The staff of their lives
A former Washington power couple leave the fast lane to bake bread. It means hard work and long hours. But it's their life now.
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer
Published December 12, 2003
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[Times photo: Fraser Hale]
Keri Eisenbeis, left, and Michael Matthews get a good workout of their arm muscles as they knead dough in their Great Harvest Bread Co. store on S Howard Avenue. The couple left behind politically oriented jobs in Washington to become bakers in South Tampa.
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SOUTH TAMPA - Michael Matthews sits in bed, eyes open. His wife lies beside him, asleep. It's about 3:30 a.m.
Matthews, 35, rises for work. He slips on his clogs, streaked white from flour.
It's time to make the bread.
Arriving at work, he ties an apron around his waist. Later, he places a hat on his head. His wife, Keri Eisenbeis, made the hat. Decorated with red and green stripes, it says "Sweet thing."
The baker's hat is on. The transformation is complete.
At 3:45 a.m. lights flicker on at the Great Harvest Bread Co. on S Howard Avenue. For every moment, a schedule is set.
The times are written on a board on the wall.
4:30 - do this.
4:45 - do that.
5:00 - time for another thing.
There's a task for 5:05, 5:15, 5:30, 5:45, 6 a.m., and so on.
All of the assignments are written in a code, hieroglyphics that, once unraveled, will disclose trade secrets of the sweet, soft bread.
There's no time to explain those codes.
Now, right now, the wheat must be milled. The flour must be mixed. The cheddar cheese and Granny Smith apple chunks must be blended. The mixture must be kneaded. The oven must be set.
It's time to make the bread.
* * *
A thousand miles away in Washington, D.C., the day is starting too. People are putting on their blue suits and red ties. Lines form at the Metro. Even before dawn, the Beltway is jammed.
Those were the mornings that Michael and Keri left behind.
The two were young and smart and ready to change the world. Keri had worked in the Clinton White House. She also had done research for a former congressman at the Brookings Institute, and worked in South Africa after apartheid. Her job with the U.S. Agency for International Development had taken her to Peru, Indonesia, East Timor, the Czech Republic, Nigeria and more.
Michael was a student of South Africa, too. He also had worked at the Brookings Institute. He had worked in 50 countries in Africa, on economic development projects for a Washington-based firm.
They had their first drink at the Fox and Hound, a watering hole in Dupont Circle.
They were the quintessential, upwardly mobile, politically aware Washington couple. They owned a home in Alexandria, inside the Beltway, in a location that home buyers covet. You could walk to the Metro.
Last year, they did something simple, yet excruciatingly hard. They gave it up. They started everything over. They decided to open a bread company.
When they told other couples and co-workers in the Washington world, they got stares. Tampa?
But then co-workers would pull them aside in private.
"I'm so unhappy," one, then another, would say.
Keri and Michael were unfulfilled for the same reasons. They hated the stress. They hated the traffic. They hated Washington, which put so much value on prestige and political connections. They wanted out.
Other co-workers told Keri and Michael how they wanted to do it too. But they had kids, mortgages, responsibilities.
The couple just wanted what their friends, what everyone, wanted: a job that would fulfill them, but not consume them. A life.
"It's quite liberating," Keri says.
Who knew it would be this hard.
* * *
About 6:45 a.m., Michael peers into the 140-quart bowl of Apple Crunch bread dough in the industrial mixer.
By this point, he has worked three hours, milling the wheat and mixing gallons of flour. National Public Radio busies the background.
He sticks his finger in the dough. He pushes the sides. He's testing the texture, and listening for pockets of air.
"This is where the art comes in," he says.
So many factors are beyond his control. It's about 50 degrees outside, and temperature affects the dough.
Michael flips on the mixer for a few more minutes. Then he pushes the dough around. He stops, places his hand on his chin.
"I'm not happy with it," he says.
The clock is running.
Customers arrive in daylight at 7 a.m. The front door is unlocked.
Good enough.
At 7:35 a.m., Michael lifts a 140-quart ball of honey wheat dough and throws it into a container. A minute later, he opens the lid. The dough has a life of its own: It suddenly expands like a huge, snoring Santa Claus whose chest rises and falls.
Michael and three workers throw the dough on the kneading table. Rolling the dough into loaves looks like fun. But it taxes the body.
The forearms, the triceps and the shoulders feel the repetition.
Cut the dough.
Weigh the dough.
Grab the dough, fold it over.
Start again.
Grab, fold, grab.
Grab, fold, grab.
Again.
Once more.
