Category: Business

Honor our colleagues and improve our organizational culture

 

In 1980, a couple years before we opened the Deli, the psychologist Carl Rogers wrote his classic A Way of Being. Rogers, who was born in 1902, the same year the Deli’s building was built, concluded that the country was moving towards a new future—one in which openness, authenticity, collaboration, community, an equitable and sustainable connection with nature, and nurturing relationships with ourselves would become increasingly important. Rogers called his approach “human-centered.” His practice was based on the belief that each person had great potential within them, and that a leader’s—or teacher’s—work was, as his colleague Irwin Yalom writes, “to release that which has always been there.” While I was certainly not a student of Rogers’ writing back when we opened the Deli, much of what he had to say is very clearly aligned with so much of our work here at Zingerman’s. “This new world,” Rogers wrote, “will become more human and humane.”

There are hundreds of ways to help make our organizations more “human-centered.” I’ve shared many of my own thoughts on the subject in this newsletter, and in the various books and pamphlets we’ve put together over the years, and it’s at the core of all that ZingTrain teaches. Let me start this week with a super simple, incredibly practical, step in the right direction—one that can help us make our organizations more human and more humane: Learn and regularly use in meaningful ways the names of the people we hire.

Over the years, I hear again and again from one staff member after another how much it matters to them that the leaders in their business know their name. It is, from what they tell me, all too uncommon in the work world. While learning someone’s name might seem like a small, even irrelevant thing in the scheme of big-picture strategy, I will, as I have learned, stick with what food writer Angelo Pellegrini said in his amazing 1948 book, The Unprejudiced Palate, is “the significance latent in little things.” In that sense, I would suggest that we will never have a truly humane organization without doing it. In Native American tradition, names are an important element of tribute. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships.”

As I wrote in Part 4, “One of the most important ways we can help people feel honored and valued for being the unique and important individuals they are is simply to know, and regularly use, their names.” It’s hard to have a meaningful relationship with anyone or anything that we don’t call by its rightful name. People will pick up on this literally unspoken message. As Carl Rogers writes, “Human beings have … a tremendous range of intuitive powers. We are indeed wiser than our intellects.” When we employ someone for eight months and mispronounce—or fail to remember—their name, the message may not be loud, but it is clear: We don’t care. By contrast, knowing people’s names boosts hope; it improves relationships; it helps build confidence and makes for more cultural connections.

It’s interesting to me how many leaders will simply shrug this suggestion off by saying, “I’m just not good with names.” This is a belief. And we know from studying the self-fulfilling belief cycle (see Secret #40 for more on this), that what we believe is likely to create a big part of our reality. As Carl Jung, whose work Carl Rogers built upon, warns us accordingly: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I’ve come to look at name-learning like any other essential skill of effective leadership. While it may come easier to some of us than to others, we’re going to be hard pressed to do well if we don’t learn it. I guarantee that if and when we commit to learning names, we will improve. As I say to folks here, “We want new staff members to learn 100 different cheeses, so it seems reasonable that you and I would be able to learn each of their names.”

How did this practice become so important to me? My chocolate-making world-changing friend Shawn Askinosie says that our life’s vocation is very often an effort to heal our childhood wounds. My only addition to Shawn’s sense of things is the belief that most of us have more than one wound to heal. One part of what hurt us when we were kids may become our life’s passion; other wounds may be smaller, but still important. I can see pretty clearly how this focus on knowing names would be one of the latter. Here’s a snippet of what I said on the subject in Part 4:

I’m not even sure why I originally started being so mindful of people’s names other than it just seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe it’s because so many men and women I’ve met have pronounced my name incorrectly, often despite the fact that I’d told them exactly how to say it two minutes previously. I’m not without empathy—it’s not easy to articulate words we’re not familiar with. But reflecting back now, in this context, it always seemed like I must not matter much if they couldn’t even get my name right.

I’m not, to be clear, even talking about my last name (Weinzweig); even now, “Ari” alone has proven difficult for many people, and back when I was a teenager, people I was meeting for the first time rarely got it right. Some continued to say it incorrectly for years. Educator Jennifer Gonzalez wrote a whole piece on why this point about proper pronunciation also matters in the classroom. While many teachers still commonly mispronounce names that aren’t along the lines of Peter, Paul, or Mary incorrectly, Gonzalez writes, “You can do better. If you make the commitment now to get them all right, if you resolve this time to honor your students with clear, beautiful pronunciation of their full, given names, that, my friend, will be the loveliest surprise of all.”

In the context of our current work here at Zingerman’s, I’ve realized that learning and using people’s names is well aligned with most of the beliefs on our Statement of Beliefs. These four struck me as particularly poignant:

  1. We believe each person is a creative, unique individual who can do great things in life.
  2. We believe our individual success can be assessed by how much we help those around us to develop and grow.
  3. We believe small actions make a big difference.
  4. We believe everyone is responsible for leadership.

George Saunders teaches writing at Syracuse. His new book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, is a look at learning to write through the work of 19th century Russian short stories, most all of which I read in school here at U of M while Carl Rogers was completing A Way of Being. Saunders says of his students:

They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space”—the place from which they will write the stories only they could write, using what makes them uniquely themselves—their strengths, weaknesses, obsessions, peculiarities, the whole deal. … the goal is to help them acquire the technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves. [Their stories come from] perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind.

I say it’s true of everyone we hire too. Learning to know and use people’s names is one small step in that really good direction. Here’s a bit of what I wrote in Part 4.

There’s a lot more in a name than many of us might consider. … Uma Sickles, who hostesses at the Roadhouse, came up to me one night to tell me she appreciated my knowing her name on her second or third day of work. “It just made me feel like I was special,” she said. “I felt like I really mattered.” Here’s the thing—she does.

Uma moved on a few years ago, but I’m guessing you would hear the same right now from Hasna, Marissa, Grace, Chris, Cora, Nina, Mara, Maribeth, Emmanuel, Rebecca, Lia, Rachel, Lauren, Maiwen, or Sam—one of whom will likely greet you if you come in to eat this week. To be clear, I haven’t memorized everyone’s name, though I would like to. There are folks’ names I forget, or even worse on occasion I get them wrong. I apologize to anyone with whom that’s happened. When we screw up and forget someone’s name, we can simply apologize, and ask again. In the process we’ll be living these beliefs from our newly-released Statement:

  • We believe asking for help is a sign of strength.
  • We believe humility is an essential ingredient for effective leadership and contributes to personal growth and success.

As Jennifer Gonzalez writes, “By humbling yourself in this way, you let them see that you’re human. You’re modeling what it looks like to be a lifelong learner, a flexible, confident person who is not afraid to admit a mistake.

