what I Hearing though is you’re meeting your customer where they’re at but doing it with your standards.

That’s exactly right.

We we know that…

We won’t change our stores.

Yeah, our people come here. And I hear that you’re wanting this. We’re going to try to meet you. But we’re going to do it this way in the most ethical way possible. I think it’s fantastic.

Somebody said to me, Well, I had a keynote cupcakes the other day, and it was better than yours. I was like, that’s awesome.

That’s great.

And, and they emailed me the ingredients to it, because they thought we should make it and I was like, well, none of we don’t use these ingredients. We you can’t even pronounce these ingredients like this is not this is this does not meet, unrefined’s way of doing anything. It’s not organic pastured eggs, it’s I mean, we’re just not going to sacrifice our kind of core competencies and core beliefs to make a product that she thought was more palatable. She’s Welcome to buy their cupcakes

And just to clarify, the reason we do it that way is because we really think that the the junk in the food The reason it’s called junk, you know, the chemicals and preservatives, the additives, the colorings, all that stuff, we believe to our core That that is part and parcel of why people are getting so sick. It’s not just the gluten and it’s not just the dairy. It’s not just the sugar. It’s the combination of all of that junk.

I couldn’t agree more.

Well, I mean, so everybody sits in so I get this all the time where patients will will tell me Oh, yeah, I don’t know, I feel a little sick when I have gluten, but I know that’s just a thing that doesn’t really exist. And you start looking at Okay, it’s not just the gluten. It’s the amylase trypsin inhibitor that’s there that the that’s the GMO wheat that allows it to be pesticide free. Now we know that creates intestinal inflammation. That’s a very simple thing. Now we know I had a patient today where she was talking about being bloated and she had her pocketbook out and a protein bar was sitting right there. And I was like, do you mind if I look at this and I pulled sugar alcohols Winner Winner it said no, it said non dairy, non gluten but it was making her bloated like crazy sugar alcohol.

That’s awesome for your gut.

Yeah. Exactly and then yeah, and so it’s it’s funny, you’re exactly right once it gets put in a package can sit for a year on a shelf. There’s all different kinds of things going on with this.

So y’all, y’all are y’all just opened your seventh location?

Seventh retail locations.

Seventh retail location. And ya’ll also do special packaging and shipping for people who are on the contiguous 48.

Yeah, yeah, we shipped to all 48 lower states. You know, the 48 contiguous. Yep. And then we also have a pretty large wholesale business

Hold on and one special customer in Alaska. I’ll just say one special shout out to my son

My brother lives in Alaska.

We used to ship him cookies in Iraq so

Yeah we did

Alaska is nothing compared to Iraq.

Wow, that’s fantastic. Y’all do cold pack shipping i guess?

So we ship with dry ice across the US, but it’s not required for everything. So some of our products especially locally within like a UPS ground delivery system within a day, which is Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, I mean a pretty good chunk of the regional US that we’re in is next day so most of our products can ship next day no problem I mean we asked for you to freeze them to prolong shelf life and but they’re not going to go bad in a day so a lot of people opt against the dry ice shipping but then things like our cakes and our cookies we require dry ice shipping for sure. So a lot of people add that plus their breads and other things to their cart and checkout.

Or pies. Yeah, we ship our pies

Pies are fantastic By the way

Can you giveme since I’ve met Eric his seasoned with your stores, but I’ve not been into one of yours which I’m going to do probably tomorrow. Can you tell me that that you’d like a brief list of the types of products that you carry or that you make?

Yep. So when you walk into our stores, we kind of act as though the freezer section of the grocery store you shop at whether it’s central market or whole foods or Kroger or anywhere else. You look in the freezer section of the gluten free staples you have your sandwich breads your dinner breads, your hamburger and hot dog buns all your various muffins and your

pizza crust

pizza crust is in our top three most popular products

Pies.

I mean

Y’all have dough’s too.

we do.

Pie dough and cookie dough.

Pie dough and cookie dough cookie dough so we I like to say we make everything gluten free with exception of pasta and crackers. So pasta and crackers are not items we make nor will we make people like oh you should make that I’m like why never made it before I’m I don’t have the equipment for it.

