Yonkers businessman Julius Walls Jr. took a break recently from his office at Greyston Bakery, where he is president and CEO, for a two-day mission in Manhattan. Between dishing out brownie samples at Whole Foods stores, he preached (the CEO also is a preacher at the AME Zion church in Yonkers) a gospel of good business practices in those training sanctuaries of American capitalism, business school lecture halls.
He spoke and dished desserts in the company of Jerry Greenfield, one backpack-toting half of the Vermont duo (Burlington by way of Long Island and New York City) that gave its name to Ben and Jerry”™s Homemade Ice Cream Inc. Greenfield at their Whole Foods stops served up one of their Unilever-owned company”™s top-selling flavors, chocolate fudge brownie, whose brownie pieces are made at Greyston Bakery.
Walls had a threefold mission in the city: to promote the “super-premium” Do-Goodie Brownie that Greyston launched in retail stores in late 2007 and the newly published book, “Mission, Inc.,” that he co-authored and, while so promoting, to spread word of that alternative business model, social enterprise companies, and especially the community mission in Yonkers of the nonprofit Greyston Foundation that is served by profits from Greyston Bakery. More brownies sold equals more money with which to do common good: that is the simple but not so easily worked equation that guides Greyston.
The book, which Walls wrote in a largely long-distance, online collaboration with Kevin Lynch, president of a nonprofit T-shirt company in St. Paul, Minn., that provides temporary jobs for recovering addicts and alcoholics, is subtitled “The Practitioner”™s Guide to Social Enterprise.” Filled with pithy boldface tips drawn from the long experience of the authors and other founders, owners and heads of typically small, successful companies whose profits support a broader social mission, the book is a beginner”™s manual for entrepreneurs in what is a growing network of business practice and studies.    Â
On campuses, there is a “significantly higher” interest in social entrepreneurship, said Walls. Increasingly, young business professionals want both to make money and “to be fulfilled as well” by putting business in the service of people rather than the reverse. “Now with what”™s occurred in the world economy, I think people are waking up to the problem with just pursuing the dollar at all costs,” he said.
“Money is not the root of all evil,” Walls said, correcting a common biblical misquote. “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
At New York University”™s Stern School of Business, one of the Julius-and-Jerry duo”™s speaking stops in the city, Walls has been appointed social entrepreneur in residence for 2009 and will teach a course this fall as a professor of social entrepreneurship.
Columbia Business School, where he and Greenfield also spoke, also offers a social enterprise program.
“It is a possibility that we can use business to do good and do well,” Walls told his Columbia audience. “It”™s not just about making money. It”™s about people, planet and profits, in that order.”
As business professionals, “We”™re responsible because we are powerful and because we are response-able.”    Â
Walls told of his first encounter with Greyston in the early ”™90s as a salesman for a chocolate manufacturer. “I had no idea what they were doing. They were just another bakery that I was trying to sell chocolate to,” he said.
He joined Greyston as a marketing consultant in 1995 and two years later was named CEO. He is also senior vice president for business at the Greyston Foundation, a $13-million network of for-profit and nonprofit entities that provides a range of community services focused in Yonkers, including low-income and work force housing, health care and child care, community gardens and jobs at the nearly 60-employee, 20,000-square-foot Alexander Street bakery. “All of that started because of a small bakery,” Walls said of those services.
Running Greyston Bakery, “It has changed my life,” he said. “It has changed the way I look at what”™s possible for business.”
The bakery under Wall”™s leadership has grown to about $7 million in annual revenue. About $500,000 this year will come from Do-Goodie brownie sales, largely at Whole Foods stores in the metropolitan area, and the company expects 50 percent growth for its gourmet brownie product. “It”™s the opportunity to grow and do this thing on a larger scale that we”™re excited about,” Walls said after his Manhattan tour.
That growth poses challenges for small social enterprise companies such as Greyston with limited resources, Walls said at Columbia and in “Mission, Inc.” To do that, Greyston, which now focuses its retail distribution in the Northeast, could open a West Coast facility and go national. “It”™s years down the road, but it”™s something we definitely need to move to,” he said.    Â
Â
To enable that growth, Walls said Greyston officials are looking at bringing minority equity owners into the bakery business. Unlike Ben and Jerry”™s, however, he told his business school audience it”™s unlikely that Greyston would ever sell the business to a company such as Unilever to support the growth of its social mission.
 “Our interest is definitely not to lose control at all,” he said in Yonkers. “Our interest is in raising capital so that we can do more. It will definitely be like-minded folk” investing in the business.
Greyston might go into business outside its bakery operation. Walls said foundation officials are planning for its next social enterprise and recently met with government leaders in Yonkers and nonprofits in a “brainstorming session.”
“By the end of this year we will have a decision” on what that enterprise will be, Walls said. He said the new business could draw upon the bakery”™s assets and resources, though that is not certain.
Walls does have a certain vision for Greyston Bakery. “We”™re going to try to be the super-premium Ben and Jerry”™s of brownies,” he said in the city.