To really study the subject of names requires far more than I have space for here, though I’m intrigued and will dive deeper. As with all history, there’s more to the story of names than just the one we got from our parents. I’ll share here a small bit of what I’ve learned over the years … Deciding on the name one would like to use is an important element of respect and dignity. As Erica Jong says, “To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.” Names play an important role in Black history in the United States. Malcolm X wrote, “The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.” This led him to change his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. Robin Kelley and Earl Lewis write that,

When newly freed blacks chose their new names, they sometimes picked those that reflected their complexion. There were thus many Browns and Blacks among the freed population. Sometimes the name reflected their occupation… the literal meaning of Sojourner Truth is traveling preacher. … Other former slaves chose names of liberty. There were names like Justice, and many others chose the name Freeman as a mark of their new identity.

The names of Native Americans were often taken away and forcefully replaced with Western names, but that painful history is hardly ever heard outside of the Native community. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “What was stolen at Carlisle [Indian Boarding School] has been a knot of sorrow I’ve carried like a stone buried in my heart. I am not alone. That grief lives on in all the families of those whose names appear on the pages of that big red book. The broken link between land and people, between the past and the present, aches like a badly broken bone still unknit.” We can consider, too, the name changes that took place with immigrant families arriving in the United States. My mother’s grandfather’s name in Russia was Perskowitz; it was altered on arrival by immigration agents to Perlis. My partner Paul’s family’s last name in Russia was the Hebrew, Sagin Or, or “knower of light,” but was anglicized at Ellis Island to Saginaw. My current last name isn’t really even my own—I got it from my step-father when my sister and I were legally adopted after he and my mother married when I was seven. Digging deeper still, it turns out that even the idea of having legally recorded last names is interesting and a relatively recent development. Historian James Scott writes in Seeing Like a State about the creation of permanent last names:

Campaigns to assign permanent patronyms have typically taken place, as one might expect, in the context of a state’s exertions to put its fiscal system on a sounder and more lucrative footing. Fearing, with good reason, that an effort to enumerate and register them could be a prelude to some new tax burden or conscription, local officials and the population at large often resisted such campaigns.

Coming back to our daily routines as leaders, I will say that while learning names is work, it’s good work to do. As Bridget Watson Payne writes, “Remembering names is a very useful life skill.” And as she says, “Name retention is a muscle you can exercise and, if you’re serious about it, strengthen and improve.” So, with that in mind, I thought I ought to share some of the practical tips that help me do this. (If you have others, by all means send them my way!)

  • Pay attention — More often than not when I don’t remember someone’s name it’s because my mind had already moved on while they were still engaged in telling me what it is.

  • Repeat the name back after you first hear it — When I say, “Nice to meet you Kaia!” it helps embed Kaia’s name in my brain.

  • Make sure you have the right name — Sometimes folks (like me) would like to be called something different than what’s on our legal documents. Jennifer Gonzalez writes, “Whatever it is your student prefers to be called, it’s worth the effort to get it right. I’m sure I’ve not only mispronounced my own students’ names, but I’ve probably also called them something that was not their preference.”

  • Use their name every time you see them — It’s no more work to say, “Hi Stacy!” than it is to say “Hi!” The more I say someone’s name the more I get it embedded in my head. Going back into an email draft I’ve already begun and adding in “Hi Heriberto!” is an easy way to honor someone and to help embed their name in my brain at the same time!

  • Ask how the name is spelled — Hearing the spelling somehow makes it easier for me to get a name entered into my head correctly. I try to do this even with more frequently used names. When we hire a “Kathy” I’ll often ask, “With a ‘K’ or a ‘C’? And then if I’m really on my game I follow it up: “With a ‘y’?” Sometimes it’s an “ie,” sometimes it’s just an “i.” It could also be “ee.” Hearing the spelling helps me visualize it better for the future.

  • Write ’em down — When we started to go over 400 or 500 staff members, I realized I was having a harder time remembering new folks’ names. To help myself, I simply started to keep a list. There’s probably an app that does this too I suppose but for the moment, pen and paper is working well. If I have a tough time with a pronunciation I’ll write it out phonetically as well.

  • Connect the person and/or their name to another image — The other day I met a kind woman over at the Coffee Company who manages a coffee shop in Indiana. Her name is Jaylon. I bonded her into my brain with Jalen Rose. The spelling is different but when I try to remember her name, I will think of him and … I get it!

  • Learn the meaning behind a name — When I meet anyone who has a name that’s not quickly familiar to me I will usually ask them what it means. Most everyone brightens at being asked. When we learn the meaning of someone’s name, it helps to honor them for the unique individual they are. I asked Hasna Ghalib what her name meant when she started at the Roadhouse last month. She smiled and said, “It means ‘luminous beauty’ in Arabic.” Just hearing that brought a bit of joy to my day. And it does in fact match her glowing personality!

  • Introduce one staffer to another — Learning and using names helps the organization on multiple levels. Making connections helps enhance our culture, and it honors that the individuals I’ve introduced to each other matter. In the process it helps improve organizational creativity, caring, communication and kindness. Physician Atul Gawande wrote about how surgical teams that started by introducing themselves to each other improved the effectiveness of their work.

  • Start meetings or classes with an icebreaker — If they don’t know each other, having them start with their name helps. Getting “everyone’s voice in the room” does help folks feel a bit more willing to speak up!

One of the best parts of the pandemic for me was the day last winter that all 20 of us partners “played” what’s called The American Dream Game. It was developed by Dr. Jenni Yim, who’s worked here for most of the last five years. Before she joined us, Jenni had been doing training for diversity and inclusion work, during which time she developed this great “game” to demonstrate how much easier it is to move forward in life when one—often unknowingly—is able to build on unspoken advantages. As part of the icebreaker for the session, Jenni had folks break into small groups and share the story of their name. It was terrific. I learned a lot about everyone in my group, some of whom I’ve known, without ever having heard the origin story of their name, for decades.

Will learning and using the names of those we lead change our entire ecosystem? Of course not. There are hundreds of factors that make our organizations what they are. That said, it does make a difference. For really no cost, we can meaningfully live our values, model leading with dignity, honor our colleagues, and help them build belief in themselves. It’s my belief that when we do it, we all come out ahead. The cost is nil, the benefit is big. As Hasna Ghalib shares:

As an indigenous South Asian woman, names play a major role in how we show up in our communities. Kimmerer’s quote on what it means to have names stripped, also rings true for my refugee friends and I. Nearly all of us adopted “American Names” for a while, some of us never returning to our birth moniker. There is a kind of healing, in knowing that those with a sense of influence in our ecosystem, understand the gravity of our names. Much like our belief systems, my people taught me that our names shape our fates. To honor a name, given or chosen, is to honor someone’s divine path in this cosmic dance.
For more on beliefs on life and leadership, along with some additional writing on the import of knowing names, see Part 4: The Power of Beliefs in Business.