We stick with our with it our expertise

So pasta and crackers are never going to be something in our wheelhouse it just doesn’t work with our model but anything baked whether it’s quick breads or you know and then obviously all of our cupcakes and cookies and custom cakes, custom cakes are huge for us

Custom cakes?

Anything like 50% of our sales.

No kidding

Shut the front door.

That is that is so labor intensive.

Well it is but our but where else are they going to get a gluten free dairy free soy free corn free peanut free tree nut free.

Where else are they going to get a cake that tast tjhat good and that every recipes a custom recipe for that item like not like we use a mix. Like every recipe is different.

Do you go so far seems like wedding cakes and stuff like that?

We do. Absolutely.

Wow you guys do not hold back.

That is all her area

I make it taste good and she helps people make it pretty.

So we have a cool thing that are you know unrefined loyalist follow for us. We have our cupcake of the week or our cow as we affectionately call it the launches every Friday. I believe this is the

Cult following

seventh year we’ve done cow. So we’ve been doing every week for seven years, a new cupcake of the week, launches every Friday morning at 9am on social media, and then it hits all of our stores that day, whatever time they open, and they last until it sells out and it’s always a custom flavor. And we bring back our favorites like what’s today, Thursday. Tomorrow, Oh no! First time ever.

Oh wait. Is this like an early leak late for the cow.

Tomorrow’s our cookie monster will go nuts for so it’s like a chocolate chip cake and it’s filled with a chocolate chip cookie cream and it has a whipped vanilla buttercream to with chocolate chip cookie crumbles. And its people just love it.

You are going there tomorrow.

Oh yeah.

The best one is the overload the chocolate overload which is my favorite.

Chocolate over it. So we have like probably five most requested cows, the overloads one of them, it’s a chocolate cake. It has our fudge brownie bakes into the center. And so it kind of is gooey and then crispy on the top. And then it’s topped with chocolate buttercream and dark chocolate ganache. We do that in, in what we call. And we have fun naming them late like early on. We contests for people to come up with new ideas and like our what our signature cupcake is called a loaded monkey. And that way one of our It was one of our early cows, maybe our second or third and people loved it. And I was like oh well we could just this could be our signature cake so it is it’s our

So we have a cake with a peanut in it.

That’s our signature cake. But but so our production facility is peanut free. It’s a peanut free facility. But our retail stores have peanuts and they but they don’t have peanut for anything that’s packaged so anything that’s packaged never come in contact.

And can I just say the wonderful yin and yang that happens with two people that are equal owners, right? And first of all her friends are like, it’s so nice that you let your mom work with you. My friends are like, it’s so nice you let Taylor help you out with this. Like they are completely convinced that the other one is just, it’s just along for the ride, right? But Tyler comes to me years ago and says, I think we need to do a new cupcake every week. Kind of spice it up. And I said, No. We have vanilla. We have lemon, we have carrot and we have vanilla with strawberry that is in chocolate. Like who needs more than that

Who needs more than a five cupcakes of variety?

They were great, right? We have more than that now.

Oh, she is single handedly with this cupcake of the week. I could never do it. Like my brain doesn’t think that way. I’m the one that gets in and spends 52 hours nuancing a recipe to make it perfect. Which she would never she’d be like oh tasted fine three weeks ago like

Visionary, implementer.

We’re just different. We’re just different. She’s super creative and the cupcake of the week it’s just been

You watch the YouTube video of that of that little chimpanzee eating the fermented fruit falling off the tree and you’re like loaded monkey. That’s our new cupcake right there.

We did a contest for that name.

That’s awesome

That’s awesome. Anyway, that’s thank God whoever feels the most strong wins.

Before we get into that really quick, I just want to talk science again really quick. So celiac, you can diagnose it through blood, and also biopsy and treatment, I have a new treatment. What I’m going to recommend is if you get diagnosed with celiac disease, you will move into an unrefined bakery for a minimum of three months and just lay out just…

Perfect just like realize that you’re not gonna lose your mind.

