Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Edah.
Hi Emily, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Emily Edah, owner and operator of Little’s Loaves. I have always been in the culinary industry. I knew both sides of the industry when it came to cooking and baking/desserts. The only thing I wasn’t familiar with was bread.
As a California local, I decided I needed to travel to New York, the culinary mecca of America, to really perfect my skills. After working in New York for a few years for a few world-renowned chefs, I came back to California and was presented with an opportunity to start a bread program at a previous restaurant that I was a pastry chef at. I jumped at the opportunity and dove right into teaching myself how to make Old World Sourdough bread.
After less than a year of making bread, my previous partner and I were approached by a local farmers market to be a bread vendor and start selling our baked goods. At this point, we decided to dive in, head first, to the entrepreneur world. We had no idea what we were doing but knew we could make it work because of how passionate we were about our sourdough product.
Between starting the business and selling at the market, I decided to do a 6 week-paid internship at a bread bakery in Copenhagen, Denmark. Being able to learn even more about the same style of bread I was making back home and honing my skills.
A month after my return, we debuted at the farmers market and haven’t stopped since.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Starting a business is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Lots of failures and learning from that failure. Our business started eight months prior to COVID. To say it’s been a hard road would be an understatement.
Once COVID hit, we knew there were going to be problems at the farmer’s markets we were selling at. We didn’t know what would happen, but we decided to adapt and change before anything DID change. Eventually, all pre-packaged vendors had to leave the markets for a short amount of time.
We decided to work ahead of what was happening and pull out of the farmers market for a short time prior to this happening and start selling our bread out of a loading dock behind a gym that I attended at the time. The gym owner was very gracious to offer this to us.
We would set up a “bread drive thru” twice a week at this gym, people would pull up to our bread table and we’d sell to them right out of their cars. Our lines were going all the way out of the parking lot and down the street for a while.
We sold bread there for about four months before returning to the markets.
This was one of our biggest hurdles.
Through this time, we learned to pivot during the unknown.
Once returning to the markets, our sales skyrocketed because of the customers we made with our bread drive-thru. To this day, we still have many of those customers.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Little’s Loaves ?
We are an old-world sourdough bread company.
All of our bread is sourdough based and is made from three ingredients: flour, water and salt. We use no preservatives and mostly organic ingredients.
We pride ourselves on quality. It is a two-day process to make our bread, and we long ferment it overnight to make it easily digestible and have a more sour taste. Our goal is to bring a quality loaf to everyone’s table where they are gathered to break bread together.
I’m most proud of our team and all the hurdles that we have overcome. Starting a business right before a pandemic and then making it through the pandemic and still growing to this day, I would say, is our biggest accomplishment.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Camping and cooking.
Contact Info:
- Website: littlesloaves.squarespace.com
- Instagram: @littlesloaves