 

Get Part 4: The Power of Beliefs in Business

 

Category: Business

And how to help work past it


Why Worry Won't Work

I’m writing this the week before Election Day. This will be published November 4—a day after. Whether the exact outcome will be clear Wednesday when we send this out to the world, I can’t know. What I can say with certainty is that, although I know better, over the last week or so I’ve started to catch myself beginning to worry about the election. Intellectually, I know, there’s no point. I’ve already voted and there’s nothing I can do that’s going to impact the results. Worry won’t help. In fact, I long know from experience, it will likely make things worse. The best strategy is probably to do what the farmer friend of our longtime olive oil and vinegar supplier Albert Katz advocated years ago: “Sweat the things you can control and let go of what is not in your hands.”

Knowing that worrying is a waste is one thing; not doing it, though, is another thing altogether. Twenty years ago, I would have told you I was a “born worrier.” I’d been doing it regularly for as long as I could remember. Having learned a lot about life in general, and myself in particular, over the last thirty years though, I’d reframe that statement completely. Today I would say that I was raised by a well-meaning family who were really great at worrying, and who, unwittingly, taught me to do the same. If one could get a degree in it, my family—and I say this now with love—would all have had PhDs. And I’ve always been a pretty good student.

Fortunately, I’ve learned a lot from others over the years. As many of you know, I’ve been inspired many times over by Brenda Ueland’s insightful book, If You Want to Write. While the book is about writing, it also taught me a lot about worry. As in, how not to do it. Ueland shares, “I learned that you should feel when writing . . . like a child stringing beads in kindergarten—happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. ” It’s a wonderful way to approach writing. And life. Unfortunately, back when I was a kid most of the beads I’d been stringing were what folks in the Middle East would call “worry beads.” But writing, for me, works to push away the worry. In Nationalism and Culture, Rudolph Rocker theorizes that as nationalism rises, culture goes down. Or, conversely, as culture thrives, nationalism recedes. The same, I learned from Ueland, is true for worry and good writing. The more we worry, the worse our writing will be. By contrast, the more and better we write, the less our worry. Honestly, each week when I start on this enews I begin to worry it won’t work. “Everyone,” I hear myself in my head, “will hate it.” But I’ve learned from Brenda Ueland to keep on typing anyway. She’s right. Just keep writing. Later each week I get wonderful notes from people who read the pieces I put in.

Have you ever worried that you weren’t worried enough about something? It makes me smile to say it, but I know the feeling all too well. If you’re smiling or nodding right now, then I know you do too. I would never have been able to admit it years ago. Self-learning, I know now, is a life project. If we stick with the work, we will find some helpful insight and wisdom. I can’t say I’ve completely stopped worrying—the feeling still starts coming over me regularly. It’s just that I’ve learned how to short circuit the feeling before the worry short circuits me. The shift reminds of what I heard from Ram Dass when I heard him speak years ago at the Power Center on campus. He was then probably about the age I am now. He said something along the lines of, “I still have all the same problems I had when I was twenty. But back then they were like tidal waves that overwhelmed me. Now they’re just like little flies, buzzing past my head, that I can gently wave away with my hand.” Which is what I think about worry. I can feel it coming on. And mostly, now, I can just wave it gently away before it overwhelms me.

Maybe, I’ve been wondering this week, worry might be a bit like fog. It descends, often at inopportune moments, more often than not in the morning, or later, at the end of a long day, and makes it hard to see what’s right in front of us. If we swat at it, nothing happens other than wasting our own energy. If we pretend it’s not there, we’re likely to crash into something. But if we can wait a short bit, usually the fog will burn off and we can get back to moving forward, mindfully and meaningfully.

Worry is mostly anxiety about the future. At best, it’s a big waste of time. At worst, I know now, it’s downright destructive. As I wrote in Part 4, I’ve come to realize that worrying is essentially “negative visioning”—imagining a future (either in five minutes, five years, or in my current case, on Tuesday evening) that we fear, and tell ourselves over and over again what we don’t want. In the context of the belief cycle, our worrying may, ironically, make the future we say we don’t want more likely to happen. As Brené Brown writes, “We dress-rehearse tragedy.” And in the process, we increase the odds of tragic outcomes.

While worry is . . . worrisome, I would say that its opposite is not a care-free world or a happy-go-lucky life. Rather, it’s what we might describe as “healthy anxiety.” You could also call it “appropriate concern.” As Peter Koestenbaum writes:

Anxiety [of this sort] is how it feels to grow. . . . One becomes an adult by learning to move through anxiety, to stay with it and not avoid it. Leadership, therefore, means to face anxiety, not fear it, to make it your constant companion. . . . It can go in either destructive or constructive directions; you make the choice.

While worry is a waste, healthy anxiety keeps us on our toes, alert and prepared in the same way a grounded, veteran athlete still has a bit of butterflies for a big game. Once we’re at peace with our natural healthy anxiety and the inevitable uncertainty of life, we can stop worrying about it. Because as Alan Watts wrote, “One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious.”

There are worse problems in life, I know, than worrying a lot. I’ve come a long way in working to minimize worry’s unhelpful impact. But as I write this week, I’ve felt that old unwanted tension of worry starting to work itself—destructively and dangerously—back into my head. Fortunately, I know now how to stop it. What follows is a list of 14 ways that I’ve learned to push the worry, for the most part, out of the way:

In a way, I realize, this essay is just what Abbey is advocating. I probably wrote this piece as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s. As I alluded above, the writing works to reduce the worrying. I still don’t know what Tuesday will bring, but I’m a bit calmer, and it’s a beautiful morning out. My friend, author and expert in human energy, Anese Cavanaugh, summed it all up very succinctly: “Worrying is pointless; a waste of energy. Breathe, come back to the present moment, do all you can (if even the littlest things) to help things go right in this moment, and save that energy for the right things we can address.”

Thanks for reading. Have a great week. See you on the other side.

For more about living in the moment, steering clear of worry and staying centered, see “Mindfulness Matters” in Part 3.

Category: Business

 

One of the most positive innovations of the last few months has been the formation of the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC). The group came together a few weeks into the pandemic to help independent restaurants collaborate and advocate effectively for their needs in Washington. While the headlines and aid packages have historically gone to big businesses and easy-to-identify national chains, the idea behind the IRC was that the needs of independent restaurants, or small restaurants groups like the ZCoB, needed to be called out as the special places that they are. Let’s face reality—this is not an easy situation for anyone. And on the economic front, small businesses have a particularly difficult row to hoe. sources in the industry are speculating that somewhere between 25 and 70 percent of restaurants in the U.S. will not reopen.

The Coalition, which includes some of the nation’s top dining establishments—Rick Bayless from Frontera Grill in Chicago, Tom Colicchio of Craft in NY, Katie Button from Asheville—makes the case: “Independent restaurants directly employ 11 million workers and indirectly employ tens of millions more up and down the food and hospitality supply chain. We are small businesses but have a big impact on the economy with $1 trillion contributed to the economy each year and 4% of GDP.” And yet, restaurants bring an enormous amount of community connection—food for the soul as well as the stomach. They’re important parts of their communities. I feel honored to be part of this special community here! And I know that the other members of the Coalition play comparably positive parts of the cities, towns, and neighborhoods in which they work. As my friend Sara Fetbroth from Oleanna restaurant in Boston writes: “I truly believe hospitality can change the world. If everyone’s goal was to be other-centered and take care of each other, imagine how happy and healthy life would be! Food, the table, and hospitality are the most universal of languages, so what better environment to spread the love?”

