 of staying young at heart. My name is Maria Mera. I'm your host and I'm also a financial advisor with Edward Jones. Today, very exciting episode. We have, we're bringing artisan breads, artisan and high quality breads brought and made with Aloha from Hokkaido. And for that, I'm bringing my guest and a very good friend, Alberto Fernández. He is the VP of operations with Brook Baker. Welcome and thank you very much for joining us, Alberto. Hi, thank you very much to you and a pleasure to be here. And for those who are listening to us already and thinking that our accents might be similar, I guess because we are both from Spain. Both Spanish. Yep. So Alberto, let's start from the beginning. What is Brook Baker? What are the difference and how do you define Brook Baker? So Brook Baker is a Japanese bakery from Hokkaido. It was born in 1977 by the chef, Takemura. He was a very passionate baker that used to bake very good Japanese high quality breads. And then he fell in love with European style bread. So he went to Germany, lived in Germany, learned the European style of baking. And then once he came back to his hometown in Sapporo, in Hokkaido, in the northernmost island of Japan, he created his own style of baking. He blended his own flowers. He utilized the Japanese techniques with the passion and the culture of bread that we have in Europe to create something unique. And that became very popular. And we came to Hawaii in 2011. Let's take one step at a time. So is that name Brook? Is that Japanese or does it sound Japanese to me? So the original name, the first name that the bakery had was Buruk, B-R-U-G, which is the name of a castle where he used to hang out a lot in Germany. They make a very delicious wine that inspired him, that he loved very much. And he wanted to make the bread that you can enjoy with wine. Not just the bread that you will eat with a sandwich, but the bread that you will sit with a nice, you know, cup of wine, a little bit of cheese, and you would enjoy. So he wanted to have a name that evoked those feelings, those memories from from those European bread. So he created a Buruk. And then when we came to Hawaii, the U-R-G became a R-U-G, so Brook. Nowadays, the Japan side of Buruk, it became also Brook after the Hawaiian side of the company. Okay, so how many stores are there in Japan and how many stores in Hawaii now? It's four in Japan and five in Hawaii. So where are the five ones in Hawaii? They are all in there. The Hawaii ones are two in Alamoana shopping mall, one downstairs, a mountain side. The other one is in the food court, the Lanaya at Alamoana. Then there is the Perich store uptown. There is one store in Manoa Marketplace and one store that that's the newest one that opened in Kahalamol, right behind Kahalamol. Best places. What store is the best selling store? Before the pandemic, the busiest store used to be the Lanaya at Alamoana that had a lot of traffic. It has a good combination of locals and visitors. But now without visitors, I think it will be a tie between the Lanaya and Kahala. Probably Kahala a little bit more right now. It's probably our busiest store. Is it more or it's more profitable? Oh, it's both. It has more traffic of a constant drop of local and regular customers that come for the daily bread. So a lot of loaves of bread are sold in Kahala. The Lanaya at Alamoana is more pastries and drinks. Somebody just working maybe on the go. They want to grab and go something healthy and you don't have something quicker than fast food but it's definitely healthier. It's made it slower, right? Yeah, and it's definitely delicious. Let's let's show a little video of what we are talking about to just give people a little bit of an image. I only smile when I see those those items there. I know that's a popular one. How many items do you or how do you call how many breads or how many items do you sell in the in the stores? Yes, we're busy. We sell actually over 70 kinds of bread, firstly made every day. So we have a lot of sweets, a lot of savouries. We make over 10 types of dough which is not so common. A lot of places they just make one or two types of dough in a range toppings. We just make from scratch different types of bread. Really that each topping requires a different texture and a different personality to the dough and we try to do as much as we can to please the customer. So you have different breads in different stores? Yes. How do you decide that? Majority of the bread like we have 80% of the breads that they are common and they are based of the common root of the Hokkaido bakeries like our you know stray loyal to our origins but we have very well you know skilled trained professional bakers and they are creative people. They are very proud of what they do. So we give them room to have a space to create new products to develop new ideas. Sometimes they have a new product in the market or it's a season for a special fruit so they want to make a jam and with that jam make a special fruit Danish or when we have seasonable items we let them a little bit experiment right like a try to have a our little R&D of local bakery to sometimes create new product that they were actually not even that we've never copied from anywhere before like we just try to have our own originals. So can you can you tell us what are your best items or your your most popular items? Depends on the location some customers like more or others have but there are some that they are very popular across all the store I would say like the dose of bread the toast bread it's a vegan bread sugar and dairy free and it's a little bit crispy very soft it has a lot of very pillowy crumb and that one is very popular across all the stores and um table is definitely a sausage roll maybe that's a part of the mix of the Japanese culture in American culture the hot dog culture means the Japanese arabic sausage and it's a crunchy kind of a snappy type of Japanese sausage with a soft bread and that's popular because adults like it kids like it it's very soft and sweets we have cute ones that have chocolate custard like the kuma chocolate that has like a cute bear face and um yeah I would those ones are the most popular ones I think that our images are not matching the the items that yours that that you're talking about but um that gives room for everybody to go to the closest location and try true very very it's almost sure something that it's personality right like with over 70 types of pastries so is there anything in hawai that is similar to uh brook or or um this is a unique concept well there are other bakeries there are Asian bakeries there have been also Japanese bakeries