Sleepy Owl Bread
Joanne Toupin and Beau Burton opened Sleepy Owl Bread on Wall Street in 2013, with baked goods that highlight flavours of local ingredients, from prairie berry Danish pastries to round rustic loaves of whole wheat sourdough miche.
While Sleepy Owl’s night owl bakers create, the early bird gets the bread.
Q: How did Sleepy Owl Bread get its start?
A: We started by making bread for farmers’ markets. When we found this place, the rent was equal to what we would pay for the use of a commercial kitchen. There’s risk to starting a business, but we knew if a retail shop didn’t work out, we weren’t going to be in over our heads.
Q: What did you do before?
A: I worked at Tall Grass Prairie for five years. My husband and I worked together there and at Diversity Foods. Working together works for us!
Q: What are some of the challenges of owning and operating a local business?
A: We were lucky that we didn’t have to navigate the levels of bureaucracy new businesses often face to open, because the space was licensed as a bakery previously. We had to learn to fit in the back-end parts of the business, like bookkeeping, that we didn’t have to do in our previous roles. We also had to learn to prioritize our own health and happiness to balance life and business.
My dad owned a business and he’s very reassuring. He helps us understand that difficult things that we think are a big deal are just speed bumps, and every business owner will run into them.
Q: What are the highlights?
A: It’s a nice, calm place to bring our eight-year-old son and include him in what we do. He talks about the time when he’ll open his own Sleepy Owl.
Q: How has the business grown? Have you been able to keep up with demand?
A: Word of mouth is our number-one marketing tool, with social media a close second. We made connections early on when we had our bread at farmers’ markets, but we’ve also found suppliers for the local ingredients we need on Instagram, too!
When we started, we would bake 40 loaves of bread and 2 dozen pastries. Now we bake 200 loaves a day and 10 dozen pastries and still sell out. Calculating production is one of the hardest parts.
Q: What’s next for Sleepy Owl?
A: We’d like to expand our product line. It’s rewarding to make something that nourishes people. We have customers who say our long, slow-fermented sourdough is the only bread that they’re able to eat. It’s a gift to be able to provide it to them.
Photos by Mark Tabaquero