If there’s a positive out of all this, I will say that the connections that have come from the work of the IRC have already been really rewarding for me and for others. The organization has, in a matter of months, successfully put the independent perspective into the national conversation. Recently, three IRC members went to the White House to speak personally on behalf of independents (like us) to the President in a televised setting that would typically have included only CEOs of big, publicly traded companies. And Congressman Blumenauer of Oregon has introduced a bill with the acronym RESTAURANTS that puts forward for legislative approval most all of the points that the IRC has been advocating for. Keeping alive in a pandemic is already a challenge for all of us as individuals. Keeping communities healthy as we all come back from it is, I believe, important as well. Helping independent, locally run, restaurants around the country to keep going through this and come out the other side is also important. Check out the IRC website, sign up for the newsletter and sign on to send letters to senators and Congressfolk to share your support! Every little bit makes a difference!

—Ari

P.S. Since I wrote this piece, all of these people have co-sponsored the bill:
Blumenhauer Cosponsor; Rep. Fitzpatrick, Brian K. [R-PA-1]; Rep. Bonamici, Suzanne [D-OR-1]; Rep. Evans, Dwight [D-PA-3]; Rep. Kuster, Ann M. [D-NH-2]; Rep. Panetta, Jimmy [D-CA-20]; Rep. Pingree, Chellie [D-ME-1]; Rep. Smith, Adam [D-WA-9]; Rep. Welch, Peter [D-VT-At Large]; Rep. Wild, Susan [D-PA-7]; Rep. Axne, Cynthia [D-IA-3]; Rep. Craig, Angie [D-MN-2]; Rep. Khanna, Ro [D-CA-17]; Rep. King, Peter T. [R-NY-2]; Rep. Case, Ed [D-HI-1]; Rep. Neguse, Joe [D-CO-2]

Category: Business

 

Over the 38 years we’ve been in business, I’ve worried about, talked through, and planned for hundreds of strange scenarios. I’m a planner, and here at Zingerman’s we’ve been forecasting and budgeting and organizing for probably 30 years now. But, as Mike Tyson once famously said, “Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.” 

I don’t think anyone I know in the food world has ever thought about preparing for a pandemic. Having talked to dozens of colleagues around the country, we all seem to be struggling to answer the same questions: How do we deal with unexpectedly having to lay off dozens/hundreds/thousands of people that we’ve worked with for years? Are we providing better community service by staying open? Or by closing? Can we figure out what the 900 pages of the CARES Act mean? How long will this go on? If it doesn’t end for a year, how do we handle that? If it does end, what will happen next? Just writing down the questions, I can see why I—and probably most of us—have felt overwhelmed, pretty much daily, for the last few weeks. 

On Tuesday, March 11, we had a fundraising dinner at Zingerman’s Roadhouse—the closing event in our 5th Annual “Jelly Bean Jump Up” campaign to raise money for SafeHouse Center, the local shelter for victims of domestic abuse. It was a great event. We sold out the 60 or so seats, and it capped a month of fundraising that far exceeded our goal of $30,000. The next morning, Wednesday, March 12, is probably a day that will live in infamy in at least the food world for a few decades. Almost every restaurant in the country felt a shock that I can only equate to the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. For some, like those in Seattle, it started a bit earlier. For others, a little later. But basically, one day things were relatively fine—we were dealing with not being able to hire enough people, performance issues, food-cost challenges, getting ready to roll out some new products . . . the usual. The next day we were addressing problems most of us had never even thought of. 

It’s only been just over four weeks, but it seems like four years. Who would imagine that we’d already have adjusted our sales expectations down so much that what we’re now celebrating as a “good day” a month ago would have passed for a so-so Monday lunch? 

As a history major, two thoughts play around in my head. One is that it’s generally said that no war with a foreign power has ever been fought on American soil. The Civil War, of course, was a conflict between American citizens. And small acts of violence that haven’t historically been classed as “wars” have been happening to folks on the short end of the social stick every day for centuries. While we’ve all read articles about the horror of war in northern Syria, of bombs dropping on Bosnian cities, or about farmers trying to make a living growing almonds in war-torn Afghanistan, most of us who’ve lived our lives in the U.S. are fortunate to have never experienced that daily fear and vulnerability firsthand. This situation feels, as best I can imagine, a small fraction of what that might be like. Yes, there were “storm clouds” on the horizon for a while as stories came in from China and Italy about the virus. But, one hopes and believes that, of course, that “won’t happen here.” And, yet, it did. One day things were fine; the next day . . . they were more messed up than most of us could have imagined. 

I haven’t lived through one so I’m not sure the analogy is accurate, but this does feel sort of like what I imagine living through a war would be. Life, as we knew it for years, has been drastically altered. Stable “successful” organizations all over the country were suddenly, sadly, laying people off. The health care system is overwhelmed. When I read about and talk to health care workers, it sounds like stories of working at the front in a war zone—not enough people, not enough supplies, choices to be made about who lives and who dies. As in a foreign invasion, we struggle to know who might be an “enemy” agent. We’ve started eyeing everyone we see on the street as a potential “saboteur” who could be carrying the infection. “Curfews” have been imposed. We don’t know how long this will go on for. We don’t really know what to do. The craziness of the restaurant world that we all love and have learned to live with, the variability in pretty much everything we’ve all worked with and actually kind of enjoy . . . now seems stable and calm compared to this world where the Coronavirus is calling the shots and we hope and pray that we, our colleagues, and our businesses can survive. In the food business, we’ve always worried about food safety and worked with the knowledge that we carry our customers’ lives in our hands. But this is at a whole new level. I certainly never imagined I was going to go through something like this in the course of my lifetime. And yet, here we are. I try to imagine what it must have been like to own a community-focused restaurant in Paris in 1940. Some came out on the other side, some didn’t. How did they survive? What can we learn from them? 

The other piece of history in my mind is that, while none of us have been through this before, humanity has, and many times over. Annalee Newitz wrote a great piece in The New York Times recently about the history of the bubonic plague in 1666 in London. It was the worst plague since the Black Death had struck back in 1348. London lost over 15% of its population over the course of a year. Roughly 100,000 died in London; 750,000 died in England overall. Newitz’s article reminded me of what I already knew: history always repeats. The description of what was happening in London in 1666 when the plague struck all now sounds eerily familiar, equally serious, and at least as difficult. The similarities are striking. (On a light note, Newitz shared that Samuel Pepys buried a wheel of “Parmazan” cheese in his backyard when the city was evacuated.) The good, long term, learning from Newitz’s article is that, as we know, the world did keep going when the plague receded. While it was a horrible year, and things didn’t just return to normal quickly, clearly, England did recover. The plague did go away. And there were restaurants still operating at the end of it. 

