THANK YOU FOR YOUR GRACE
Hey guys - it's been super busy this week...We apologize for the inconvenience any of you may have experienced and thank you for your grace. We hope to be opening our new facility in a year which will allow us to vastly increase production. In fact, we're in Irvine on a Sunday afternoon as we type this, running tests on production equipment.
If you want to help us make this happen, increasing production isn't for the faint of heart - the equipment cost alone is in the millions. We'll be re-opening our equity raise soon! More details on that below.
We highly recommend a pre-order and they're open for this week NOW! Have a pre-order? Can't find a parking spot? No problem. Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
PS - We want to extend our gratitude to the IZOLA front of house team and our Assistant General Manager Jeff. They are on the front lines when we get hit hard like this and the IZOLA team has pulled out all the stops this week. Particularly on Friday when we had one of our biggest Fridays ever and the team was down by a third, running on a skeleton crew that worked overtime to bring joy to the IZOLA community. Then it extended into Saturday....then again on Sunday....and they kept going strong. I imagine they are absolutely exhausted - we hope you rest up, charge power. Thank you for your passion, hard work, and perseverance.
PARKING AT IZOLA
We know parking downtown can get tricky. If you have a pre-order, and can't find a parking spot? No problem. Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
If you'd like to head upstairs and join us in the bakeshop (we'd love to see ya!!), please make sure to feed the meter, and do not park in the yellow zone (unless it's Sunday!). You will get a ticket. The yellow loading zone is for commercial vehicles only.
If you'd love for us to have a parking lot one day - read on! Our new facility in City Heights will have our very own parking lot. WOOT WOOT! Help make IZOLA Main happen and join us for an upcoming investor conversation to learn more.
PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT TEST #2
Many of you read about our recent adventures in the Netherlands as we traveled to the headquarters of Rademaker to test our sourdough and croissants on their Radini line. This weekend we are back at Rheon, at their domestic headquarters in Irvine to do the same.
We tested two different methods on our sourdough and will be baking them out tomorrow. Below is our sourdough being shaped using a punch rounder. The other method we tested was rolling our dough, similar to how we roll a croissant. Currently of the final shaping is done by hand by our lean and mean 2 person sourdough team.
Today we've been on the production line at Orange Bakery - a full production facility in Irvine. We are here to test our croissant recipe on their equipment. Below you can see our Beurre D'Isigny butter being enveloped by our croissant dough. The machine pipes the butter directly onto the dough, then two arm help to fold the dough over. This is the first step to the laminating process.
The current process to prep for this first lamination step starts with the Dojo team unwrapping each 1 kilo block of butter and sandwiching them between parchment, just like the leaning tower of butter you see below. Then each pack goes on our sheeter to be flattened into the exact dimensions of a full sheet size pan.
The team then hand wraps each sheet for use later in the week. This entire process takes about 5 minutes per kilo of butter and at well over 100 kilos needed each week, that's over a full shift of labor. With a butter extruder, we unwrap 10 kilo blocks of butter, place them on a conveyer belt, and we're done - from 5 minutes to literally seconds!
That's a full shift of labor that the team can then focus their energies on tasks requiring a human touch. And with zero risk to quality, in fact, we will actually be able to achieve a more consistent lamination with this mechanized process.
We'll have more to report on next week after we finish out our visit here at Rheon and head home. Test bakes happen tomorrow! In the meantime, I'm trying to sneak in a few minutes of rest here and there, these test days are long!
IZOLA INVESTOR CONVERSATIONS
Our equity raise will be re-opening soon! If you've been curious about our equity raise and why over 200 of the IZOLA community have joined us to become part owners in IZOLA, join us online this Tuesday March 14.
Jenny and I will share with you our plans for the next several years - from increasing production so it's easier for you to grab a croissant or place a pre-order, to moving to a space on the ground floor WITH parking, when we'll be opening up an IZOLA Bread Cafe in your neighborhood, and how we plan on bringing 20 new jobs to City Heights.
Sit back in the comfort of your own home as we share, answer questions and have a conversation with you and other interested members of the IZOLA community.
We're ecstatic that we've already raised over $1M to date, but it's not enough. Find out why!
Register below, or sign up to get added to our Investor Interest list to be the first to hear when we re-open our equity raise (coming soon!).
GRATITUDE
Many of you have seen the Gratitude Journal that lives at the IZOLA bakeshop. We love reading the warm, loving, sometimes heart-wrenching messages that the IZOLA family leaves. It's on the toughest days that a practice of gratitude helps carry us through our day - gratitude for each other, for this beautiful city we live in, for the passionate folks that surround us.
The gratitude journal is provided by Grateful Peoples, a non-profit, that with the community's help, has donated over 20,000 journals since 2017. With their Gratitude in the Classroom program, they are also sharing the practice of gratitude to the next generation. Want to brig Grateful Peoples to your school? Reach out to them today.
If you'd like to help Grateful Peoples spread gratitude, please donate below.
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY
Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is! Our line up is still coming together, but we publish the full schedule every Friday night in our Instagram Story. Head on over there and follow us now!
If you're a performer - a poet, a singer, a musician, and anything in between - and are interested in joining us on a Saturday morning, reach out to Jenny and she'll put you in contact with our musical directors! They'll be happy to provide more info, answer any questions you might have and perhaps book you for an upcoming Saturday!
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