The Silver Bullet
Now that we were out of the garage, I wasn’t living over the store, and we were able to keep all of our inventory under one roof rather than having it dispersed all over the neighborhood—much easier to keep track of. But it was getting to be too much to deliver out of the trunk of my Chevy. It was exhausting, and because the number of stops I had to make was growing, delivering product to our customers without everything softening around the edges was becoming much too tricky. While newspaper worked just fine as an insulator when I had very few stops to make, it was only taking me so far.
Serendipity intervened. We bought all of our new equipment from the same supplier that we had used in the garage, and we recognized the young man who made the deliveries to our new shop. When Jill and I reminded him this was his second time around with us, his eyes got very wide, and he called and quit his job on the spot! Now it was we who were wide-eyed as he turned to us and asked for a job, explaining that he had a personal policy of not staying at any job for more than a year. The timing was perfect; Jill and I had been talking about hiring a driver. We hired Don, and soon after hurried out to buy our first truck! (Don ended up disobeying his own rule: he worked for me for many years, and he became plant manager just over two years after we hired him.)
We equipped Don with a secondhand truck from Avis. It was a well-used, slightly banged-up silver refrigerated van we dubbed the “Silver Bullet.” With our first driver, I could expand my sales arena to include Greenwich Village and further downtown Manhattan, as well as Brooklyn and Queens.
Thanks to our young accountant, we kept simple but real books. One of our friends became our part-time bookkeeper. We had two other production workers to help with packing, cleanup, and the like, but Jill and I still did all the product development, mixing, and baking ourselves.
One of the very first smart things we did as business owners was to raise our prices just a bit shortly after we moved into the new shop. Nobody complained, and that should have signaled to us that our prices were too low to begin with, but we were just happy with the very-much-needed extra income. Now we had time to expand our customer base and our product line at a steadier pace.
I could almost still taste some of Evelina’s scrumptious desserts from my childhood, and three of her specialties were the inspiration for some of our next dessert products. Her lemon cream and chocolate cream pies and her sour cream coffee cake were largely the inspiration for our Lemon Mousse Pie, our Chocolate Mousse Pie, and our delicious Evie’s Coffee Cake. We didn’t have her recipes, but Jill and I were good enough by then to replicate them closely enough, and maybe even a little bit better. From Jill came our spectacular brownies in a half sheet pan, and together we developed a Raspberry Glazed Bread Pudding.
It began to dawn on us that we needed to make some changes—some subtle, some a bit larger—in order to move forward and compete on a more level playing field with other products available in the marketplace. Our customers were done with the plastic bags, a fact they let us know quite forcefully. So now that we fortuitously had the space, we finally started to pack our cakes for delivery in corrugated boxes. The basement at the shop was filled to the brim with cake boxes. Boxes then could not be made to customer specifications as they are today, so we had to find ones from local suppliers around town that “almost” fit the bill. Anything was a vast improvement over the bags, though.
We also realized that if we wanted to sell more cheesecake, we would have to change to a ten-inch straight-sided pan, such as was being used for all the other cheesecakes available in the marketplace. Up till then, we were only offering our one nine-inch size for all of our quiches, cheesecakes, and pies. We continued to roll the dough by hand for our six-inch quiches, which were intended for our limited local retail business, but because our original secondhand pie press came with only one die, we still offered just that single pan size to our restaurant accounts. Obviously, we had not yet been demonstrating very good marketing, a word not yet in our lexicon. As usual, still clueless, we had not realized that we could order additional dies to use on our pie press, from three inches to fourteen inches, with either straight or sloping sides. One phone call and we could have learned all this. With the introduction of our straight-sided ten-inch pan, we were learning the lesson of competition, of answering the needs of our customers rather than the other way around.
Selecting from the new array of pans available to us did result in one big mistake, though. We went out and bought a few dozen ten-inch springform pans at the hardware store, but it never occurred to us that they were not intended to be used commercially. They became so flimsy from repeated use that the pans became misshapen; more and more of the cheesecake batter would leak onto the bun pans beneath them, so the cheesecakes became thinner and thinner as time went on. We still had not awakened to the fact that our products needed to be the exact weight we said they would be. We were delivering cheesecakes with weights that were all over the place, some of them tissue thin!
All this led to one of my more embarrassing customer-supplier moments, one that I will never forget. One of our good customers was a seafood place called Nodeldini’s. The owners had another restaurant called One Fish Two Fish, still there on Madison and 97th, and at one point there was a third place also. Around this time, Nodeldini’s stopped taking orders from us, citing problems with the products we were delivering. The owner at the time knew that I’d be back once I got my act together. A few years later, when I made an appointment to try to resell him my desserts, he took me into his office where he had a small freezer. He lifted out the last cheesecake I had delivered, so thin it practically disappeared when held sideways! I was nonplussed, but thanked him for saving it all these years to show me. We both burst out laughing, and I got the account back! I was always good at sales.
