Two of my favorite food shops of all time are located very close to each other in Norwich, VT and Lebanon, NH, and I got to visit both of them on my recent New England food-shopping
spree.
I'm somewhat ambivalent about brand names. Quality and consistency are important, but often I find that brand cache is not a reliably good indicator of the underlying value of a product and takes on a life of its own due to rampant advertising. But in cooking, the brands I trust and
always use
are Trader Joe's (for most everyday items), Cabot dairy, and King Arthur Flour.
On my recent trip, I got the incredible opportunity to personally tour the King Arthur Flour headquarters thanks to Allison Furbish, KAF's media relations manager. Full disclosure - I got the opportunity because of this very blog!
First and foremost, what I love about KAF is the flour. If you normally bake with standard (Pillsbury, etc) or generic brands, you will notice an immediate difference in taste, texture, and overall quality if you switch to KAF. Their standard white flour is my all-purpose flour of choice, and I haven't used any other kind for years now even when the alternatives are substantially cheaper. Other flours from KAF I like are the Queen Guinevere cake flour, which produces cakes as fine and light as the softest down pillow; their Whole Wheat flour which delivers nuanced, whole-grain nutty flavor without being gritty; and their White Whole Wheat, which combines some of the flavor and nutrition of whole wheat with the texture and structural integrity provided by white flour. And yes, every baked good I've posted on this site was made with King Arthur Flour.
Although I realized when I came home that it's written right on the package, I didn't notice before that KAF is a fully employee-owned business. After walking through and meeting many of the employees who run the website, package the mail orders, and manage the enterprise, I can safely say that indeed, the employees do appear to be as chipper, dedicated, and genuinely nice as you can imagine. No kidding.
Another thing that you may not know is that KAF does not own any wheat farms or processing facilities. But it does impose strict quality standards on all of its flour (all of which is grown in the US) by protein content and other metrics - and clearly, they are doing something right because their quality is simply superb.
But now on to the two other things I love about KAF - its
baking blog and its
cookbooks. I came home from my tour with two enormous gifts, KAF's Cookie Companion and Whole Grain Baking cookbooks - an embarrassment of riches. The cookie companion has been my bedtime reading for several weeks now, and it's chock-full of unique recipes based around variations on the classics - the chocolate chip cookie, the sugar cookie, the oatmeal cookie, and so on. It gives detailed instructions on how to achieve the precise texture and flavor
you want in a cookie, an approach which ensures satisfying results. I've owned the KAF 200th anniversary cookbook for some time now, and its bread and pie crust recipes are standouts (my favorite is its buttermilk pie crust). With the proliferation of baking cookbooks out there from 1001-recipe lists to celebrity-chef hard-core, KAFs baking books truly distinguish themselves through the quality of their recipes and the meticulous detail of their instructions and advice.
Similarly, although I hardly even make time to read the news anymore, much less food blogs, I have found myself drawn time and again to KAF's
Bakers' Banter. Creative recipes, insightful writing, incredibly detailed instructions with photos, even
cost breakdowns for every recipe
. Just overwhelming quality that no other baking blog that I know of can match. 'Nuff said.
What I'm left wondering about though, is that for all of the virtues of KAF as a firm, its challenges going forward are far from trivial. The employees do clearly feel the tension between corporate growth and loyalty to its small-firm ideals. But if small firms like KAF self-impose limits to their growth, how can we translate these great ideals to the broader economy? Furthermore, most of KAF's employee's actually work in their catalog business which sells quality baking equipment, ingredients, and custom baking mixes via their website. I can only guess that much of the revenues from its catalog business comes through markups on resale products and the value-added of its processed mixes. I've never been one for baking mixes, and although the catalog's product mix is dependable and hand-selected, it's hard for me to imagine the growth potential of KAF's catalog business with the high labor costs from employee-oriented policies admist cutthroat internet retail competition. And to be honest, I see KAF's real value as a firm as coming from the unparalleled quality of its flours, cookbooks, and baking advice.
Another stakeholder-owned business (an organizational form which seems to flourish in this corner of the country) that also happens to be my
favorite grocery store of all time is the Lebanon Co-op. Full disclosure - I do own a share of the Co-op. But alas, this post is already far too long, so I'll have to share the hidden treasurers of the Co-op next time.
As evidenced by KAF and the Lebanon Co-op, there clearly is room for wholesomeness in the business world. But the Lebanon Co-op and King Arthur Flour are far from naive hippie enterprises. They are run by smart, sophisticated people who deeply understand the virtues and benefits of naked capitalism - but choose a different road nonetheless because they also understand its flaws and are dedicated to proving that principled business can be good business. I can only hope that these working examples of the possible balance (and even synergy) between profits and principles are recognized by more firms in the global economy.