Throughout our own history of Zingerman’s, we have worked through massive inflation, the tragic upheaval of 9/11, the instability of the recession of 2009 . . . In all of those cases, looking back, I can see that we survived—through the fear and uncertainty—by staying true to our values, taking good care of our customers, communicating caringly with our crew, staying in touch with vendors, and maintaining quality. We continued to talk things through collaboratively, to work cooperatively, to stay as grounded and centered as we could under the circumstances. If I’d gone to med school like my grandmother wanted me to, I might be trying to save lives in a hospital or doing research in a lab to find a vaccine or a cure to end this crisis. Unfortunately, I have nothing to contribute to either of those. So, I’ll continue to work to keep our community and our organization as healthy as possible. Try to figure out creative and caring ways through the darkness. Try to listen and be empathic and share struggles as best I can. I’ll continue to call colleagues all over the country, hoping that someone else who’s smarter has come up with some great solutions. And then keep my fingers crossed, think positive thoughts, rub my rabbit’s feet, and, as with all long walks through darkness, hope like hell we can get through to the other side together. 

Here at Zingerman’s, we’re still doing takeout and delivery from our three restaurants—sales are running at about a third or a bit more of what we’d normally be doing. Our Bakehouse isn’t down quite that much thanks to wholesale sales to supermarkets and to our Mail Order. Wholesale is hanging in there at our artisan Creamery, Candy, and Coffee businesses. Our training business, ZingTrain, is, of course, decimated. The bright note for us is that our Mail Order is very busy. And that we’re still being kind and collaborative and cooking and delivering good food. For now at least, for us, and for so many others, that’s our new normal. That fundraiser on the evening of March 11 seems like lightyears ago. Eventually, like WWII and like the Plague, this will start to end. Every day I wait to hear good news. At some point, there will be some. When it does come, we can say something along the lines of what Winston Churchill said as the British turned the tide of a very long war by defeating the Germans in Egypt in 1942. “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” 

Whatever happens, I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with so many great people both here in our own organization and in the food community across the country and around the world. To have bought, sold, served, and eaten so much good food, to have had a positive impact on so many people’s lives. I’m not ready to give up yet. As one of our line cooks shared from her work at a previous job, on really rough shifts they used to say to each other, “See you on the other side!” 

 

*The title is taken from the 1981 song, “Things Fall Apart,” by the artist Cristina, released a few months before we opened the Deli. It was on regular play around my house back in those days. Sadly Cristina passed away, on April 1, from Coronavirus. The lyrics of the song are shockingly poignant for the present situation.

Category: Business

 

Friends, colleagues, customers, community,

I’ve been holding off a bit on writing something over the last week. In the flood of messages about the Coronavirus (Covid-19), I keep waiting to be able to offer some new insight, a more holistic approach, or better still—a solution. I alternate between wishing it wasn’t happening (denial) and wishing I could tell you that eating more bacon, rye bread, barbecue, or brownies kept you from getting it (magical thinking). Unfortunately, neither of those is true. This is clearly very, very serious stuff, to which no one, least of all me, has the answers. 

The situation, as you already know as well as I do, continues to change by the hour.  As we go forward, we will continue to check CDC and Health Department updates and immediately work to adhere to their recommendations. What I do know right now as I write is:

  1. Everyone at Zingerman’s is taking this extremely seriously. We’re doing everything possible to prevent the spread of Coronavirus in our businesses. All of the things that you’ve read online—because we’re reading the same CDC messages everyone else is—have been actively implemented in all of our businesses. While each Zingerman’s business has its own specific applications, everyone is doubling—nay, quadrupling down—on all of the strict sanitation practices we have always adhered to. More aggressive—near-constant—handwashing, wiping down of surfaces (chairs, counters, doors, door handles, etc.) with sanitizer, proper temperature controls, and wariness of cross-contamination (we don’t want to forget while the headlines are rightly focused on the virus that is disrupting the entire world, basic food safety rules are all still imperative). We have additional sanitizer in all the businesses and are using it—as everyone else is—at record rates.
  2. We are—as we have since we first opened—doing the best we can to provide a positive, supportive, and healthy workplace for our coworkers. As always—more now than ever—we encourage folks who feel even “sort of sick” not to come to work. We know this is very real. And we have a major obligation to do our part in holding the virus at bay as best we can.
  3. We have had paid time off for our staff for so long I can’t remember when we started it. We have always allowed folks to take additional time off as well. We have provided health care benefits for over 20 years now. We have a long list of other benefits we offer, which I won’t repeat here. We also have long had—at Paul’s suggestion many years ago—a Community Chest which is a fund available (in confidence) to staff members in crisis. None of these are shared to imply we’re so great, but merely to answer the questions in the news about employees being able to get through this situation without having to work when they’re ill. This week we just added a temporary boost in PTO possibilities for staff in anticipation of the struggles that will come for folks as they work to get through this.  Realistically, given what we know, this will not be enough for folks. While we’re “big” by some standards, we’re still a small business by the world’s standards and the resources don’t match up to what we’d ideally like to be able to do. We’re hoping that Federal or State governments will come through with aid and support for our staff.
  4. We’re encouraging staff to stay healthy in proactive ways—the positive work we need to do to take care of ourselves. Everything I read, and my own physicians, regularly tell me that a good diet, exercise, plenty of sleep, vitamins, and effective hydration all help boost immune systems.  And right now, we’ll take all the help we can get.
  5. We’re all in this together! We have over 700 people who are part of the Zingerman’s Community, including 18 managing partners and over 200 staff members who own a share in the organization. Paul and I started the Deli in 1982. (Coincidentally, March 15 was our 38th anniversary, though needless to say, there weren’t any big organizational celebrations this year.) We would never have made it out of that first uncertain year without YOU. From Day One, Paul and I have both strongly believed—known, actually—that we need our customers and our coworkers more than they need us. And that our work has always been to give people really good reasons to want to come shop, eat, and work with us. That remains true today, clearly, with some new challenges in the mix. We are working hard, every day, together, to figure out how we can serve you all in what, at least for the next few months and maybe much longer, is the new normal.

I know many of you won’t believe it, but I’m actually a totally shy introvert who would prefer to stay home on my own. “Social distancing,” for me, is my normal state. What’s hard for me isn’t being away from people—it’s going out in public. But at the same time, when I don’t see you all, paradoxically, and very positively, I miss you! Priya Parker, in her fine book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, shares in her preface that “My hope is that this book will help you think differently about your gatherings.” Given the state of the current situation we’re all in—together—our work is to figure out how to help all of us to think differently about how to gather while still being safe and sanitary. 