You guys should start doing inpatient rehab for celiac.

You can tell when somebody comes in new you can it’s like that orphan annie deer in the headlight look, and they literally we can spend like 45 minutes with a new person. And we’ll walk depending on what they’re allergic to. We’ll walk them through we recommend we sell gluten free for dummies or living gluten free for dummies just because people they just they’re so overwhelmed by it and we remember what that felt like.

And food is so intrinsic to our culture like when you’re told that you or your child specifically can no longer have the sugar cookies for Christmas there used to decorating with their grandmother or the birthday cake or cupcakes they can share with their friends or just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that they The only thing they’ll eat in their lunch. You know, I mean, we’re talking celiac here and not necessarily other food allergies, but it’s so overwhelming for people, just people, most people don’t approach it. I felt like with the same level of Okay, well, now we’re going to be gluten free that we approached it with. And we realized that I think we approached going gluten free with a gusto that most people don’t.

We always talked about the fact that being lonely is just as dangerous as smoking. Do you find that people when they walk into stores suddenly find a sense of community?

Oh, absolutely. And we hear their story, people love to talk about their history and what brought them to us and what brought them to gluten free and how being gluten free has changed their life. And it’s no joke and it is a community like people. Everyone talks to each other. They’ll come in, they’ll be six people in at the cupcake and they’ll be like, Oh my God, have you tried the Have you tried the retro, it’s my favorite. I buy 12 at a time or….

They immediatley have something they can connect with. That is so cool.

It’s so cool. And people love it and everyone talks to each other in our stores, which is like customer wise. I mean, it’s super cool. We love it.

That’s awesome. So your life does not end if your food allergy or diagnosis and your healthy life begins

totally, you’re gonna feel so much better

Even if it’s any of the major food groups that’s in all the processed food, gluten, soy, dairy, corn that’s in everything. Like if you can’t eat any of those items, you just suddenly it’s a different world, and

Especially if you’ve eaten a sad diet, standard American diet. It’s very sad, right? And you’re told you need to go like gluten, dairy, soy, or even were dairy free. It’s so overwhelming. Sure, because people don’t understand that if you’re used to being a drive thru goer. It’s going to be really hard for you to adjust to cutting out one of those items.

That’s why I think that we should start the unrefined bakery inpatient rehab, because if you check yourself in, these are a few of the things that you’re going to be exposed to.

A hundred percent.

Would you like to talk about this?

Well, it’s one of our first 19 items. People literally take it and they come back and they say, what you put in that

It’s called the mix.

It’s called the mix it they apparently can’t duplicate the spices in it, because they try they’re like I try and I tried, I tried and I tried and I can’t get it. And I literally I sat down to watch football game and next thing I knew it was gone. Like What Did you put in a crack? We’ve, for 10 years that’s been the description of this food. It’s our only

People love it.

Is it rude to eat live on the show?

You go!

I want to try it man.

It’s our only item that has conventional grains in it. But again, it was one of our first 19 items and people would kill us if we got rid of it.

Oh i’ve had it.

Oh you have?

Oh yea its great!

So it’s like it all the Eatzi’s carry it. It’s one of Phil Romanos favorite products in Dallas.

Oh Eatzi’s carries it?

Oh yea They’ve carried it for 10 years, 9 years.

Dan McDowell talked about that on the ticket.

They were super early.

So I would normally mute my mic here but I

No you shouldn’t it’s crunchy and awesome. It’s a good bar snack.

So kids of all ages. How you thinkng Dr. Ken oh he’s shoveling more.

It’s so good. So people love the mix that’s you know, it’s unique it’s it’s definitely doesn’t necessarily fit our profile in general for what we do. It’s just, it’s just a fun snack.

So we have a box here of some of the treats. I haven’t seen them yet but I will say that one of the coolest things beyond even the food is your logo and your colors. I think the boxes are cool, so when you gift things which my wife and i’ve done it looks awesome. It’s not just some throw away box it looks cool.

Anybody has a pink or white box right?

We put money into branding right from the get go like that’s one of the things we did

Oh in here.

That looks so good.

We have some incredible delectibles.