now some of them they close down uh other ones coming or planning to come hawaii is a special and difficult market for any kind of small food business and bakery has small margins it's not a like a big restaurant uh or like a franchise name so it's quite unique there is no other Japanese bakery that imports their flowers from Japan like we do like from Hokkaido at least like we are very specific and proud of you know bring up that Hokkaido value because Hokkaido it's a very a place well known for all Japanese to have some of the most exquisite food very flowers rice so we are in that sense we are quite unique but um there are other Asian bakeries that have somewhat similar but i don't see the i don't see that same yeah so you you don't really bring the products from Hokkaido what you know we just bring the the ingredients it's just a fresh row ingredient and we cook just locally everything locally made on the spot it just store makes for itself okay and i i sometimes i think we also have a video of the parmesan so you're you're connecting the european with the parmesan or the with the most Japanese and then make it Hawaiian maybe we can show that video too um if we have it uh and i keep smiling i keep smiling so um Alberto how many employees do you have and you were talking about how much you value good and uh but how how many employees do you do you have in hawaii we used to be close to a hundred people team before a pandemic now we are about a little bit more like 60 around that around that size so that's it it's pretty bad yeah are you are you already rehiring or thinking of maybe we are we are we are hiring we are hiring at some locations and um we are always looking for professional bakers that they are passionate about what they do and they are willing to learn the type of um techniques and baking techniques that we do and it's difficult to find that um type of um qualified people that um you know schedule is difficult starting at 4 a.m you have to wake up very early and it's very it's physically demanding because you have to really work fast based and we are hiring and always looking for you know passionate people that um they can always email us and we are more than happy that yeah i've interviewed them we'll make sure we'll give your your email at the end um so so how how does the process work do you um do you make all the um the items i keep saying items and the bread bread items and uh do you make them in the same place and then they get distributed to all the stores or no we don't do central kitchen because um that we notice that our type of dough that it's very delicate so that damages the quality of the product in the transportation because it's very hot you would have to keep it in banjus uh our savory this is all like between salt and this post between baked and disposed excuse me it only go four hours so there is no room for baking in a central kitchen delivering it and then trying to so we just do it keep it as fresh as possible and then once time is gone um we better bring a new batch just bake it in each store not that though everything is done from on each location try to have the that's why also we have the japanese side of blue doesn't have many people are surprised that we only have four bakeries in japan but our type of um idea and values doesn't scale so you don't gain efficiencies by growing more and more and more and you don't have a lower cost or it doesn't become easier because um each store it becomes a new place to create genuine breads right so we don't get benefits of a scale so we keep it smaller big enough to reach too many people and being able to import products but not as big as to lose touch with the customers and with the products okay so you wanted to make it very local also yes that's one of the points that being always focusing on the local repetitive or type of customer that become friends over the year um quick question before we go to the break um are the prices in how in hawaii the same as uh or to the taporo yeah could they be more or less the same we are some products are a little bit more expensive here because we have to import the flour they have it already available the rents are smaller in there um we are in major shopping malls with a lot of food traffic so all of those costs sometimes get reflected but we haven't changed much the prices since we opened so we compared to other food businesses that make the food ready available I think is not expensive compared to other similar type of products and size of food okay okay well let's leave it there for uh for now we're gonna go to a break and we'll be right back with our guest today Alberto Fernández from Brooke Bakery welcome back everybody um again I'm with Alberto Fernández with the VP of operations of Brooke Bakery and uh we were talking before about um uh high cost high quality or uh yeah like we were talking about um bread quality and how if the prices were similar in Hokkaido and in hawaii and probably the prices here compared dollar to yen is more costly here but uh compared to other food and local restaurants in hawaii we're definitely a lower cost of having a for example a family of three or four persons eating in the mall is quick and cheaper than most of the other options that we have yet the quality and the value you get is um more than other similar bread companies out there and I want to um this is me and my background right I want to focus a little on the business on the business side because to me it's very impressive it started in Japan you had four stores in Japan you arrived to Hawaii with with one store right you stopped it just the one store yes so yeah continue so how do you how do you go from one store to five stores in five years or yeah five or six years yeah it's a successful story in hawaii that I would like to dig a little more on on how did you go from one store to another was was there a plan from the beginning or you just okay one store and then so the founder and the the owner the one person who purchased the business from the founder um his name is to reach Tan Yama and then he he they purchased the business he came to hawaii he regularly fly to hawaii and he saw that there was not any japanese bakery that he liked and in here although there was some so he thought that the bread that they were doing it could be something that could be of value to the local market he created the first distorting the old shirokia that the person who still remember the old shirokia so and the space where the old san germain used to be uh they took over the space and created they created the the first bakery there and uh at that time um either my wife or I which