Clearly, the news and understanding of the virus is changing almost hourly. Like every other caring leader you know—and the odds are you know many—we’re doing our best to respond as quickly, caringly, and effectively as possible. After conferring with the Washtenaw County Health Dept and a number of physicians we have decided to keep our businesses open. By doing so, we help provide the sort of comforting place that we have for the last 38 years. We help our staff stay employed. We help support the many small artisans we buy from and keep their staff employed as well. 

Some folks in town will understandably and appropriately choose to stay home right now. The good news is that we can still serve you and offer you full-flavored, traditional food, and a positive Zingerman’s Experience in a wide range of ways: 

In our 38 years, we’ve been through massive inflation, recession, 9/11, 2009. We will figure out—together, all of us—how to get through this. If we can be of help in any way at all, please let us know. Even if you just want to talk, we’d love to hear from you. Call, email, drive by for pick up.

Thank you for letting us be part of this incredible community for all these years. Thank you for the chance to serve you. Thank you for being patient with us and with each other and with the universe while we all figure this out. As many of you remind me, and I remind others, we’re gonna get through this. Together. 

Sending good thoughts to you and everyone!

 

 

March 18, 2020

Category: Business

“Friendship is often more enduring than love and less exacting.” Emma Goldman


My Good Friend Frank; 40 Years of Fine Food, Friendship, and Fun

Back in the spring of 1978, I started my first job in restaurants. It was washing dishes at a place a few of you might well still remember, called Maude’s, over near the corner of Fourth Ave. and Liberty. Paul Saginaw (Zingerman’s Co-Founder) was the GM. Frank Carollo (Zingerman’s Bakehouse Managing Partner) was a line cook. Maggie Bayless (ZingTrain Managing Partner) started not long thereafter as a cocktail waitress. If I remember right, I was 21. Paul, I think would then have been an “old guy” of almost 26. Frank and Maggie, who I’m pretty sure are the same age, would have been 22. Earlier that year the Sex Pistols played their last concert, Elton John appeared on the Muppets, and The Rolling Stones started another big cross-country American summer tour. 

As I write this, for the 38th Anniversary issue of Zingerman’s News, Paul, Maggie, Frank, and I are all active parts of Zingerman’s—connected, learning, growing, each being ourselves, and yet working collaboratively together. That we are all still here is, to my sense of the world, a marvelous, and nigh on miraculous thing. There simply aren’t all that many foursomes of folks who work together and get along in caring and supportive ways for such a long time. The Rolling Stones, who started in 1962—two decades before we opened the Deli (!!!)—have us beat by a mile. But even they lost some of their original members early on. I love what early 20th century film critic, anarchist, and writer Siegfried Kracauer said on the subject: “Friendship civilizes.” My existence is far, far better thanks to their civilizing influences. 

Irish philosopher, poet, and theologian John O’Donohue once opined that, “Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.” This essay is exactly that—a formal written act, probably long overdue, of recognition for the exceptionally fine partnership of my friend Frank Carollo. I’m writing this now, at what might otherwise seem a rather random time, to recognize Frank more publicly in print in this way, because next January, at the start of the year 2021, after what I believe will be our 28th successful and biggest ever holiday season at the Bakehouse, my good friend and longtime business partner is going to retire. Frank is going to step back from his super significant role at the Bakehouse, and in the ZCoB, and walk forward into the future to explore new ways to enhance the quality of his life.

The act of even writing this essay, I have to say, is rather strange. I’m talking about a relationship that started back when we were both in our early 20s, at a time when I had no clue what my life was going to look like—not even a glimmer of a good thought about anything to do with a deli that would come to be called Zingerman’s, let alone the idea of creating a Community of Businesses. I had pretty negative beliefs about business, and almost no opinions one way or the other about good food and cooking. By definition, the longest-standing friendship I had at the time would have been 10 or 15 years. If you had told me that 40 years and more later we’d both still be productively and professionally ensconced in the world of food—and in it together—I would have asked what you’d been smoking. And yet, here we are, Frank and I, working supportively, relatively near each other, but respectfully conserving the other’s introverted space. 

It’s hard for me to imagine life at Zingerman’s without Frank here every day. The band “The Left Outsides” have a song entitled, “My Reflection Once Was Me.” I like uncommon and uncomfortable phrases like that which make me take pause to really think my way through what they mean. For the moment at least, I have a feeling that their song title describes what life around here in the ZCoB might well be after Frank has shifted his days to do other stuff. 

Wendell Berry once wrote, “There is a sense in which my own life is inseparable from the history and the place.” I know the feeling. While I have a fairly strong sense of my own existence—business or no business—having spent most of my adult life as part of Zingerman’s, it is hard to imagine my life apart from it. It’s equally impossible to imagine what life around here would have been like if I had not connected with these three exceptional people. I feel very lucky to have met and then partnered with Paul back in the early 80’s. And equally fortunate to have found Frank and Maggie. And then, later, over the years that followed, Amy at the Bakehouse and all the other of the 18 (at the moment—tip of the organization’s historical hat to Tom, Toni, Aubrey, Kieron, Mo, Tabitha, Grace, Rodger, Ji Hye, Kristie, Rick, Katie, Steve, Ron) or so managing partners, plus all those who’ve come and then gracefully gone, who’ve all worked so darned hard to make the Zingerman’s Community what it is. 

For Frank, Paul, Maggie, and I, it’s been nearly four decades that we’ve been, in one form or another, doing this thing that we and the rest of the world know as Zingerman’s. It has indeed been a solid, superbly and spatially supportive, 40-something years of working together for the two of us. The whole thing, in a sense, is so big, I can barely get my mind around it.

Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana believes that it’s impossible to really assess anything in isolation from what and whom it interacts with. Although any number of studies seem to isolate variables, the reality of all of our existences, Maturana says, is that we have each been impacted by what’s around us, and at the same time, we have impacted everyone and everything. None of us would be what or who we are without the contributions—direct and indirect—of those around us. I believe that. So, although Paul and I tend to get top billing most of the time when the Zingerman’s story is shared, the truth is that none of us would be remotely close to where we’re at without the others. Masanobu Fukuoka, the marvelously insightful Japanese farmer, poet, and writer, says that taking singular credit for something would be “like clapping your hands and then arguing about which is making the sound, the right hand or the left.” Frank’s part in the Zingerman’s story, I suggest, is something like that of the “other” hand—while it’s not the one that most folks focus on, without that “other hand,” there would be no applause. And maybe no Zingerman’s. 

I will say then, with a high degree of delicious certainty, the Zingerman’s Community would be a very different place without the determined, positive, intelligent, and incredibly skilled presence of my friend Frank. In fact, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that, without his contributions, the organization would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Without Frank’s early work there would have been no Bakehouse. The sandwiches at the Deli would never have been as good as they are now. Competition would have been more easily able to adapt to our other quality improvements—we might have kept up. Our Mail Order would have been deprived of its major supplier and one of its most significant market differentiators. The Creamery would have had no great bread or bagels on which Zingerman’s customers could spread its artisan cream cheese or goat cheese. 