Well, as you do this exists, all that we know it’s gluten free, is it?

It’s all gluten, soy, dairy and corn free.

This is blowing my mind no way,

so I’m gonna hold this one up.

Sure. So that’s that’s our loaded monkey.

That’s a loaded monkey.

The loaded monkey.

Heat that thing up for like 10 seconds in a microwave. Oh my lord it is unbelievable

So it’s a banana chocolate chip cake and it has chocolate peanut butter fudge filling in a peanut butter on butter cream. So this is probably one of our cupcakes I’m the most proud of and I think and probably as well. So this this happens to be one of our cows it was last week’s chocolate Raz so it’s a chocolate raspberry cake. But what I’m so proud about that cake. So that chocolate cake I think is the best cake we have. And it is free of every food allergy I mean obviously you could technically be allergic to anything but it’s free of gluten dairy, soy, corn tree nuts, peanuts and eggs.

It and it’s literally like 60% less sugar. People aree like well what what is it what’s in it like unicorn tears and pixie dust?

All of our cake is about 50% less sugar I literally just chop the sugar and you can see how small the icing is true and it’s not because we’re cheap. It’s because we’re by it’s by design, right? We think you just need enough. But you know, it’s it’s fat and it’s sugar. You just need enough now the icing is awesome, but like most cupcake places the icing is like this tall.

It’s organic fat and it’s organic sugar.

Yes, that’s vanilla.

Yeah, this is a vanilla cupcake.

like we really try.

I like this new role that Eric’s doing this is a vanilla cupcake.

so that’s.

Are you Vanna?

Sort of, just Van.

that’s our carrot with butter cream. So our standard icing is called un butter cream, which is just our butter cream, but it’s dairy free. Un butter cream.

So just out of curiosity is that ghee or no?

No, it’s it’s a blend of oils. That the secret is how we make it.

Is it? Is it a spoiler alert if I asked what kind of flower you’re using in that one?

No, they’re all different though. Oh man Anne go back to when you put the rest of it together.

Carrot is White rice, tapioca and sorghum.

Oh, good job Taylor.

Oh, this is no joke. You guys were like really experimenting back in the day because if you’re combining all it’s usually Oh, that one’s almond flour. Oh, that one is…

They’re all at least three if not 5,6,7 flours.

This is what makes it so successful.

That’s what maks it work and then this one the white one has I totally threw away the book and started over on that one because it’s super good. It was it was too dark Taylor’s like people say it’s too dark. I need a white cake. And I’m like one organic bakery with brown sugars and brown flowers and you want a white cake?

Yeah, so when a whole wheat I mean,

but let me say eat white rice, sweet rice eret, potato starch and sorghum. Well, I think and tapioca

You’re like a chemist!

Yeah, that’s what took like 52 hours

Is this just called chocolate?

That’s just our classic chocolate.

Classic chocolate.

That was that same cake.

The last one in here.

So that’s our fudge brownie when we put it in the big cup, so doesn’t fall over.

Gotcha.

So that’s our fudge brownie. Have you had our brownies? Eric?

I have not had the fudge brownie.

Does your wife like chocolate?

She she’s actually kind of on the fence on chocolate.

Okay, well then so my talk it’s really not my jam but it is like fun G and rich and has a nice it’s awesome

one lady years ago

It has five ingredients the cake the brownie itself and

In 10 years one person has said Oh, I didn’t care for it and I said you didn’t care for it and she goes, I said, Can you tell me why? And she goes, Well, it’s really gooey on the inside and it’s crispy chewy on the outside. I said, Yeah, that’s right. She goes no, I don’t like it. I’m like, well, but that was what we intended.

So you wanted a cake like brownie get a cupcake.

the yin and the yang of chocolate. So those are just some treats.

Thank you all so much for bringing all the stuff y’all are the very first ones on the gut check project Episode 30 to show food to anybody

and did we know that there was video in this? No we did not. We thought this was radio.

Ya’ll are not the first ones that we surprised we even do a podcast.

