Tacoma Baking Company: Rising to Challenges
The much-anticipated Tacoma Baking Company is set to open this weekend (January 4th-5th, 2020). They will offer a full range of baked goods that include artisanal loaves, pastries, desserts and delicious bagels. Their road to opening has been a bit bumpy with unanticipated construction delays and funding shortfalls but they are finally reaching the finish line and will be opening as Tacoma's most expansive, full-service baking operation. We caught up with co-owner, Jessica DeVisser to get some insights into their pathway towards opening and to find out more about their delicious baked goods and company goals.
Upon entering the bakery, there are excited employees buzzing about. Viewing the size of the operation and the seriousness of the baking facility it is clear that getting Tacoma Baking Company open was a tremendous undertaking.
"We got the building in the middle of 2016. We had about four different announcements when we thought we were gonna open. We discovered that you cannot get a bank loan if you're a startup food business like this; banks don't understand the operations of bakeries, so they'd either misclassify us or not look at us like we were viable. So, we bootstrapped the entire operation. Every gain that we made represented either an additional debt note that we took on, an additional loan from the community, or a new investor. This building was gutted: there was no HVAC system, no plumbing, and our joke used to be that the electrical system was enough for an Easy-Bake Oven and a hair dryer, but nothing else," said DeVisser.
Who knew it would take such a sizable amount of effort to create a place where folks can come to get fresh-baked goods, coffee, and hearty hot foods? The owners of Tacoma Baking Company persisted, though, with the backing of an enthusiastic Hilltop community, who were energized by the ethos behind this ambitious bakery and their goals to become a large and equitable local employer.
"My personal goal is to create 200 jobs," says Devisser. "We have created 60 jobs (so far) for this operation. We tried really hard to hire from Hilltop, which sometimes means hiring people with no experience, but we will teach them the craft (of baking)." The remaining 140 hires will hopefully come in the form florists for a forthcoming florist shop directly next door to Tacoma Baking Company and an exciting urban farm operation that will feed the TBC and its affiliates. The sky is the limit for this multi-faceted venture.
For as much work as they've put into finally getting Tacoma Baking Company off the ground, DeVisser says they couldn't have accomplished this without the continued support of the Tacoma community in general, and the Hilltop community in particular. New businesses moving into Hilltop are usually (and understandably) met with hesitation by residents, but people here saw potential in what Tacoma Baking
Company wanted to build.
“I don't think that we could do this business structure anywhere other than here, because the support that we've gotten from the city has been huge,” says DeVisser. “There were some days when we thought we were gonna quit, we didn't know where we were going to get money from. We literally had one of our angel investors walk in as we were about to vote to close down, and she said, I have $250,000 to invest, so who should I talk to?
“We thought it would take six months and $250,000, and instead it took three-and-a- half years and $2.5 million,” says DeVisser, “but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.”
Swing by Tacoma Baking Company this weekend to welcome them to the community and enjoy some wonderful baked goods.
1316 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Tacoma, WA 98405
Grand openings starts at 7AM Saturday and Sunday. Regular opening hours to follow.
