office interior designer in nagpur
♪ bells ♪ so my name is jill you're here at road culture conversations and today, we're going to be talking about having a mobile bakery in a small town, and we're gonna be talking with barbara you want to say hi? barbara: hello ♪ singing in french ♪ barbara has this bakery in little town of mountain air. and i wanted her to just tell you what she did, and why she did it -
but first let's just do a tiny bit of background. you're not from mountain air, are you? barbara: no, i'm not from mountain air originally jill: relaxbarbara: i'm cold. i know it's really cold outside![laughing] jill: cold - out - here barbara: i'm not originally from mountain air, no. i was born in texas and have lived all over the country spent the last 35 years,before moving here, in new york city. and, doing extensively traveling. i guess you'd say so that's it and here i am.my husband and i decided to -
find some - good place for grazing horses, and we thought that would be, new, mexico, haha? they have to live here to understand why that's funny. jill: they actually have seen pictures of my cow farm where there's no grass, so - barbara: yes, well there's grass when it rains so - jill: so i have to tell you my favorite barbara story. is what she didn't tell you used to do security computer work, right? barbara: yes. i was a security... computer security person for many years.
jill: and then she would fly to paris just to go shopping and did your love of baking get initiated in paris at all? barbara: oh yeah definitely europe for the european bakeries, of course living in new york - new york's a little bit different now, new york city, but many years ago, they had fabulous italian bakeries, and you know classic french bakeries, so there are very good bakeries now, but it's kind of a different class of things i guess. she's a breath of cosmopolitan urban air in a small town in a mobile unit so that's why we're talking about road, rural, and urban culture and the intersection so,
what made you want to put your bakery on wheels? so what is your bakery? what is the building? and why did you do it that way? barbara: okay, so the building is - was originally a mobile data center at los, alamos so it's probably radioactive except my -jill: another new mexico treasure - barbara: but i bought it because the building codes in new mexico are very very strict. i mean if you travel here you'll see a particular you travel rural. you'll see a lot of a substandard housing and my opinion is part of the problem is that the the codes are so strict that people do everything, including really really crazy things, to avoid them.and i had this like little dirt lot next to the
post office - which is very significant because, in a in this particular place it's this is a town of about 900 people, but it's services farms and ranches all around the area, so everybody comes to the post office. jill: it's the "in" spot on saturday morning. barbara: it's the "in" spot - the post office. jill: that's how exciting we are - barbara: because there's no mail delivery in town anyway and and also outside of town i think it's difficult - jill: you have to go pretty far out -barbara: you have to go pretty far... barbara: so everybody has po boxes.
so you can pretty much guarantee that everybody's gonna show up at the post office ♪ ... singing in french... ♪ jill: why did you decide to do wheels?what makes that different? barbara: well it's actually a vehicle, so it's not subject to code. jill: a very important point. barbara: and i think you see across the country barbara: there's a lot of people doing trailers for exactly the same reason you can put one up much much less expensively and i'm not you know i'm not against building codes building codes are great, and we looked at the structure. the structure is government steel
so i mean it's strong jill: radioactive steel. barbara: radioactive steel, yes. jill: important thing, what happens when you want to sell? barbara: oh well, you know actually i could sell it and they could just drive it off. jill: which is very important which is why i love having my house in a tiny box on wheels barbara: or i could drive it off to the ranch and go bake over there and be happy too so -
jill: well that may be and good someday plan - barbara: i have to leave the arbor though i like the arbor a lot jill: so the next question i want to ask you is why did you start a business in a small town? because there's challenges here with our 900 very diverse people. barbara: well, i started baking bread because new mexico is not a bread state it's a basically a tortilla state you can find tortillas and things that are called bread [jill laughs] barbara: but don't - if you're anywhere else, they don't look like bread!
jill:the squishy stuff in the grocery store that never goes bad, yeah barbara: i'm not saying there aren't some good bakeries but they're few and far between it is very difficult to find good bread in a rural area almost possible jill: they've seen me make my sourdough bread. i've actually kind of mastered sourdough bread barbara: i may be doing a class on baking bread at home jill: yeah? barbara: 'cuz i can't actually bake enough bread here. jill: bread sells out. barbara: so if people could start doing their basic daily bread at home
i could do some fancy breads or something. jill: she's very good, very good. jill: so basically, you love to bake?barbara: oh yeah. barbara: so, i started making baking bread -jill: even though i think she's crazy - jill: it's hard - it's a hard business. barbara: oh, yeah, it's a very hard business, but i kind of got suckered into it because i was baking bread for myself, and then i thought well, i'll just sell some bread at the farmers market and that really took off - jill: which is right next door in the parking, lot - barbara: yeah -
so and then i realized that when you start baking bread in your house you're gonna have flour everywhere flour on everything everywhere jill: along with the dirt and the dust from the wind barbara: so i started planning on how to get - not be baking in my house and at the time this little 14 by -this lot is 14 feet by a hundred feet, is really narrow, but right next to the post office barbara: it became available, so i thought well, i'll just open a little bread bakery jill: and here we are barbara: and here we are but -jill: how many years now?
barbara: i think this is our fourth or fifth year...i don't exactly.jill: okay. jill: you guys both from mountain air? customers: no we're not, jill: where are you from? customers: we are from rio rancho jill: then you drove up for here? customers: yes, absolutely. jill: thank you for supporting mountain air. barbara has the good stuff doesn't she? customer: yes, it is the best. customer: it is the only reason we come here.
jill: do you want to say"happy holidays and merry christmas"? customer: happy holidays and merry christmas!customer:merry christmas. barbara: well i wasn't expecting all the challenges because i didn't expect to be doing this i thought i would just be baking bread. so don't ever tell people you're just gonna bake bread because if they find out you can make things or you do breads we do sweets -jill: and really good at it. that's the other problem. barbara: we do - um - also, do dinners and when it's warm enough to eat out here, which isn't right now. - jill: sorry, we're almost done, so what is one piece of advice you would give somebody in a mobile or small town advice
jill: looking back one thingbarbara: the biggest problem is staffing. jill: oh, and that was including me for awhile. barbara: small businesses have a have a lot of issues and staffing is one of them and and the cost of taxation on wages. jill: new mexico's bad. barbara: immense, just immense, and then you feel really guilty because you're paying your employees like minimum wage and the government's, you know, taxing use telling you there not - jill: and the last thing, what is your favorite thing to bake? barbara: my favorite thing to bake?jill: your favorite thing -
barbara: breads! of course.jill: and what's your favorite bread? barbara: oh! not mine! my favorite bread would be in paris! jill: maybe - maybe we can do the next conversation in paris barbara: sitting with a glass of wine and classic baguette. - jill: ok, everybody in favor of going to paris. barbara: i don't have a steam injected oven so the the the french are definitely know what they're doing with baking bread. jill: that is one of my favorite memories is when i went to france as i stayed in paris in was i forget what it was called it was basically students from all over the world and somehow miraculously in the morning big bags of baguettes
which show up every morning. barbara: i know, when they were really cheap because you get french - french baker's here and they can't believe what americans would pay for a baguette because then that's like a glass of water you know it's since the french revolution when they chopped off everybody's head because they didn't have bread! now they have bread! jill: you just demonetized my video. thank you barbara: oh, no. jill: it's just - kidding - well, they will, but that's ok, alright - so, were are we at? jill: and we're actually not too bad
time wise -barbara: oh good, okay jill: i want to say thank you. thank you barbara for sharing this time with me barbara: thank you jill.thank you folks, jill: and we will see you next time barbara: bye!