Josh Allen is the president of Companion. Not Companion Baking. The name’s recently changed in conjunction with the company’s current growth spurt. “Now it’s just Companion,” Allen said. “As we expand the concept and broaden who we are, we’re moving forward.” Along with the new name and the new logo, Companion is opening two new locations, allowing Allen to “deepen the connection” between his company and his customers.
What is your vision for the company? What we were always trying to do from the beginning in ’93, when we unloaded the first oven, was change the dialogue about food in St. Louis. Initially, that was bread. As we continue to grow and expand, we want to continue to do that. My inspiration now is to try to create gathering places – places to give people a new or different experience in which to relate to each other and to food.
So you’ll have three locations: Clayton, which is the existing location, Ladue and the Central West End. Why did you pick those locations? They are all neighborhoods. They’re all closely associated with the communities that surround them. We want to be part of that fabric of a community.
What are the opening dates? We’re hoping that we’re open the first week of November in the Central West End and around Thanksgiving in Ladue.
Are you looking to become a chain? No. We are not developing a franchise plan. The biggest reason to open three locations is to be able to have connections with the community more than from the back of a truck to the back of a restaurant.
Will you bake at the cafés or just the South City bakehouse? Almost all the bread that we use for our sandwiches will be baked fresh every day in all of those locations. … We’ll have open kitchens in every environment. We’ll finish and decorate cakes in every location, actually be in the windows of all of the locations. We want to return to a working bakery window that doesn’t exist any more.
Is the food going to be the same in your new locations? Breakfast and lunch will be the same in all of the locations. We’re going to have expanded bakery offerings in the West End and Ladue, and in Clayton we’ll have that eventually as well. In the evening [at the Central West End location] we’re going to do an antipasti course and grilled bread – it’s the foundation of who we are, so a wonderful bread basket – and a number of spreads and really nice cheese. And then we’re going to do a small selection of boutique wines [and craft beers].
It’s a huge jump, going from one bakery-café and the wholesale business to three cafés and the wholesale business. We did open a wholesale bakery in Kansas City and closed it, so I’m not afraid of failing. I’m nervous, not because of the failure part, but I have such a great grasp on what I want Companion to be, so now, internally, that’s the pressure. In the West End, because of the evening and the broader concept, I want that to be the personification of the whole brand. So can we deliver on that? Can the physicality of the space deliver? Can the service deliver? The quality of the food? Can we source the products we want? Can we maintain it? It’s a 16- or 17-hour day instead of an eight-hour day. It’s a lot more opportunity to create raving fans and a lot more opportunity to screw it up.
How are you going to maintain quality? It’s easier to teach folks to make bread from scratch in each location than it is to teach people to make thousands and thousands of baguettes in one location. We want to train bakers, we don’t want just mixers. We have people that take tremendous pride in [their work] because they own the process. They come in at 3 a.m. and open a bag of flour and they make bread as opposed to making a portion of the bread. … We have people that are interested in maintaining quality across the company. Same thing with the cake decorators. Same thing with the folks making sandwiches. We don’t want a commissary approach to anything.
What do you love about baking bread? You either love it or you run screaming. Like any restaurant job, it’s hot, it’s dirty, the hours suck. … Going in at 8 o’clock at night and at 6 o’clock in the morning pulling out the first loaves and recognizing that we did this all from scratch – and leaving and knowing that you have to do it all over again. And the bread, because it has the fermentation steps to it – if you miscook a steak in a restaurant, you put another steak on and people are five or six minutes late getting their food. If we blow a batch of bread, it’s eight to 36 hours later that we can fix the problem.
And now it’s more than bread. We’re putting pressure on ourselves to a certain degree because, now, your experience of Companion is relative to a lot of things, not just the bread. But that’s the challenge and that’s where the excitement is: … Make it not just about bread, but about gathering and connectedness.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2007.