Today’s volunteer group is from The Bread Project. Yep, the same Bread Project that bakes the delicious bread our clients receive in our Grocery Center! Right now they are fine-dicing 350 lbs of chicken to make chicken salad sandwiches for the senior lunch program.
In late August, 2010, we “rolled” out the fruits (or rather breads) of a new partnership: 100-percent whole grain loaves baked fresh five-days-a-week for Project Open Hand by the Bread Project, a local nonprofit dedicated to providing skills training and job assistance in the food industry to help low income people in the Bay Area work towards self-sufficiency. The relationship started with a meeting at a conference for development professionals. Open Hand’s Bob Brenneman and Bread Project’s John Lee exchanged cards. Open Hand’s Dan Schuman got a call almost immediately. “I thought, ‘Eureka, this is a perfect partnership!’” and he invited Bread Project’s Executive Director Dagmar Schröder-Huse to 730 Polk Street for a meeting.
Dan recalls, “Dagmar came with a box of samples—including the bread we now buy, plus scones and muffins. I just went around the office handing out these great baked goods. It was a wonderful way for us to see all that they can do.” Dagmar says, “The Bread Project’s bakery production training focuses on batch-food making skills, so working with Project Open Hand to produce large volumes of bread and other baked goods is perfect for us.”
Project Open Hand goes through approximately 5,500 loaves of bread per month. Dan notes, “We were satisfied with the baker we had, but here was an opportunity to partner with a mission-focused organization that makes even better bread than what we were getting.” The Bread Project bread is 100-percent whole grain and also almost 100-percent organic, made of organic whole-wheat flour, with salt, yeast, canola oil, honey, and water. “The bread is delicious,” Dan reports. “We served our first loaves to our senior clients last week and the bread received universal praise.”
On September 1, the loaves were added to clients’ grocery bags. “Changes are always met with a little trepidation around here,” says Dan, “but clients are accepting the new bread as soon as they taste it.”
“We decided to start simple with the bread, but we’re planning to expand to include hamburger and hot dog buns; we’re also thinking about other things we may not have done before.” One of these things may be a fresh-baked protein bar. “It’s a popular item that we struggle to source. Inventory at the Food Bank can be spotty. One thought is to have them make an energy-dense, nutrient-dense baked product for us. Given the creativity and capability of their staff—which includes Pastry Chef Deirdre Davis who used to bake at Google—anything is possible.” Future orders may also include Bread Project’s graham-flour-and-molasses bread, whole-wheat dinner rolls, or possibly brioche. “If we can give clients a little bit of variety one week out of the month at a price we can live with then that’s what we want to do.”
The contract with the Bread Project is part of an overall effort Project Open Hand has been making in the last few years to source as many products locally as we can. Other examples include the coffee for seniors and HIV clients which is roasted and ground fresh-to-order, our pastas made fresh by Eduardo’s Pasta Factory, and our grains and dried beans sourced from Giusto’s in South San Francisco. “We don’t just do this because local is a buzzword. What you get when you make these local connections is that you sit down with the owner or the head baker and you talk about what has worked and what kinds of things they can do for us, and they tell us how they can tweak recipes or preparations to meet our needs.”
The switch to the Emeryville-based Bread Project was also about supporting the nonprofit’s overall mission of providing job skills. As Dagmar explains, “In addition to wholesale clients like Open Hand, Bread Project operates a café and a catering service. These social enterprises are a key component of our program, offering crucial on-the-job training opportunities participants need in order to work in the food industry. All of the proceeds from these enterprises, as well as the wholesale bakery, are invested back into the Bread Project.”
Dan notes, “If we can spend our dollars on a fellow nonprofit and improve the quality of what we are getting—then what could be better than that?”
To learn more about the Bread Project at www.breadproject.org.
