Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993 TAG: 9306230078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
A popular Blacksburg bakery for 13 years - that's a dozen, in bake-shop talk - the place is quietly turning out bread, pastries and specialty food items for sale from their shop in Blacksburg Square and for wholesale in Southwest Virginia and beyond.
Those yummy blueberry scones sold at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea? They come from its kitchen. Ditto the breads at the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op, Tinnell's Finer Foods, Ward's Rock Cafe and several other groceries and restaurants.
Our Daily Bread is no longer known for being the cozy eat-in restaurant near Virginia Tech with soup for under a dollar plus all the bread you can eat. Though it's managed to hold onto its steady clientele - and then some.
"We have people who've been with us for 13 years," when the bakery first operated on Progress Street, says manager and catering director Jennee Tu Loflin. "I have about 10 clients who ask me to call them whenever we have a catering job and I make more food than we need."
That loyalty is what's kept the bakery growing - even after owner Karen Iannaccone decided to scale back and simplify her operation by dropping the restaurant side two years ago and moving to the outskirts of downtown.
"We wanted to increase our parking and have a bigger work space to devote to the baking side," Iannaccone explains.
"We wanted a life," adds Loflin. Both mothers of young children, Iannaccone and Loflin were beginning to burn out on the rigors of running both a full-service restaurant and a bakery.
And yet whatever Our Daily Bread turns out, their customers still scarf up - only now it's mostly take-out. From their home-made bagels and popular Portuguese sweet breads, to their home-made pies and pasta salads.
The thrust of the enterprise: Everything is made from scratch, no preservatives used. When the day's lunch menu lists turkey sandwich, customers can rest assured that Loflin didn't just buy the meat pre-sliced and assemble the sandwiches; she roasted an entire bird.
Customers are so loyal, almost proprietary, about the bakery, they'll bring in old family recipes for Iannaccone to try out.
One long-time customer, Blacksburg's Jane McMenamy, was so set on Loflin catering her upcoming September wedding, she changed her date to fit the bakery's schedule.
The religious significance of the name was what first attracted McMenamy, she says. "They're just such a good asset to the community - their food and their personalities - as well as making me feel at home there. . . . It's someone continuing to provide our daily bread."
The philosophy extends to the bakery's 19-member staff, a close- knit group of employees, some who have been there as long as nine years.
All employees, including the owner and manager, take turns cleaning the bathroom. All employees, including the owner and manager, pitch in to clean the pots.
If something goes wrong with the plumbing, Iannaccone fixes it.
Breads are reduced daily from their date of baking. After five days, the staff sticks them under the table for what's known as "duck bread": Customers pick up the free bread and head for Virginia Tech's duck pond.
A former polymer chemist at Virginia Tech, Iannaccone looked around Blacksburg 13 years ago and noticed it didn't have a bakery. The entrepreneurial urge to provide it with one fit in with her interests in baking, sparked as a youngster.
"Ever since the third grade, my idea of fun after school was to go home and bake," Iannaccone recalls. "My mom didn't teach me; I figured it out on my own. I've just always liked the feel of dough."
Manager Loflin, a first-generation Chinese-American and a registered dietitian, had taught Chinese cooking classes and done catering before joining the bakery nine years ago.
The two figure it takes five years to establish a business in Blacksburg, 10 years to make it truly stable. "Blacksburg's pretty picky," Iannaccone says. "We have a demanding clientele - well-educated, well-traveled, and they know what they like.
"Thirteen years in Blacksburg, that's really good."
The best part of running a small business is the lack of bureaucracy, they add. "We can have a new bread out within a week," Loflin says. "You test it, work on it, and it's out. No middle men. You have the control to create a product and then present it."
Some new breads that are about to get the go-ahead this summer: sun-dried tomato, salsa and French. To accommodate their fast-growing wholesale business, plans are also being made to expand the bakery's kitchen.
Dinner dishes are constantly being developed, too, for the regulars who like to stop by on their way home from work to see what the bakery's made that particular day - or has left-over from their catering surplus. Dinner specials include baked chicken breasts, lasagnas, quiches and pasta dishes.
"A lot of people call us when they have 14 things to make for a party, and they like to make seven and want us to do the other seven," Loflin says.
"In a way, we're an extension of people's kitchens."
Our Daily Bread, at 1317 S. Main St. in Blacksburg, is located in Blacksburg Square strip mall, behind Hardee's. Summer hours are 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. 953-2815.
by CNB