E2: Baking with Passion: Marc Anderson on Building a Legacy at Linda's Bakery

In this episode of The Perfect Rise, host Kimberly Houston chats with Marc Anderson, President of Linda's Bakery, to uncover the secrets behind his decades-long journey in the baking industry. Marc shares how his small-town roots, family bakery beginnings, and passion for nighttime baking sparked a lifelong career in the culinary world.

Together, Kimberly and Marc dive into the biggest lessons he's learned, the importance of loving your work, and how aligning passion with purpose is critical for success in the bakery business. Marc also shares advice for aspiring bakers, insights on industry changes over the years, and his vision for the future of family-owned bakeries.

If you're looking for inspiration, wisdom, and actionable advice for thriving in a competitive industry, this episode is a must-listen!

Key Takeaways:

• Why loving your work is essential for building a thriving career.
• The challenges and rewards of running a family bakery in a small town.
• How to stand out in the baking industry with unique, high-quality offerings.

Stay sweet, friends, and don’t forget to share, follow, and subscribe to The Perfect Rise!

**Grab the Show Notes!!

Visit Linda's Bakery: https://www.lindasbakery.com/

Follow Linda's Bakery

Become a Member

Transcript

Kimberly Houston (00:01.038)
Hi Mark, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the new RBA podcast. We've done your introduction. I know people are going to be super excited about this conversation and so we're gonna jump right in. So the first question I have for you is tell me a little bit about your journey. What inspired you to get into the baking culinary world?

Marc Anderson (00:23.247)
Sure, thanks Kimberly. Linda, who is my sister, purchased a small bakery in downtown Los Alamos. Our population at that point was about 3,000 people. That was a couple of years even before I thought about even having a bakery career. I was still in high school. I started working at the bakery on weekends and things when I was about 16. And I always liked working in the kitchen at home. We did a lot of baking and things like that. And that was definitely a night owl.

So when I got a job that I could work at night and got sleeping in the morning, I knew that was the career for me. After high school, I attended Dunwoody Technical College in Minneapolis, and I took there the one-year pastry and bread courses that they had offered at the time, which was actually a perfect fit for what we were doing in our bakery at the time. It was a good fit for us in the things. So I became a partner with my sister Linda then about a year after.

Kimberly Houston (00:57.677)
Yes.

Marc Anderson (01:19.695)
During that time, I also did a parallel stint. My family owned and operated a smaller grocery store here in town. So I did that for a number of years and unfortunately we had to close that store a little bit, I learned a lot. had a lot of insight from running a larger business doing that. And then I knew there that if I was going to keep running a bakery, we'd have to change from a small mop and pop bakery to a larger operation. I found it better to be the big fish in a small pond than the small fish in the big

Kimberly Houston (01:27.16)
Peace.

Kimberly Houston (01:49.774)
Nice! What an incredible journey. Okay, we're gonna dig into those things, but I think I want to start with what's one of the biggest lessons you've learned in your career?

Marc Anderson (02:03.341)
I think the biggest lesson is it's very important to love your work. I mean, we ask our staff at our annual meeting every year, it's like, you love your job, you know, and if you love your work, if you don't love your work, you should really consider working somewhere else. And it sounds like a strange thing to say to your staff. But, you know, we found everything that we do. If they don't if they don't love working here and we don't love working here, it just really shows. And we do everything we can do to make sure Lindas Bakery is an employer that

staff wants to work for. The great thing about our work is we have something for everyone. Of course anybody that's familiar with the bakery industry knows that we have mornings, afternoons, nights. We do a lot of hands-on work. We have a lot of customer service work. We have artsy work. We have production work. You know, really something for every every talent of somebody that comes to us. So, but it's very important to get everybody on the right seat of the bus.

to make sure that they're doing the job that really fits them because that's really going to make them love their work. like I said, if they don't love it, you know, they're not going to be great staff members for

Kimberly Houston (03:06.254)
Thank

Kimberly Houston (03:11.054)
That is true. That's also the perfect segue into me wondering what advice would you give someone starting out in the industry? And with us, like, kind of staying with where we are on them needing to love their work. Like, if you can speak to someone like, we have lots of students at the RBA. And so if you were talking to them about, you know, them looking for a job or looking for that next step.

What advice would you give them?

Marc Anderson (03:43.595)
I think it kind of goes again to the same thing. Make sure your work is your passion. If you're going to be in the bakery industry, you know, my daughter took a baking course in Madison and one of the things I liked about the teacher, she had an introduction class that day and she said, you know, if you're not planning on working weekends and holidays, you know, you're in the wrong class because bakery is definitely not a Monday through Friday nine to five.

Kimberly Houston (04:09.474)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Anderson (04:11.791)
Excuse me.

Kimberly Houston (04:15.532)
I agree. My chefs told me that at school too. They told me if I wanted to see my children, then I should not go work in a hotel or go work at a restaurant. They were like, you need to open your own business. I was like, okay, understood. And I did not do that. So I get it. So you've been in the industry for a while. When we think about how the industry has changed, like what changes have you seen in the industry and where do you see it going?

Marc Anderson (04:45.485)
When I started was back in late 1970s. So I'm kind of dating myself there, but there are a lot more bakeries around the state and even across the nation. I think kind of the decline of the family bakery has been due to a lot of different factors. Typically, you know, with a bakery, the hours are long, profits were small, work was kind of physically demanding. You know, I can say for certain that the next generation is not really interested in a job or career like that. So.

The bakeries that want to be viable in the future will need to improve on those factors and be forward thinking to survive.

Kimberly Houston (05:23.406)
Okay, yeah, I that. And do you, where do you see the industry going?

Marc Anderson (05:29.987)
You know, it's hard to say, but I think there's always going to be baking careers available. mean, people love good quality things. You know, we try to try to do something unique. Obviously, we're in a very small town and we've been fortunate enough to grow our business quite a bit. And I really kind of attribute that to being being a unique place and not doing the same as everybody else. I think that's what people are going to need to do to stay alive.

Kimberly Houston (05:56.909)
Yeah.

agree agree definitely agree with that okay so i have a question for you what is one piece of wisdom or encouragement you would like to share with our audience

Marc Anderson (06:14.219)
Again, of leading in, you know, many bakeries turn to using mixes and proof and make products and a lot of those things are very good and they do it because of the shortage of skilled labor in our field. But in my opinion, that can be dangerous slippery slope. If you're selling the same thing as all the supermarkets and the big box stores, you know, you're never going to be able to beat them on price. So you need to offer something really unique.

people will travel for, that they'll make a special trip for. It's something that provides an extra value for your customers. You know, it's a more difficult path, but for us, it's really been what's, you know, kept us going and made us unique and successful.

Kimberly Houston (06:59.402)
agree. I think that that is incredible advice for anyone who was listening. I don't think anyone told me that when I was first starting out a decade ago. I think that that is absolutely wonderful. I want to thank you for joining me on this episode of The Perfect Rise. Please everyone who is listening, make sure you share, follow, and subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, stay sweet friends.