I’ve never written a resume or CV for myself but, here’s an informal, outsider’s version of one for Frank. He grew up in St. Clair Shores on Detroit’s east side. His father’s family came from Sicily and his mother’s from Austria—both places, coincidentally, with wonderful cooking, and baking traditions. He arrived in Ann Arbor to go to school at the University of Michigan where he ended up studying engineering. At some point, he got a job cooking at Bicycle Jim’s, which was upstairs, on the second floor in the building that’s still on the northeast corner of South U. and Forest. At some point, early in 1978, he, along with half-a-dozen or so of his Bicycle Jim’s buddies, began working at Maude’s. He—and they—were all there when Paul and I started at Maude’s that spring. 

Throughout those early years, Frank was my teacher. Had he not taught me well, I’d never have learned to cook. He trained me how to cook the line, how to clean the grill, how to organize the walk in, how to stay focused through a big dinner rush, how to be kind and find humor when one was having a hard day, and how to be humble. We played softball on the Maude’s team—he was the star, faster by far, and more skilled than anyone else out there. We drank shots of tequila after games (it’s been probably 40 years since we’ve done that). Together, we’ve talked through good times and bad, survived economic challenges, managed through marriages and divorces, developed products, worked on visions, and traveled. We’ve probably tasted literally over 20,000 things together, comparing notes and assessing quality in the process. We’ve talked through management issues, learned about bread making and business. Shared frustrations and fears, hopes and happinesses. 

Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” It’s a lovely way to say it. Especially for a pair of introverts like me and Frank. My friend Frank Carollo is one of the quietest, most caring, and insightfully thoughtful people I know. What Frank and I haven’t done, at least that I can think of, in all of those 42 years, is pushed into the other’s space to give unsolicited advice or intruded into that solitude. 

While we worked at Maude’s, Frank was always a bit “ahead” of me. He started managing before I did. He went out to the Hilton (they owned the restaurant there) to manage before I did. Paul left and opened Monahan’s Seafood Market in 1979 along with Mike Monahan (it had been the Real Seafood Company’s retail market). I left a few years later, in the fall of 1981. Frank stayed on as a general manager for a few more years. Paul and I opened the Deli in March of 1982. Frank came down and helped us for free on his days off, first with renovations, then with work. When he left their organization, unsure of what he was going to do next, he came and worked in the retail department at the Deli for a while. I remember feeling exceptionally fortunate to have someone with his skill level working on the counter. 

A year or two later, in 1985, Frank left the Deli to partner with Paul and Mike to open a second Monahan’s Seafood Market in the suburbs. Despite their best efforts (which having worked with them all for years is a lot of effort) it didn’t take off. In one of the most difficult moves any business person has to make, they closed the market late in 1986. I think what they were doing was probably ahead of its time, but their commitment to high quality—and appropriately-set prices for that quality—didn’t cut it in that market.

With the second seafood market shuttered, Frank came back to town to work with Paul and Mike at Monahan’s in Kerrytown. Sometime late in 1991, or maybe it was early ’92, Frank announced to everyone that he was going to move on from the fish market. I don’t think he was clear on what would come next, but it was time to do something different. It was, I suppose, much the same situation I was in, a decade earlier, in the fall of 1981, after I’d given my notice at the restaurant group. I was fortunate then that Paul had called me a couple days later to propose the idea of opening the Deli. I hadn’t thought about this until just now, but I guess I did with Frank what Paul did with me—phoned a friend that I really liked working with to share an idea, the very beginnings of a vision, and a possibility to create something that didn’t yet exist, to see if he wanted to take the lead on the project, and partner together to make it happen. In Paul’s case, he proposed we put together a little deli on the corner of Detroit and Kingsley, across the street from the fish market’s spot in Kerrytown. In Frank’s case, the idea was to open our own, Zingerman’s, bakery. 

Martin Luther King once said something along the lines of, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” In hindsight, Frank’s leap of faith was even more amazing—he was agreeing to walk up a long set of stairs that weren’t even built yet. None of us knew much of anything about baking. We did know how to work and learn. Frank took the leap. We tasted bread together. He went to upstate New York to work with our teacher, Michael London, to begin learning the basics of artisan bread baking. He came back to be home for a bit and do work on the business part of things, then went back to spend more time with Michael at Rockhill Bakehouse. In September of that year, Michael came here for the weeks around the opening, bringing with him his plastic cooler filled with starter dough and with his little rubber-band-bound notebook full of hand-scribbled recipes. (Speaking of Franks, Frank Zappa played his last concert, that month.) Then, Michael flew home and Frank was essentially on his own. That he turned those tentative beginnings into something so terrific is a testament to his relentless pursuit of learning, quality, and excellence. Ideas aren’t all that hard—the challenging part is making them turn into reality. In this case, Frank took that challenge and rose, naturally, to the occasion—much like the beautiful loaves we’ve been crafting at the Bakehouse ever since. I have huge admiration for Frank’s learning. He went from knowing nothing to, very humbly, being one of the best artisan bakers in the country. 

So, on this 38th anniversary of Zingerman’s, my thesis, my belief, my statement, is that Zingerman’s would not be Zingerman’s if it wasn’t for Frank. It’s hard for me to imagine us without the amazing bread that the Bakehouse makes every day. Without the coffee cakes and rugelach and brownies. It’s hard to imagine Zingerman’s Mail Order without all of the baked goods we offer or Zingerman’s in recent years without all the traditional Hungarian foods the Bakehouse has brought to town. Think about the sort of mind boggling community that is Zingerman’s “southside”—the Bakehouse, Creamery, BAKE!, the Candy Manufactory, Coffee, and ZingTrain and all those people who now come there every day to shop, eat, drink, and glean good energy. None of it would have happened without the Bakehouse starting up first. If Frank weren’t so diligent and determined and relentless in his pursuit of improvement. If he wasn’t willing to go in at all hours, cover for people who didn’t come in, keep working to improve and take leaps of faith when, at best, the bottom stairs were all one could see . . . I wouldn’t be here writing this piece. 

