Quality Control

Running a bakery that makes just one item -- a Bundt-shaped pound cake -- is not as simple as it might sound. Janie Clapp, a baker by training, has been operating Janie’s Cakes since 1987 in Tyler, Texas. Daughter Katherine Crow became her official business partner 10 years ago. They make 26,000 poundcakes a year, in a variety of sizes with different fillings, enjoying busy seasons like the holidays and Mother’s Day. Annual revenue is $750,000. But the tricky part, which might not be obvious to, say, the local Texan who scarfs down a slice of cake, is securing the same premium ingredients on a consistent basis. All the cakes are made with farm-fresh eggs, creamery butter and real cane sugar, and filled with things like rich buttercream icing or topped with toasted pecans. “We are very particular about our ingredients,” Clapp says. “My product tastes a certain way and bakes a certain way -- I’m not willing to fudge.” In recent years, maintaining Janie’s Cakes’ baking essentials has been impacted by everything from severe weather to factory explosions. “Unexpected surprises add another level of challenge in terms of maintaining our own standards,” Crow says. Stockpiling ‘Liquid Gold’ Case in point: Vanilla. A world away from East Texas, farmers on the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa produce an estimated 80% of the world’s supply of vanilla. A cyclone tore through the island in 2017, uprooting vines and triggering a sudden increase in the spice’s price. “All of a sudden it goes from a hundred and something dollars to $400 a gallon,” Clapp recalls. Clapp and Crow say they were almost instantly notified about the cyclone situation from their supplier. After that, it was all-hands-on-deck in Tyler. “Whatever our priorities at the bakeries were,” Crow says, “it immediately went into a halt.” They quickly started researching other companies that sold the same type of all-natural vanilla in volume, hoping to secure gallons of the spice at fair market value, before prices rose. They succeeded. “When the vanilla bust came, we had purchased enough vanilla to get us through 14 months of production,” Crow says. “We sat on it.” In the months that followed, the two would joke “‘we need a safe -- this liquid gold is nerve-wracking!’” As a baker, Clapp says she was completely unwilling to use much cheaper artificial vanilla. “No, no, no,” she says. (Her preferred brand is Nielsen-Massey, which she says is “fabulous.”) And as a business, Crow adds that Janie’s Kitchen wanted to maintain prices. If the cost of your supplies soars, “you either eat the cost or raise the price -- and those are two areas we hope to avoid,” she says. Weathering the Storms Throughout the years, Clapp and Crow have weathered other storms, both literally and figuratively. In recent memory, a Louisiana factory exploded while making powdered sugar (it’s highly combustible), triggering a shortage that they’re still dealing with. The price of butter goes up and down, as does cocoa, whose production is impacted by drought and warming climates. Flour, fortunately, remains somewhat consistent. Crow handles forecasting for Janie’s Kitchen, generally using the slower summer months to analyze reports from the company’s database. She then alerts suppliers as to how much they’ll need of a certain product, per month. She’s currently looking ahead to the Christmas holiday season. “All that information can be transferred to our vendors, so we all have expectations and guidelines,” she says. Clapp and Crow says aspiring entrepreneurs in the food business should work with experienced suppliers who can help manage sudden shortages or temporary price increases. “Typically, we work with companies that have really great sales reps or companies that really care about customer service,” Crow says. They use bigger suppliers like Ben E. Keith and a number of smaller vendors. “They immediately inform us and notify us, because they know how important it is to us to maintain the quality.” While vendors are “helping us look for Plans C, D and E, we do our own experiments,” Crow says. For instance, they recently tried making pound cakes using powdered sugar made from beets, which some bakers have converted to. It didn’t pass muster. “The flavor is different,” Clapp says. “I’ll be so glad when this plant is back up.” After so many years in the food business, Clapp is pragmatic about dealing with shortages. “So much of life is problem solving,” she says. When something like a vanilla bust happens, “you get busy and solve the problem."

Quality Control

This Texas Bakery Makes 26,000 Poundcakes a Year – and Survived a Vanilla Bust

The Story Exchange

Quality Control

This Texas Bakery Makes 26,000 Poundcakes a Year – and Survived a Vanilla Bust

The Story Exchange

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