Today we’d like to introduce you to Jackie and Andy King.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jackie and Andy. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Andy and I met at culinary school and then had our eyes set on working in Portland, ME at the Standard Baking Company. We worked there for over three years. During that time we got married and had our first child. At that point we decided to move down to the North Shore of Boston to open our own artisan bakery. I am originally from the North Shore and I knew there was no bakery like the one we were trying to open. It was also really important to have family support as we jumped into this demanding business! We located a space in Salem, MA in the downtown area and constructed our bakery. From locating the space to getting our bakery open took 6 months. We opened in June of 2006 with just Andy and me as the only bakers and five retail employees to serve our customers. Over the past 12 years we have grown our business from those 5 employees to 42 employees.
We run both a retail and wholesale business making and serving traditional European style breads such as baguettes, sourdough, ciabatta, whole wheats, as well as hand rolled croissants, scones, muffins, cookies, and rustic desserts with local produce.
In August of 2017 we completed our first major expansion project. We opened s 7500 square foot baking production space, also in Salem, and a second retail location on site.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It’s less of a road than cutting your way through the forest! Going from simply bakers to running a bakery was such an enormous change. The entire scope of your responsibility goes from the task at hand – bake bake bake – to employees, facilities management, marketing, and everything else under the sun. That was something that took some getting used to. Now, with our recent expansion, we’re up to over 40 employees, and two locations, we feel like we’re opening the bakery all over again!
Honestly, the best thing we’ve done is try to surround ourselves with great employees who understand our mission and business. When you have a core group whom you trust to help you develop products, schedules, and run the bakery when you are away, life becomes a lot easier. Or, at least, you have more people who will hear you out and help when you’re having a tough day.
Please tell us about A&J King Artisan Bakers.
We pride ourselves on our technique, our schedules, and the quality of our ingredients. That’s all a great bakery is, really, a combination of those three things – once you apply great technique to amazing ingredients and put them into a workable baking schedule, you can’t help but turn out good product. It’s tougher than it looks, since we work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but our staff’s commitment to our craft is another one of those things we can’t say too much about. Our employees work very hard at some crazy hours. They’re a tight-knit group, and we love the working environment that has emerged over the past 12 years. Work hard, work smart, have fun,
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Honestly, we probably would have charged a little more for some items – we spent years slowly raising prices on some of our more expensive to produce items just to get our food cost under control! But we were terrified about what we were doing and the potential response that we tried to keep prices as low as possible. It’s a double edged sword, really, but we spent years hearing people whisper across the counter “Your stuff is really cheap!”
Believe it or not, it’s a really different environment today that it was 12 years ago in the baking world. There’s more of a stress on whole grains, local grain economies are popping up, and the infrastructure for receiving local produce has steadily gotten better…I think we did pretty well for a couple of kids not knowing what they’re doing back then!
Contact Info:
- Address: 139 Boston Street OR 48 Central Street
Salem, MA 01970 - Website: www.ajkingbakery.com
- Phone: (978) 224-7978
- Email: info@ajkingbakery.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/ajkingbakery
- Facebook: facebook.com/ajkingbakery
- Twitter: @anjkingbakery
Image Credit:
Andy King
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