Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Raposa.
Laura, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Rhode Island in a family that owns a large bakery wholesale supply business serving southern New England. I have a lifetime of experience watching how successful bakeries worked and why others failed.
For 30 years I worked at the Boston Herald. For more than 20 years, I was one-half of “The Inside Track,” one of Boston’s best-known newspaper columns. My job – that also included stints on TV and radio — brought me in close contact with the city’s brightest culinary stars and the people who marketed their businesses.
While a columnist at the Herald, I also operated a small catering business. After leaving the newspaper in 2013, I worked briefly at Flour Bakery & Café, Boston’s most successful multi-bakery business. Truthfully, I never wanted to leave! I didn’t shed a tear when I left the Herald after 30 years but cried like a baby after my stint at Flour.
In my quest to have a “shadow career,” I attended many instructional programs and “boot camps” at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. and King Arthur Flour’s Baking Education Center in Norwich, VT. I also consulted on opening a gluten-free bakery on the South Coast.
My husband and I opened The Foodsmith, a scratch bakery and lunch “boutique” in August of 2015. I have never worked so hard. Ever. But it’s paid off.
We have developed quite a local following in Duxbury and enjoy our role in the community. Recently, we’ve prepared 100 lunches for the Senior Center’s Daffodil Days festival and will soon bag up (artfully, of course) 200 lunches for the Garden Club’s bi-annual Garden Tour.
We have been blessed with an awesome staff. Betsey Hunter, our chief baker and decorator, has been with us since before we opened the doors. And Michaela Lake is so organized and creative, we look to her to keep us on schedule, as well as boost our presence on social media. Our corps of Duxbury High School-ers, who work on the weekends, are an impressive bunch — smart, focused and funny. We have developed a nice little Foodsmith family.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
A smooth road? Ha! This is New England. There are no smooth roads.
While we had a business plan and some idea how to run a bakery, this has been a learning-on-the-job effort. I chronicled Tom Brady’s love life for a living. What did I know about inventory control and payroll taxes? We had to build out the space, outfit it with equipment, deal with the town, find employees and vendors and get the doors open. Then, when the doors were open, how to keep people coming back.
Our biggest struggle came this past winter. The weather nearly killed business every weekend. Snowstorms left us without power some days. Our customers fled to the sun every chance they could — and who could blame them?
We were never so happy to see the sun.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Foodsmith is a throw-back. Everyone is greeted when they walk through the door. We remember that Bill doesn’t like raisins in his curried chicken salad, so a half pint is set aside for him before the golden raisins are added to the bowl. It’s that kind of place.
Barbara, who is 87 and describes herself as a trustee of the Foodsmith since she comes every day, had pneumonia this winter. Her lunch was delivered to her with an extra little treat or a cup of chicken soup.
Children and dogs reign supreme at the Foodsmith. We make it a point of remembering kids and what they like. As for the pooches, we have an Instagram hashtag #dogsofthefoodsmith. Because we love dogs. Our latest obsession is Sirk, the Duxbury Police Dept.’s new canine cop.
What were you like growing up?
I hated being a kid. I wanted to be an adult.
Contact Info:
- Address: 17 Standish Street
Duxbury, MA 02332 - Website: www.thefoodsmithduxbury.com
- Phone: 781-934-0134
- Email: thefoodsmithduxbury@gmail.com
- Instagram: @thefoodsmithduxbury
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefoodsmithduxbury/
- Twitter: @FoodsmithDUX
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-foodsmith-duxbury
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