As we successfully transitioned from Bonne Femme to Love and Quiches, I somehow spontaneously became known as “The Quiche Lady,” a moniker that follows me to this very day, even among our most prominent national and international clients (despite the fact that we now sell mostly desserts). Our roster of restaurant customers kept growing: the All Star Café on West 72nd Street (only very recently closed); the Barking Fish; Rusty’s, owned by the famous baseball player Rusty Staub; and Daly’s Dandelion, owned by the bandleader Skitch Henderson and his wife, Fay Emerson, a popular actress and performer. In Greenwich Village there was the Riviera Café, the Buffalo Roadhouse, The Elephant and Castle, and the Lion’s Head (where Jessica Lange was waitressing) before its current incarnation as the superhot The Lion. And so many more. All of these hark back to a lifetime ago, far from where we are today.
With all these customers to please, our new driver Don had to really hit the road early each morning in the Silver Bullet. More than once the van broke down—it was, after all, on its last legs when we bought it. On one of these occasions, we learned that … let’s just say that Don still needed to grow up a little. True to form, he abandoned the stopped truck on the side of the Van Wyck Expressway. But he took the last couple of orders with him and managed to get them delivered; don’t ask me how.
Jill and I had another set of keys and went to rescue the van. As it happened, just in front of our truck sat another abandoned truck being looted by two very large and unsavory looking characters. The truck thieves assured us that they were only interested in the truck they were in the midst of stealing, and that we could proceed to steal ours in peace! Incidents like that happened to us all the time, but at least we kept our sense of humor, and we could laugh as these crazy—sometimes dangerous—events occurred.
More Products, More Growing Pains
Another one of our customers requested a product that in later years precipitated one of the most pivotal leaps that Love and Quiches ever made. We were servicing Ellen’s, a very exclusive gourmet shop on the Upper East Side, and the owner was catering a dinner party for Jacqueline Kennedy. He asked us if we could bake our delicious brownies in the round rather than in
the traditional oblong pan. Thus was born our famous Pecan Brownie Pie, which he served on beautiful plates in wedges adorned with whipped cream and berries. Peter, the owner, was also our first customer for Frozen Lemon Soufflé. (These were prepared in the infamous springform pans, but by then we knew better and lined the pans to prevent seepage.) Shortly thereafter we transitioned to heavier weight commercial cake and pie pans, and we ordered more dies for our pie press. Little by little, we were evolving.
This was still just in our second year of operation, but we also had added a Mocha Cheesecake in our line that Frank Sinatra had apparently been served and loved. Somehow the dessert was traced back to us, and we were asked to deliver one to the Westbury Music Theater when he was performing there. Funny how certain small memories stay with you.
Then we introduced our Trianon, an exquisite bittersweet chocolate truffle cake (from a recipe I had used in my cooking classes) that we still produce today, more than forty years later, in several shapes and sizes. It remains one of our premier desserts, and it’s among my favorites.
Our products were superb, but this fact alone didn’t turn us into businesspeople. There were still no profits. Jill and I continued doing all the baking, and I had dozens of burns in uniform stripes all up and down my arms, like badges of honor. Jill must have been more careful because I don’t remember her having quite as many burns as I did, but I do remember having to wear long sleeves (even in summer) to cover them when I went on sales calls. The scars finally faded, but it took twenty years.
We’d been in our new shop for about six months when something changed for both Jill and me. We had started the business as a lark, but this was no longer a hobby or a part-time enterprise where we could show up if and when we felt like it; it had become very hard work. Love and Quiches seemed to have its own momentum and life. It seemed we weren’t having fun anymore—or at least, as I learned, Jill wasn’t.
* * *
* In 1995 we renamed the company Love and Quiches Desserts, and in 2013, Love & Quiches Gourmet. To simplify matters, however, I have used Love and Quiches throughout the book unless the historical context required me to use one of the other two names.
Chapter 4
The Transition (1975)
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
—Albert Einstein
One day in the early spring of 1975, I was tramping up and down Third Avenue making sales calls in the city. I was following my usual procedure: I would knock on any door that looked as if my products would be a good fit, and I left a price sheet and a sample or two. If the manager was in, I did my pitch then and there; otherwise, I would call back for an appointment. After a couple of meetings, I rounded a corner and there was a friend of mine and a business associate of Irwin’s—David—walking with a neighbor of his. David introduced me to his friend, and we got to talking about Le Snac, the fast-food café he’d just opened. It had a French motif, the only problem being that he had nothing French to offer but the mustard. When David told his friend about my business, he expressed his disbelief at the lucky coincidence and ordered two hundred quiches on the spot. He wanted them delivered very soon. For Love and Quiches—which at this time was still selling “eaches,” not cases—this was a gargantuan order, our biggest so far.
As soon as we parted, I found a pay phone and called Jill. “We’ve got an order for two hundred quiche Lorraine—and he needs them before the end of the week!” I told her. “Start making dough and frying the bacon—I’ll be right back.”
When I got back to the shop in Hewlett, she’d started all the prep, and we worked on the quiches all through the night: me driven by excitement, Jill going through the motions, frustrated.
