Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Ben's Bread: Turning Sourdough Dreams into Reality with Ben Rosairo
Have you ever tasted a dream kneaded into reality? Ben Rosairo, the artisanal force behind Ben's Bread, joins me from Tuscaloosa to recount his remarkable shift from UK project management to US sourdough savant. In this bread-centric journey, we uncover Ben's dedication to the timeless craft of sourdough bread making, with his hands thoughtfully working only the best organic, non-GMO ingredients. It's a sensory feast as we explore his bakery's lineup, boasting everything from the purest of baguettes to the most buttery croissants—each product a testament to Ben's sugar-free commitment (save for that necessary croissant sweetness). And the melody of his life doesn't end there; Ben's harmony with piano teaching resonates throughout, proving that the rhythm of passion can turn a YouTube hobby into a community treasure at the farmer's market and beyond.
Amid the aroma of freshly-baked bread, we break bread over Ben's entrepreneurial odyssey, filled with the thrills of skateboarding and the intense focus required for starting a business. The story of Ben's Bread is kneaded with challenges, from obtaining permits to beating the clock on financial deadlines. Yet, through the power of community, a Kickstarter campaign became the leavening that allowed his bakery dreams to rise, embedding a deep confidence and shared sense of ownership among his backers. Step into the sanctuary that is Ben's Bread, where the walls echo with the support of Tuscaloosa, and the air is thick with the promise of connection, nestled in every warm loaf. #GNPNorthport #BensBread #Tuscaloosa #EatLocal #BuyLocal #Bakery #Sourdough #BakedGoods #Bread #Baking #BakeryLife #Baking #BakeryLife
and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Ben Rosario. Did I say that right? Ben Ben Rosario? You got it spot on. Ben Rosario. I'm Ben's Bread here in Tuscaloosa. Ben, how are you this morning?
Speaker 3:Fine thanks. We're just at the bakery right now doing some work to the building we tend to on Mondays and Tuesdays. There's a chance for us to kind of do some improvements and think about how we can make the building work for us better.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of us that know you here in Tuscaloosa from the farmer's market. But for those of us that don't know you, tell us about your business, Tell us what makes your bakery special.
Speaker 3:Well, I suppose for me, the thing that makes it special is the fact that we only use organic ingredients and we're a purely sourdough bakery, which I think for me that's the kind of bread that I love the most. I've always liked sourdough and I like how it has so few ingredients to kind of make a loaf of bread pretty much just water, flour and salt, and then the fermentation happens with the natural yeast in the air, I just love that process.
Speaker 3:It's very simple and you know so old, such an old way of making food, and so I think that's that's kind of what I, what I think special about this business.
Speaker 2:I love that you use a high nutrient, non-gmo organic flour so you take care of your sourcing. You take care that your sourcing has that high nutrition flour. It creates an extra special loaf of bread because you've given that fermentation so much more nutrition to feed off of and to break down and make available for the human body off of, and to break down and make available for the human body. Tell us, tell us about, tell us about what kind of bread you make and any other information that you that you want to, that you want to share with us about. You know sourdough.
Speaker 3:Sure, I mean, we make pretty simple products at the moment. We do at the simplest end our kind of baguettes, which is just literally flour and salt. Um, we make, I guess, with with those. The thing that makes them special is the fermentation process which happens over with the baguettes, often over 48 hours, a very slow fermentation process which kind of develops the flavor and the texture of the bread. And then at the other end we do a lot of seeded seeded loaves, um, whole wheat loaves. We don't really put we don't put any sugar in any of the bread. The only exception to that are croissants, which are kind of the other end of the scales and they're a really complicated process. But still the ingredients are very pared down. It's just flour, water, milk, butter and sugar of course goes into the croissants, but they're the way of life making croissants, one for a couple of days a week, it takes all week to do it. We also do bagels and focaccia, things like that.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I haven't had your focaccia yet, but I'm a big fan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a pretty special bread.
Speaker 2:Tell our listeners about your journey, ben, I mean, I can tell from your accent you ain't from here.
Speaker 3:Tell me how did you end up?
Speaker 3:in tuscaloosa well, my wife got a job at the university, uh, teaching book arts that I was working at the time for american experience actually back in the UK and as a project manager, which is completely different to what I'm doing now. But I originally trained as a pianist and so I was ready for a career. I really wanted to get back to playing the piano and teaching, and so it was a good moment for me to get out of the job that I kind of had enough of and for us to come and have an adventure. And so we moved from Brighton, england, where we lived, and lived opposite of Sourdough Bakery actually, which is where I started to fall in love with sourdough bread and we moved here and I started teaching piano at the Community Music School at the University of Alabama and I taught there for, I think, at least two years and at the same time, or maybe more like three years, at the same time, I was making.
