Breaking Bread

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Stephen Robinson is a reminder that you can seize opportunities, and they can change your life. 

In 2020, Stephen was working full-time at Cheddar, selling digital ads and branded content. On the side, he had a hobby he’d enjoyed since growing up in Seattle: baking sourdough.

When the pandemic hit — like many people — he started baking more bread at home. He and his family were sheltering out on Long Island and he started selling some of his bread at farm stands in the Hamptons. 

One day a chef from Topping Rose House, a Jean-Georges restaurant, passed by and asked if he could deliver 100 baguettes for a July 4th event. Up until that point Stephen had never baked more than half a dozen loaves at a time. But he said yes, rented a kitchen, and figured it out. 

He began pitching restaurants and wineries around the Hamptons., writing cold emails and sending Instagram messages. He kept his day job for almost four years, working at night to build out Newlight Breadworks. Earlier this year he went all in on bread.

Since then, Newlight has moved into a 20,000 square foot facility in the Bronx and scaled to serve over 200 clients with nationwide distribution. Top accounts include Tao Group Hospitality, Two Hands, Westville Restaurant Group, ALIDORO, The Grey Dog, Mohegan Sun and Wish You Were Here Group (Ruby’s Cafe & Dudley’s).

The business is benefitting in part from growing demand among Americans for more sophisticated, artisanal bread that wasn’t available from many of the older, family run bread manufacturers. He explained making sourdough is particularly challenging in the Northeast because of the changing seasons and fluctuations in temperature and humidity. 

Stephen said his efforts to reach out to customers directly has also been a factor in spurring growth. Many have not heard from their supplier in years and appreciated his reaching out. 

Stephen bootstrapped the business with $100K from friends and family and has layered in state grants and nonprofit loans. It was a slow, steady, cash-flow-first build.

Now, he’s expanding outside the Northeast. He has a distributor in Dallas–Fort Worth and a new program with the Two Hands restaurant group in Nashville. 

An operation that began with half a dozen loaves is now several thousand a day and it all started because he was ready to seize an opportunity that appeared one day.

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BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

PRODUCT DESIGN: Product design is often underestimated. This post makes the case Netflix won because of superior design that made it so easy to use.

WAYMO IS COMING FOR THE SUBURBS: VC Sam Lessin’s take on how automated car service Waymo is that it will have its biggest impact on the suburbs as it reduces the need for parents to drive their kids everywhere.

DANERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Research reminding us that TikTok specifically and probably social media in general is hazardous to our health

BILL GATES & MICROSOFT: A reminder that Bill Gates and Paul Allen were absolutely hardcore when they were building Microsoft.

SOCIAL MEDIA ISN’T SOCIAL IS IT: Derek Thompson wrote a fascinating essay about how all social media is inexorably turning into television. He notes only a fraction of the time is involved in being connected with friends.

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