The next week, when Le Snac placed its second order—for four hundred quiches—the gulf between my approach to the business and Jill’s became more apparent. Where Jill saw our endeavor as a side pursuit, I needed to make this work. In the short span of time since we had started Bonne Femme, I’d started to feel ambition growing inside me, and I wanted to keep going. Another big difference between Jill and me was the fact that I had the support of my husband. For a traditional suburban housewife in the early seventies, this was important. Even in the early days, I realized with great certainty that without Irwin’s unfailing support, I would never have been able to build this business. Jill’s husband, on the other hand, advised her against continuing, as did the rest of her family. She had more children than I did, as well as more social responsibilities, and although she really loved what she was doing, she could not devote the necessary time to take the steps to make the business profitable.
In other words, she couldn’t get serious about Love and Quiches, even though I was very much ready to. With our visions of the future so out of line, I often found myself alone in the shop at the end of the day holding the bag. Out of sheer frustration at this, I would sometimes eat coffee cakes straight from the freezer, a practice I would not recommend to anyone else—especially since it doesn’t solve anything.
So, Jill and I found ourselves at a crossroads. We still had no real business plan or vision and, more importantly, there was no profit, although by that point we were doing just enough volume to cover our overhead. With no profit, a business cannot survive. We were learning that growth does not solve problems; it merely amplifies them if you’re not ready. We were not ready. Most small or start-up companies suffer from the same shortcomings: a lack of effective planning and enough capital to get through the first year or so. We had continued to make pivotal leaps forward, but all the while we were still doing everything wrong. We were so busy looking but not seeing where we were going. We didn’t recognize growth opportunities, make relevant decisions, or act on them. Luck can only carry you so far. Then it’s over. We had thought our venture would be an extension of our love of food and cooking, but experience proved us wrong.
Shortly after our two giant Le Snac orders, Jill came to me and said she wanted out. For her, it was over. Love and Quiches was going nowhere, and now my partner had cried uncle. The prospect of losing her overwhelmed me, but what could I do? I understood. It was over.
In March 1975, I bought Jill out for $12,000: $6,000 for her conception—the enterprise was her idea in the first place, and I will always be grateful for that—and $6,000 for her half of our expenses in fitting out the shop.
Jill and I remained friends during her departure and are still friends all these many years later. Shortly after she left, Jill started another business making rugelach (rolled cookies with various fillings in a cream cheese pastry dough), which she ran for a while out of her home. The work was just as hard, since the cookies were all handmade, but she could at least control the hours. No more all-night quiche-making sessions. (Many years later, after Love and Quiches had grown up, Jill told me that somebody at a party had once asked her if I had bought her out for $5 million!)
On My Own
As I surveyed the state of Love and Quiches in the weeks after I bought out Jill, I saw that I needed to shift my strategy. We had been gaining assets, buying more equipment with the proceeds from our sales, but we were also incurring liabilities. On balance, we were making no money, and ultimately we ran short. We weren’t far removed from the days when we’d kept records in our heads—we even kept track of our receivables that way. Incorporating should have lent structure to our enterprise, or at least made us aware that we had a commitment to succeed, but we never really took that next step. We “appeared” to be organized: our accountant set up our books, we did payroll, we ran the Silver Bullet, and we increased our sales to over $75,000. But we still didn’t know where we were going or how we were going to get there. I wonder, on occasion, why it took us so long to come to grips with our potential. Every time it became apparent that we’d better sit down and think, we’d be anxious to “get back to work”—as if planning ahead wasn’t work, but frying bacon was!
We hadn’t defined our goals and we weren’t contr
olling our costs, buying well, or pricing our products properly. We paid no attention to vital details that virtually define success: we didn’t realize that pennies counted, and we didn’t know that we were also a service business and therefore had better provide good service along with our products. By now we should have been polishing our image, but instead we had remained in our original mindset: clueless.
The wholesale food processing business, as with any business involving production and service, is a full-time commitment, especially when there is established competition. It takes a tremendous amount of work, and we weren’t good enough. We had started losing accounts at about the same rate as we were getting them because our service wasn’t very good and our quality was uneven. The taste was there, but as I pointed out earlier, the weights were anybody’s guess.
Our problems were those often faced by small businesses: we lacked capital, we lacked management and technical assistance, and we had no formal technical training in our particular field. We had no understanding of finance, and we were inexperienced about marketing and buying opportunities. In sum, we still had no preparation whatsoever for business ownership, which put us at a great disadvantage.
Now what? I found myself alone in the enterprise. It was a lonely feeling at first, but exciting too. There were a lot of possibilities ahead, and I wanted to stick around to see how the story ended. I was way out of my comfort zone, but I had bought my own business, and I had to assess what I had bought. I knew I might be in for the ride of my life, along with plenty of potential heartbreak—yet, at the very least, I wanted some payback for all of the burns I had suffered up and down my arms.
We were a young married couple with two children, a big house, and very little money. Yet, this recessionary period during which we rolled our first dough provided Love and Quiches with its start; we saw the rise of the pub without a pastry chef. This became my motivator.
With Love and Quiches Page 5