I was like is it radio? It’s podcast, right? So then I googled it and found that I’m like, it’s a podcast, which my mother would be very happy about. Because now she gets to listen to it. Cuz she said, How can I listen? I’m like, let’s hope it’s a podcast. I’m like, it is so you can listen to it.

Like, like all things. This podcast sort of started out as just, we were we were with spoony radio and then then Eric, and I decided that this is really a way for us to learn some stuff. And man, I love your story. This is so cool. This how I built this. This is a fantastic story.

Shout out. If it were me, we would have gone under years ago with the best product ever. Luckily, it’s not just me. And she has kept us alive, kept us afloat, done the book.

Thank God you wrote your daughter help you out in your business venture.

Thank God, I let her sit in the corner critter in the corner.

I’m so proud. So proud. Yeah.

So I don’t I don’t want to lose anybody. I know. We’re getting the show notes. We’ll have all of the links that you sent over, etc. But where can people Find unrefined bakery online and then find your location

So you can go to our website unrefinedbakery.com, and then locations we have across Dallas Fort Worth. So we have one in Fort Worth one in Frisco one in Rockwall, and then we have four in Dallas proper. So we have our brand new uptown location that opened a little less than a month ago.

Oh, that’s not going to do well at all.

Yeah, terrible.

It’s right off the park. It’s right in Pearl and McKinney, pretty awesome location. We have our medallion center location, our Preston center location, and our lower Greenville Avenue location.

And as we referenced earlier, everyone can order online of course for shipping no matter where they are correct? Of course.

All right.

Yeah, we gave a little discount code to your followers.

Yes. Oh, you’ll see it in the in the show notes. And if you happen to be looking at gut check project. com gut check project. com If you’re only listening on the podcast, I or Apple player, gut check project. com Go to the show notes where we’ve had unrefined bakery, it’s episode number 30. And then you’ll see the link with The discount code specifically from from us we’ll probably also make the code available at the GI clinic.

Yeah, that’s awesome.

We could even do we can even do we, we do a lot of research and so but our background we always try and find things we should do the whole unrefined challenge where it’s basically if you’re making an appointment with me, it may take a little while Anyways, I’m going to challenge you that I need you to eat 12 cupcakes, log, your bloating score come in with the empty box and then tell me how you feel like you probably have celiac.

Yeah, that’ll be awesome.

And don’t forget that it’s not just cupcakes.

Oh right. breads, doughs…

Yeah, we make the staples that you that you need in your life. The cupcakes are fun, but you need to have cakes for the first year like literally we were a bread and food bar bakery. Nice.

So knowing that, like whatever 10 billion chicken wings we get people the Super Bowls coming up here we got the what is the unrefined pick for the Super Bowl here coming up and everybody needs to get a bag of the mix. For the Super Bowl.

You should probably get more than one box

and a tray of brownies and pizza. Oh in Uptown store selling pizza.

I’m gonna give you a hint take the Chiefs cuz mahommes is from Texas.

Oh yeah, yeah, the Chiefs Oh yeah. And it’s been what 50 years

So if you’re only watching us for the first time because you’re fans of unrefined bakery check out gut check project like and share like and share this is what we do all the time we talk about health topics we talk about food topics

and please connect with us when you go and do the cupcake of the week the COW and you have ideas and we we want to start intermingling our our groups together super proud of what you guys have super proud that you offer food for my patients because I have a huge celiac group, huge food sensitivity group. And now I’m going to just start funneling it I’m thrilled that we have this show for one reason one reason only that I can get one of my patients to walk in your store and start crying.

Yeah.

Tears of joy,

That would be awesome. Well Taylor Anne thank y’all so much for hanging out with awesome show

Can we do this a couple more hours.

Oh, come back more bring some more Bread. We’ll do anything will bake a pizza whatever it takes

perfect.

Well that’ll do it for Episode 30 Dr. Brown anything else?

No, this is awesome. Thank you so much once again a mother daughter team team, not

Team equal partners.

Equal partners rockin I wish you both the most success you come from a place of love. You come from a place of caring and it shows everybody can taste it in your foods. Congratulations and Wow, great job.

See y’all next time!

Bye