Speaker 3:I made, as soon as we got here, I found we couldn't find any sourdough bread, so I made my own starter you know, watching videos on YouTube an isaudo bread. So I made my own starter, you know, watching videos on youtube. And, uh, eventually it took like two or three weeks of kind of misery, watching this thing feeding, it wasn't bubbling, nothing was happening. And then suddenly it burst into life, which was so exciting. And then I started making bread every day, getting um learning how to do it, watching videos, reading books day, getting um learning how to do it, watching videos, reading books, just experimenting all the time and taking breads to friends. And that's when the name came about. You know, I kind of wanted a cooler name for the, for the, for the bakery, but everyone called the bread ben's bread, right from the word go, all of our friends, and that name just kind of seems unavoidable and it's, it's memorable and it kind of sounds okay. So, anyway, that's where the name came from.
Speaker 3:But anyway, I was teaching piano, still making bread every day, and then I decided that I'd like to start trying to sell at the farmer's market and that was 2020, just before COVID-19, the pandemic and I started there for a few weeks, just long enough to kind of a small reputation. And then the market switched to. Well, first of all, everything shut down, didn't it for a few weeks? And then the market switched to curbside collection only, and so I set up a website so that people could order the bread online and then just come and pick it up, which is what we did, and that was actually super fun.
Speaker 3:Delivering bread, you know, bringing it and putting it in people, you know people would drive up in their car and I'd just go with the bread in bags and put it in the trunk of their car. That was really fun. And then but then, when everything lifted up again and the market went back to usual operations, everyone carried on ordering the bread because it meant they never had to worry about me running out and getting there early and so that just carried on growing.
Speaker 3:So in the end I ended up being a, you know, having a stand at the market where 90 of the stuff was sold before I even got there, which is a little strange, for you know, if you, if you show up and you want to buy something, and you come up to me and ask what's for sale, and there's all these bags of bread, they always none of it was a sale, which this is a kind of an uncomfortable conversation sometimes, but anyway people would join the main my mailing list and then more and more people would order, and that's the way we.
Speaker 3:I carried on right up to uh, to this point at the, when we opened the bakery, and that gave me a stability, which I've been so grateful for. Those pre-orders it meant all the way through winter. It wouldn't matter how quiet the market was, I'd always have the same number of orders. It would always be very predictable and very stable. And then now we've opened the bakery here and we're still doing the pre-orders that part of the business has carried on, and so now the challenge is making enough to fill the bakery as well as the paper bags.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had a couple of people go to the bakery and they weren't upset, but they just mentioned that. You know they got there a little bit late and it was sold out, but that you know. This really speaks to the quality of your product, then, and it speaks to also and you're not going to mention it because you're kind of like this self-effacing, kind of humble guy but the reason one of the reasons why Ben's breads is Ben's breads is because of Ben, because the relationship that people have with you is is a very, it feels very good. You have this talent for making people feel welcome and feel good about associating, you know, with you. People speak about you here, ben, when people say Ben, you know the guy who makes bread, ben the sourdough guy. A lot of people know who you are.
Speaker 3:It speaks to your personality and your you know your welcoming nature, welcoming nature well, that's a lovely thing to say and that's we're definitely trying to achieve that with the bakery and the coffee shop and make it a really welcoming, peaceful place to be in I think it's going to be a great success.
Speaker 2:And, um, you're probably overwhelmed with the whole responsibility of now owning a shop. But what do you do for fun when you're not, um, when you're probably overwhelmed with the whole responsibility of now owning a shop, but what do you do for fun when you're not, when you're not open, when you're not making bread?
Speaker 3:I am. I like cooking in general, actually, so I'm always cooking different things and having friends over for meals and things like that, but I, I love skateboarding, so that's the thing that I do. That's my complete escape. I like skate parks skateboarding. Like skate parks, skateboarding. I like downhill skateboarding, longboarding, anything that's got, anything that's got a board and four wheels on. I like to get on it and and have fun. That's a complete escape. For me, it's pure joy, as anyone who skateboards will tell you.
Speaker 2:I can't skateboard to save my life. I think I would kill myself, but I see the joy on people's faces when they are rolling around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really special, it's amazing and I'm sure it's the same for for roller skaters, rollerbladers, skiing, all those sorts of things. It's just something about going fast. That is just a great feeling.
Speaker 2:I can speak to skiing and find it exhilarating.
Speaker 3:I'm sure it's really similar.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So is there something you've run across? I mean, this is your new, you know, not a new business, but a new adventure as an entrepreneur. Has that been a challenge for you, a hurdle that you've had to overcome? Is there anything in there that's challenged you?
Speaker 3:I don't think the whole business side of it has been a challenge. Even at the beginning, when I started to sell at the farmer's market, getting the right licenses, the permits, understanding the difference between the city, the county and federal, all of that stuff I found very difficult and my brain didn't really want to get to grips with it, I suppose. So I found I resisted it and I also just found it really hard to do and then that was hard then. And then opening the business here and understanding all the different licenses we'd have to get and all the different health checks and permits, and that stuff seemed so complicated at the beginning and I I could almost not imagine it happening in the tree. And even though that you know we had, we had this building from the beginning of december and we managed to open. We were open in february, so we did it actually in less than three months, which I think is, look, you know, looking back, I think that's amazing.
