When our founder and CEO Tristaun LeClaire set out to develop a gluten-free bread his son could eat, it was a grueling process.
Sandy: Tristaun, I love when you share about some of the early challenges we faced. It’s so inspiring! A LOT of discipline was applied. Could you share with our readers some of the unexpected obstacles you met when you first set out?
Tristaun: You know… the process of developing a gluten-free bread that my family could eat, well… I knew it could work! I had seen it work! But I didn’t know how it worked. I had to push forward in faith. I knew there were answers even though I didn’t understand. After much trial and error and finally creating a recipe that was coming along beautifully, I bought equipment, I got financial help, rented a bakery… but the journey was more complex than I ever anticipated. I had been baking in my home kitchen up until then, but now in this new facility I found I couldn’t make the recipe work!!! There were big cavities in the bread and all sorts of craziness started happening! The process was long and hard. I was sleeping on the floor on a mat at the bakery to keep close tabs on the entire process from beginning to end. I would experiment with three different ways of working with the formula, and then would have to wait 6 hours. Afterwards, I had to slice and analyze each loaf. Everything seemed to be going wrong. I was freaking out because I didn’t expect all the disasters, and to be honest, there came a moment that I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it work! It was terrifying. But I decided to put my head down and keep persevering. In that process, I had other ah-ha moments, that would show me what was causing the failures. When I discovered them, all of a sudden, the lights turned on!
That’s a lot of tenacity! And we have so many stories like this. Perseverance and dedication have been weaved into every phase of the Simple Kneads story, and at this time, we are growing and expanding like never before. The demand for our product is high and as of a few days ago, 3000+ stores now carry our bread. But there is no way we could have done this without you!!! Thank you for going through this journey with us. We hope to continue delivering a clean and nutritious product you and your families can enjoy!
Happy Fall!
Sandy K Workman
SK Director of Brand Development
