Business Spotlight: The Artisan's Oven

Owner: Craig Crosby

Founded: May 2006

Address: 1832 S. Ingram Mill Road, Springfield, MO 65804

Phone: (417) 885-5030

E-mail: cccrosby@gmail.com

Products: Artisan breads, quiches, cookies, pies and cakes

Employees: 4

2007 Revenues: $100,000

By 12:30 p.m. on a rainy Saturday, the bread racks at The Artisan’s Oven bakery held exactly four loaves of bread: one San Francisco sourdough, two loaves of pain de mais – a cornmeal and olive oil bread – and one focaccia.

“Well, we had a full rack this morning,” owner Craig Crosby says, before explaining that many of his customers know to come in early for the best bread selection.

Almost on cue, a customer walks in. “Oh no,” she says, “I didn’t get here early enough – again.”

The customer buys the sourdough loaf and a sampling of cookies from the gleaming pastry case.

Since The Artisan’s Oven opened less than two years ago, it has inspired this type of loyalty among its walk-in customers, who say they are drawn to the European-style bakery’s quality.

Baker’s secret

Crosby, who bought The Artisan’s Oven from his sister four months ago, wants to take it one step further. In the coming year, he hopes to build on the reputation for quality to expand the bakery’s wholesale clientele.

Crosby plans to do that based exclusively on word-of-mouth advertising, which is all he and his sister have used so far; some might say to an extreme – “The Artisan’s Oven” signage is absent on the bakery’s marquee. And Crosby has no plans to post the name above his storefront.

“I’ve thought about what circumstances would make me need to,” he says. “For now, I don’t need to.”

The Artisan’s Oven is anonymously squeezed between a Subway sandwich shop and a Chinese restaurant just off East Sunshine Street.

“I tried to find it a couple of times,” says customer Art Spisak, who was won over after tasting The Artisan’s Oven’s bread at a friend’s house. “Eventually, my friends told me, ‘Yes, it’s really there.’ And I tried again.”

Spisak, a professor at Missouri State University, finally found it at about 12:30 p.m. only to discover that Crosby had exactly two loaves of pain de mais and one foccacia left.

Food and family

Craig Crosby’s sister, Kerry Crosby, opened the bakery in May 2006. Craig Crosby, who has worked in food service for more than 20 years, took over four months ago when Kerry Crosby took a managerial position at The Furniture Broker.

A family connection goes deeper when considering that the bakery’s cookies are the work of Crosby’s other sister, Kim Crosby, and Crosby’s father often comes in to measure dry ingredients for the breads.

To top it off, Crosby’s mother is the inspiration behind it all.

“We grew up eating really well. We were just very well-fed,” Craig Crosby notes. “But not in quantity, in quality.”

And, he adds, the bakery “is the best thing that’s happened to our family because I see everybody every day.”

Crosby learned the baking trade at Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Ore., where he graduated in 1996. Corporate jobs landed him at Noble and as chef at College of the Ozarks’ Keeter Center and Chateau on the Lake Resort.

Crosby says a baker’s key is ingredients, and he claims to take no shortcuts.

“We probably spend as much money as can be spent on ingredients,” he says, noting that about a quarter of operating costs go toward ingredients.

In other words, it’s butter, not margarine; sea salt, not iodized; extra virgin olive oil, Belgian chocolate and so forth.

Wholesale balancing act

Crosby says he has an eye on revenue growth while maintaining product quality. He knows it’s a delicate balancing act.

“Really high volume places can’t get away with what we do here,” Crosby says, adding that revenues in 2006 were about $85,000, and they grew to $100,000 in 2007.

Crosby would like to see them reach $185,000.

“That’s not going to happen this year,” he says. “But by the end of the year, I’d like to be on that track. Most of that will probably come from wholesale.”

In industry publications, Crosby has read that bakeries often earn up to 75 percent of revenues via wholesale business. Crosby’s customer breakdown is 70 percent walk-in and 30 percent wholesale.

Wholesale customers include The Brown Derby Wine Center, which carries his baguettes on weekends, and The Coffee Ethic, a coffee shop in downtown Springfield that carries his cookies and other sweets.

“For us, it’s been a plus because it’s someone local,” says coffee shop co-owner Jim Hamilton, adding that quite a few customers are aware of The Artisan’s Oven and are pleasantly surprised to learn The Coffee Ethic sells its treats.

Wanda and Lloyd Meacheam would fit in that category. The Meacheams have been visiting The Artisan’s Oven about once a week since it opened. Lloyd Meacheam, a State Farm Insurance agent, snuck in just before 1 p.m., the bakery’s Saturday closing time, and ordered a bunch of cookies.

“Looks like I cleaned out your cookies,” Meacheam says with a chuckle.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Crosby answers, before closing up shop with two loaves left on the bread rack and a raided pastry case.