When David Cooper took his family back to his native England for a visit seven years ago, he was struck by the aromas drifting from bakeries along the ancient streets.
“My childhood memories came back from the smell of pastees and scones,” he said. So strong were the memories that he decided to do something more than just remember. “I got the idea that I wanted to start a business back in the states that would bring some English baked goods to the American market.”
What he didn”™t envision back then was national ”“ and perhaps international ”“ distribution of his unbaked products and a chain of retail outlets featuring British baked goods. Back then he was still operating his sales promotion incentive business in Stamford. “The business was pretty good,” he said. “It took me through the end of 2004 before I decided to make the big change.”
But the change was one of a series that began after his two-year soccer career in England ended with an injury and he began shuttling back and forth between the United States and England to coach soccer, eventually teaching and coaching for five years at a private school in Stamford. “Then I went into the sales promotion business,” a stint that lasted nearly 20 years.
By then Cooper had already married, and he and his wife, Robin, were raising three children in their Newtown home, where Cooper found himself longing for a good old English scone. Not a hard, dry triangular American scone made with hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors and preservatives and “icing slathered all over the top,” but a traditional, round English scone one could enjoy with a nice cup of tea.
And while his incentive business was doing very well, “I wasn”™t enjoying myself as much, so I decided to play around with this thing, creating a product in the kitchen on a little six-quart mixer,” Cooper said. “We had a kitchen in the basement and I started developing the product,” adapting traditional English recipes for the American market.
Cooper and his then 17-year-old daughter, Siobhan, took some unbaked scones down to a friend”™s bakery in Stamford ”“ Beldotti Bakeries ”“ and hawked the freshly baked scones to the bakery”™s customers. They sold out their supply in two days. “Chris and Mike Beldotti said that if I was serious about doing this as a business, they”™d be my first customer.”
Exhausting work
Cooper kept up his incentive business, making unbaked scones on the side and delivering them to the Beldotti”™s and a few hotels in Danbury until “my wife said one day, ”˜Are you going to get serious at this or just play at it?”™ I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn”™t know what I should do.”
Robin suggested he take a few scones to the Norwalk Stew Leonard”™s “and see if they like it.” He took his wife”™s advice and walked into the store with no appointment and four unbaked scones and asked to meet with the bakery manager. “Two days later I got a call from them. They said they would like to bring the product in, and asked how many come on a pallet. I said I”™ll have to check with my warehouse manager. I had no clue.”
Cooper and his wife did some quick figuring and decided they could make maybe 3,000 scones a week if they worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week. “I told them we can do 60 cases, and they said they”™d take them. We worked for 15 hours a day. My wife was still a flight attendant and would get up at 3 in the morning, go to LaGuardia and fly to Chicago or Santo Domingo, turn around and come home at 7 and roll scones until midnight. Both of us were crippled by the rolling pin.”
They found a 20-quart mixer on eBay, so they could create enough dough for 90 scones at a time, up from 10. They bought five freezers and put them in the cellar, froze the unbaked scones and after an exhausting week had them delivered to the Norwalk store in a refrigerated truck. A few days later Stew Leonard”™s called again. “They said they want two pallets.”
A real advantage
Cooper had discovered the “bake off” industry and jumped into that niche market with his unbaked scones and a growing array of unbaked products. “In most bakeries and even in the smaller, local bakeries, at least 50 percent of their product comes in through the back door,” he said. At supermarket bakeries, it”™s more like 90 percent, he said. “Your supermarket isn”™t making anything from scratch. They”™re taking a mix and adding water, or baking something that”™s frozen. Nobody has the time to make puff pastry and philo dough. It”™s a very long, drawn-out process.”
“There was a revolution about 15 years ago,” said Michael Beldotti of Beldotti”™s Bakeries. “A lot of supermarket chains started delving into the bakery business, but to hire and train professional bakers is very difficult. A whole industry came about where supermarkets and bakeries can buy frozen cookies, cakes and breads and just bake it off.”
A typical small bakery today, Beldotti said, “is about 50-50” scratch made and bake off. His wholesale and retail operation is “a scratch bakery,” he said, with only about 5 percent of its offerings bake-off products, including Dere Street scones. The flash-frozen scones “are a real advantage for us,” he said. “If we sell out, we can make another batch in 20 minutes.”
National distribution
Cooper and his wife decided to move their business out of their basement after 18-wheel trucks began rumbling up their residential street unloading pallets of baking goods, moving to a 3,500-square-foot site in Danbury they outfitted as an industrial kitchen to create a growing line of unbaked goods. They called the business Dere Street ( HYPERLINK “http://www.derestreet.com” www.derestreet.com), after a main road in northern England ”“ much like calling the business Interstate 84.
“We ended up being a manufacturer of frozen baked goods,” catering to bakeries, supermarkets, food service companies, hotels, caterers, banquet halls and universities “because that”™s where the everyday need is,” Cooper said. The couple also decided to find distributors for their bake-off products, a move that has spread their frozen products up and down the East Coast, with a heavy concentration in Florida, which has a large and growing number of English tourists. “We”™re going to be delivering to Whole Foods in Texas and Colorado, and from there it”™s just a matter of signing up more distributors in different parts of the country.”
The couple”™s goal, he said, is to build revenues to between $5 million and $10 million within five years, up from abut $1 million anticipated this year and $600,000 last year. “We”™ll also see growth in the Middle East,” he said. “We”™ve been approached by someone to distribute in Dubai, which is full of British workers.”
For the time being, all of this will be out of the Danbury plant, he said. “We”™ll go to two shifts in six months to a year, definitely, then to three shifts in 18 months to two years.”
Still on the drawing boards is a chain of retail cafés in a couple of years, “maybe sooner,” he said.
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