Speaker 3:But I during those those three months or two and a half months, I was so, so terrified that we would never get everything done and would never be able to open before we ran out of money and, um, I think getting through that was that was definitely the biggest challenge to date, and it was a tremendous feeling when we did get the final health check and the green light to open. That was just. I felt like it was the first time I could sleep properly for weeks and then now the biggest challenge we have is just how to make more bread. That is. That is the. It was kind of a story though.
Speaker 2:Your whole, the whole ben's bread um shop opening was a cinderella story. It started with a kickstarter, didn't it?
Speaker 3:yes, it did, it did, and I mean this. I feel like this business has been community from the beginning.
Speaker 3:It really, you know, people have really given me such support and motivation right from the beginning the one other thing about the whole pre-order part of the business is it really is a great motivator, I think, and it's one thing deciding I'm going to make Back then for the market. I would always make about 60 loaves, 60 croissants and I don't know 80 bagels or something, and I would never have been able to conceive of making that much stuff if I didn't know it was already sold and that people had faith in me to do it. So it was a great motivator. And then the Kickstarter similarly, there was something like you know, I think, 170 people backed that project. It really gives you the confidence, I think, to kind of take a risk and do something, knowing that people believe in it and also.
Speaker 3:It also means that everyone has a stake in kind of helping out and and uh, continuing to support the, the venture, and it shows that it's something people really really want, so that kickstarter gave us the financial uh ability to open, but it also gave more than that, which I think is like the confidence to do it and, uh, you know if moral support, I suppose, is it it also gave that kick.
Speaker 2:The kickstarter was like not not quite a demographic survey, but yeah, but okay, let's, let's call it a demographic survey that many people as many people as it took to fund your, your bakery wanted you to be open. That's like a lot of people open up their shops and they don't know. They don't know what kind of community support they have. But you knew that you had a tremendous amount of community support and they were. They were actually physically behind you. They wanted a stake in it, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think I could have done it otherwise, yeah, I don't think I could have found a building, opened it and started making bread not knowing if anyone was going to come, whereas the fact that we already had, we already have this loyal customer base really was so lucky. You know, I feel so fortunate to have that and it gave us. It gave us a really good cushion, you know to to take to take this leap.
Speaker 2:Well, what's the one thing you want our listeners to take away about Ben's bread? Ben, I suppose two.
Speaker 3:The bread's one thing, and then there's the building that we now have. We're so lucky We've got this. When I wanted to open a bakery, in my head I imagined something very small that was just basically a kitchen and an outlet where people could come and buy bread, and in the end we ended up with this huge, rambling old restaurant that used to be called Posey's, up on Loop Road, and it sits on an acre of land. I mean, it's a really special place and you know it's intimidating because it's so big and there's so much we could do with it and it's still really just two of us kind of doing it all. But I think you know, come and visit the building and enjoy the space, because it's a very peaceful, warm place to be in.
Speaker 3:It has this lovely courtyard where you can sit outside and you almost feel like you're in Italy or something under the leaves of the trees, and eventually we're going to have a big backyard that we want to turn into a vegetable garden and have a big children's play area and we really want to make this a kind of a family-friendly location where people can come and their children can play. We've got a little children's area with books and a little tent and they can come and their children can play. We've got a little children's area with books and little tents and they can draw and play lots of games and things like that. So I really would like people to feel like they can just come here and hang out.
Speaker 2:Well, for people who want to hang out and learn more about Ben's Bread and meet the famous Ben. How do they do that? What's your address? How do they get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:So my email address is bensbreadtuscaloosagmailcom. The website, which is where you can see examples of the bread and where you can pre-order if you'd like to, is bensbreadtuscaloosacom. And then there's the Instagram, which is also bansburg tuscaloosa, where you can see pictures of. You can see pictures of this whole journey from where the business started this photograph from my first ever market in 2020 right up to, you know, getting the building and all the work we did to the building and where we are now. All the bread. That happens, all goes on there. So you can see an example of everything and what we're doing.
Speaker 2:And the address of your building.
Speaker 3:The address is so. We're 3510 Loop Road, tuscaloosa, 35404. And we're open Thursdays, fridays and Saturdays from 8 to 1. And then Thursdays we begin with just kind of bagels and sandwich loaves. Fridays we start to add croissants to that and more bagels, and then Saturdays we kind of have everything as much as we can.
Speaker 2:Let me just give an insider tip. If you want to go to Ben's Bread and make sure that you're coming away with a delicious loaf, order online first, but treat yourself to a visit to the actual shop. You're going to love meeting everyone there and smelling all the smells and having a cup of coffee. Just go, treat yourself, ben, it's been great getting to know you. Thank you so much for coming by and introducing yourself.
Speaker 3:You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast northport. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnp northportcom. That's gnp northportcom, or call 205-809-910-0949.