By and large, Glenn Dahl was satisfied with the way the business was going.
“We had a nice stable little bakery,” he said. “We were growing at 10 percent or 15 percent a year.”
But he could see a problem on the horizon. He’d go to Whole Foods and New Seasons and watch customers in the bread aisle. Younger shoppers didn’t touch the Nature Bake loaves.
“The vast majority of our customers were older, which meant eventually we wouldn’t have any customers if I didn’t get some younger ones,” he said.
In the meantime, Glenn had his prodigal brother to cope with.
When Dave Dahl emerged from prison in December 2004, Glenn gave him a job with the thought, he said, that if there was any chance to get his brother back, he should try.
“I always needed late night bakers. I could start him up part time. In my mind it was: ‘Let’s see how he reacts in the real world before I get too heavily committed to this.’
“I forgave him pretty early on during his prison term. But there’s a big difference between forgiving him and learning to trust him again,” Glenn said.
Dave Dahl could tell his brother hadn’t forgotten the past. “He was still trying to feel me out to see if I was going to be OK, or if I was going to destroy his company,” he said.
This time around, though, Dave worked hard. And he did what he said he was going to do. He began to earn his brother’s trust.
“Slowly over the first year after he got out, the trust was coming back,” Glenn Dahl said. “And there wasn’t very much of a chance, if any chance at all, that he was going to stab me in the back.”
So Glenn asked his brother to figure out what bread would appeal to younger shoppers.
“I thought it would be great for him to have a project that he could call his own, and he would work his way back into the business,” Glenn said. Read More
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