Another time, with feeling.
They do this a dozen or so times for each loaf, hundreds of times before 300 loaves go into the oven in a day.
Thirty minutes later, Michael is lifting hot bread from the 12- by 12-foot oven, which is one-third the size of the couple's Davis Islands apartment. Each time a loaf comes open, he rings a bell.
"Bread out!" he yells, his baker's hat on his head.
The 35-year-old grins. He's a kid in a candy store.
About 9 a.m., Keri, 30, comes into the store. She usually arrives later so Michael can leave midday. She closes the store at 6 p.m.
Today, she's in earlier than usual. She needs to get on the phone to Montana.
A supplier there ships the red hard wheat berry the bakery uses in its mill. This type of wheat berry, grown near Great Falls, Mont., is high in protein and fiber. It's the best ingredient they can find, Keri says.
It's also expensive. The Montana company does not deliver this wheat berry to any other store in Florida. So the cost of shipping from Montana keeps going up, another $1,000 recently, Keri says.
"We are going to have to eat it," she says.
Sitting in a cubbyhole office in the back, Keri thinks about the problem. The law of supply and demand works against her baby bread company.
* * *
Keri and Michael had planned for everything. Of course, they had. If they could help South Africa transition from an apartheid regime to a democracy, then they could sell bread. Right?
They got the idea after eating at a Great Harvest Bread Co. in Alexandria, near their home. The company offers franchises to a few parties a year, although about 200 apply.
Once Michael learned about the idea, it was like a ball rolling downhill. Keri abandoned every other avenue. "It was like a laser beam," she says. They wanted to open in Tampa, a city they knew because Keri's mother lives here, in Avila. Great Harvest Bread Co. had no stores in Florida, so they would be the first.
They talked about the idea and planned for it so much, Keri had to set limits. They could not discuss bread at certain times. If either broke the rule, they would have to do push-ups or prepare breakfast in bed.
Months of preparation passed. Then, came the trip to Dillon, Mont.
Every franchisee had to visit Dillon, population 3,752, where Great Harvest began.
Keri and Michael flew from Washington to Detroit to Salt Lake City to Bozeman, Mont., and then drove two hours. A box of fresh bread and cookies awaited them at the hotel.
The company sets only a few rules: Every store must mill its own wheat, give out free slices of bread, and return a portion of profits to the community.
The cooperative spirit drew in Keri and Michael. They didn't want to work in a factory, selling just any kind of bread. They wanted to serve the community, even it was affluent South Tampa, not sub-Saharan Africa.
In Dillon, they interviewed with company officials, who operate out of an old Sears building. They screened the couple's finances, questioned their marketing plan, and assessed the strength of their marriage.
The power lunch took place over fajitas at the Dillon bowling alley. Afterward, they bowled. Dinner was at Papa T's, a pizza parlor and bar.
The offer came the next day. Then, the couple, who knew they would accept, spent five days camping in Yellowstone, savoring the beginning of something new.
* * *
It's now the first holiday season for Great Harvest Bread, which opened in August.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Keri slumps over slightly. She looks tired; she has been standing for hours, kneading dinner rolls.
She rubs her triceps.
So sore.
Financially, the holidays are a feast. Michael hears that the store sold more bread than any other Great Harvest in the country, except for one. Great news. But the two look spent.
"When you work for yourselves, you get to work your own hours," Michael says. "All 24."
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, the bakery is closed. But Michael and Keri spent all day there preparing Kentucky Bourbon Bread.
Monday, they sit on the couch in their apartment. They consider the friends they miss, the house they sold. "It is still hard," Keri says.
She rubs their dog, a tan mix named Willie Mae.
"It is taking more than what we expected," Keri says.
"It is taking a lot more," Michael says.
The couple set limits on bread talk in Tampa, just like back in the Beltway: No talking about Great Harvest in the bedroom. But, of course, Michael would inch toward the doorway and bring something up. Soon, the rule was being bent regularly.
Keri looks at Michael.
We need to enforce that rule, she says.
He nods.
They talk about what they have created. Keri has T-shirts in the store that include their motto: "Be loose and have fun." She laughs and waves her arms wildly when she finds that Ronda Wurster, 49, one of the store's workers, has sewn her a new baker's hat.
It's Monday, dusk. The orchestra of peaches and pinks and baby blues that perform in the Florida sky are on stage.
Soon, it will be night again. It will be 3:30 a.m. Michael will sit in bed, awake. It will be time to make the bread.
- Times Staff Writer David Karp can be reached at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com
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