The Bakehouse is a story in itself. Frank and Amy’s book, Zingerman’s Bakehouse tells it in very delicious detail. Frank and I had our first talk in the Next Door at the Deli (which we’d only finished renovating that previous fall, on October 31, 1991). In March of 1992 in the Next Door Café at the Deli, we tasted Michael London’s artisan breads for the first time. We were pretty much blown away by how much better it was then anything we could get in town at that time. Six months later, we sold our first loaves. Amy Emberling, who became a co-managing partner with Frank in 2000, was one of the original bakers. We only baked for the Deli and there was a small cart table next to the one oven where an occasional customer who wandered in could buy a loaf. We had one “bay” in the long buildings of the industrial park out by the Ann Arbor airport that Paul had found for us—the place that most of you now know so well as Zingerman’s Southside, or maybe more anecdotally as “out by the Bakehouse.” We’d decided to build the Bakehouse there because the Deli’s physical space was already pretty much maxed out, location wasn’t all that important for a wholesale bakery, and rent was going to be much lower if we went to that end of town. A few years later we took on another bay, and then another, and then another still. In 1994 we started baking pastries. Today, the Bakehouse has annual sales of over $10,000,000, a staff of about 130 (plus 35 more at the holidays), 150 or so wholesale customers (including the Deli, Roadhouse, Mail Order, etc.) around the area and has been recognized all over the country. Jane and Michael Stern called the rye bread the best in the country in Saveur a bunch of years ago. It’s been in the New York Times and many other places too. Bottom line? With Frank’s leadership (and yes, again, Amy and hundreds of other great folks with him), Zingerman’s Bakehouse is one of the most amazing bakeries in North America. 

The late English singer-songwriter John Martyn once said, “Some people keep diaries, I make records.” Maybe Frank would replace records with baked goods. Here’s a history and imperfect timeline of the Bakehouse. 

Maturana wrote that, “Only love expands intelligence. To live in love is to accept the other and the conditions of his existence as a source of richness, not as opposition, restriction or limitation.” It’s a well-stated sort of description of mine and Frank’s relationship. While the Bakehouse was being built, as all those loaves of artisan bread and handmade pastries were being baked, the rest of the Zingerman’s Community was coming into being. Frank was there for all of it. ZingTrain, Mail Order, the Creamery, the Roadhouse, Cornman Farms, Miss Kim, Coffee, Candy, and Zingerman’s Food Tours. We’d started Food Gatherers out of the Deli in 1988. Many new partners have come, and a few partners have left. Sales have risen and fallen. Economies have collapsed, the country has gone to war. Profits have gone up and down. We started having staff partners, employees got the chance to buy a share in the business (we have over 200 of them today). Zingerman’s was mentioned in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, and Gourmet; we appeared on Oprah and President Obama came to visit. Through all of it, Frank was quietly there, meaningfully helping to hold everything together, making things happen, keeping things moving, coming in to cover for sick calls, making deliveries when drivers didn’t show up, running shifts when managers found themselves overwhelmed. It’s a rare and remarkable feat. 

To take my theory of Frank’s centrality to the Zingerman’s story further, it’s not just the ZCoB that wouldn’t be what it is without Frank; I think you could probably say the same for the whole town. Having a thriving, healthy, high quality, caring bakery in the community is not to be underestimated. If you haven’t spent time living in, visiting, or studying France, it’s hard to imagine just how big a role bread plays in French culture. In the years since the Bakehouse opened here in 1992, French villages have increasingly found themselves losing their long-standing traditional bakeries. There’s still bread to be bought—but it’s all too often from supermarkets—frozen, par-baked dough that lacks the substance soul and quality of true craft bread. In France, to be without a bakery is a bit as if someone took the University of Michigan football team out of Ann Arbor. I hear figurative gasps and see heads shaking just as the absurd suggestion that it could happen. And yet, really, that is almost the scale of significance which bread and bakeries have had in French life. As one Frenchman said earlier this year after his town lost its last bakery, “Without bread, there is no more life,” said Gérard Vigot, standing in his driveway across the street from the now shuttered bakery. “This is a dead village.” Another villager, Fabien Rose, shared: “That’s why the bakery has an enormous place in a village—because bread is life.” Because of Frank’s willingness to take that leap to start the Bakehouse in 1992, to start climbing stairs that hadn’t yet been built, Ann Arbor is very much alive, a better place, with much better bread and pastry, to live. Speaking as someone who eats the Bakehouse’s bread every single day in which I’m home in Ann Arbor, and as someone who rarely leaves home without a piece of said bread in my shoulder bag, I know that my own life has been radically improved by it, and I have to believe that the lives of thousands of others have been improved as well. 

Frank, himself, would, by the way, admit nothing of the sort. I’m working now on a pamphlet about humility that I hope will come out later this year. If there could be a poster child for humility without compromising the humility of the person being recognized, Frank would be the guy. He models humility for the rest of us, every day. It’s been a common aside over the years from any number of folks who started at the Bakehouse that they worked next to Frank on the bench making bread for two months before they realized he was one of the owners. 

In the spirit of time travel, I’m working on wrapping up this essay in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel, where about two dozen people showed up in the last few hours dressed for, what I can only surmise, should likely be a ’70s party. The lobby, appropriately I suppose, smells like pot smoke. I guess it’s appropriate since it’s a party that might have happened back around the time Frank and I met. And here we are all these years, all those loaves of bread and Magic Brownies, and long meetings and difficult discussions, big and small decisions later . . . and we’re still going at it. The idea of coming to work without Frank being around, quietly holding things together in the background, is hard to fathom. 

If we’d been the Rolling Stones, then, I suppose, Frank would have been Bill Wyman, the quiet, thoughtful, somber and stoic bassist, who stood towards the back of the stage and kept the beat while everyone else was making more noise, moving around and getting a lot more attention. Because as any good musician knows, and any number of actual studies have supported, the bass player is usually the least noticed, but the most important member of the band. Last year, in Guitar World magazine, Christopher Scapelliti wrote about a study at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, about four hours to the east of Ann Arbor. He said, “the most important melodic information is carried by the highest voice, such as the lead singer or lead guitar, (but) the most vital rhythmic information by the lowest voice, i.e. the bass.” In a more Zingerman’s-appropriate assessment of the McMaster study, this past summer Anthony Capobianco wrote, “The bass guitar is like the dough in a pizza. It may not have all of the flavor like the sauce, cheese and toppings do. But without it, it’s not a pizza.” If you think it through, without the dough the sauce and the cheese just hit the hot stone and sizzle essentially into nothing. And so, my theory gains more traction, that Frank—not me, nor Paul, nor anyone else—might be the most important part of making Zingerman’s what it is.

John Martyn’s album, Solid Air, his fourth, came out in 1973, when, by my calculation, Frank and I were still in high school. I still have the actual vinyl LP. Frank’s a year older than me so if my math and memory are right, he’d have been a senior and I was a junior. Martyn wrote the album’s title song about Nick Drake, another English folk singer, who had been his close friend. Drake died, probably of an unintentional overdose, a year later, in 1974, the year in which I first arrived to live in Ann Arbor and attend U of M. Their friendship was sadly, cut short. Which reminds me again now how incredibly fortunate I feel that mine and Frank’s has been anything but. Forty years later, we remain friends, supporters, gentle guardians of each other’s solitude. What John Martyn wrote about his friend seems in the second stanza of Solid Air, still, quietly appropriate for my friend and partner Frank all these years later. 

I know you, I love you
And I can be your friend
I can follow you anywhere
Even through solid air