are the persons that are in charge right now through hawaii and waiting hawaii so five months after the store was open and set up we took over from there and um then shirokia closed down and we lost the store and we lost everything because that was the only shop that we had in hawaii and it was a very difficult time but at that time especially my wife was the president and still uh she was the person who took over the they just took the the decision to continue the business in hawaii look for another location try to find other find investors find partners um we got loans we did everything we could and we had in our hands to make sure that uh ruby didn't disappear from hawaii and four months after or two months after closing that shirokia suddenly closed down we were able to open another standalone store outside of shirokia which is the alamoana downstairs it was a very small shop very humbled we did what we could in very in very yeah but it was a very small yeah location it's still like i was kind of it was the 13th it was the ugly side of the mall so to speak it was a tiny shop we went from a fancy location on the mall level in front of the you know close to the apple store carpier shops old premium to be in a standalone store that we we bought out of it was called the pretzel maker before they wanted to leave out so we took over their lease and it's like okay you guys are out then we just we need to get a quick kitchen with all the permits so we can open something quick because customers are just gonna forget about that and shirokia wanted to open its own bakery so it was a difficult time there was a commitment there from everybody involved right that we stick to this we are yes and we have make this happen yeah we are very appreciative to the bakers at that time they they didn't leave they were not sure if they could keep a job we couldn't we didn't have any sales we didn't have any location i started to do farmers market by myself even though for months we rented a kitchen uh started to do farmers market so at least we kept the name out i was doing farmers market by myself from white manalo to kailua to saturday kcc everywhere just to keep it alive and then we made it through the hard time to that to that tiny little store from that tiny little store we got our opportunities to open the store in per rich so we took it and it was a still difficult time because you know when you starting a business money is short difficulties come by you know never come alone and excuse me in hawaii bless you and um in in hawaii even more it's i mean if if anything is hawaii is well known for not being able to be very welcoming to new businesses yeah it's challenging it's very so you go from now we have two stores and but you keep investing and you keep believing in the uh in in the project so everything we made we just put it back into it then in in all sense like we just did our best just worked very hard then so fast fast forward to now or maybe fast forward before covid um you open the new store in kahala and everything is uh is looking pink for lack of a lack of a better word um right is is that where you were right before covid like all all the stores will be important yeah all the stores are running all the stores are profitable and they are not running at the same point as before but we are blessed that we are still open and that we're going to still work because we see our peers our friends other business owners will you talk to and some people it's you know handling but some people it's really really damaging yeah fortunately bread is something that everybody almost eats every day is something it's one of our staples of our societies i know japan is more a rice culture but in recent years became also a bread country so it's a staple and yeah well tell us to spanish that we need to have our bread in oh every day right or every day like that so fresh bread every day how have you adjusted to covid what is different now in the store did you need to implement anything any yeah that's a good question thanks for asking that we were actually one of the first ones uh at that time when covid started in hawaii i actually i was in spain and i i was able to see how bad the city of the situation was before here we fully realized and comprehend how deep was going to change this everything so i was talking every day with my wife with mijo the president said we have to take action right now this is severely gonna damage everywhere like don't think it's not gonna get to hawaii it's gonna get everywhere and it's gonna be suddenly so please take a quick action before everybody's taking action so we implemented those shield screens before almost any other places we put uh cover shelves we used to have open shelves where people just can grab their own pastries now it's closed then all the bread items are bagged because we already had connections with china for importing so we were able to bring our own food like food safety type of bags in scale to have all the breads each single item bag individually so we have to come in earlier prep earlier prep more have the bread displayed and then we also have to have shorter hours because we have to start earlier so let me make a point here you're joining us for beautiful white manalo and you're in a farm so beautiful now the chickens and horses it's not a green it's not just a green screen that we see um from everybody it's just that it's it's really green and it's uh it's in hawaii i know it's so beautiful that it looks like a set up a background but it's real you feel like i'm more attached i got a little distracted with the um with the chickens there with it i know they came to visit me i have some breads around me so yeah i was also taking some beautiful shots of new products and maybe they they smelled the delicious bread and they think i will feed them i usually feed um the animals around here you're teasing them yes yes yes yes so uh so i i i got it makes it more unique right so it's your we we're talking about best best soul items you didn't tell us about your um your favorite one my favorite oof i have a lot of favorites but the one i eat the most i recently um started to eat a lot we have like a shoku pang shoku pang is the what we call a sandwich bread right and we have a sandwich bread now with a very nice sourdough that we make so it's very much a mix of the sourdough culture from san francisco in the u.s with the japanese shoku pang and i love i love that that product and that's my son my slice of bread every morning so um alberto we are running out of time but um so there is this here in hawaii this is spanish and the vp of operations of a japanese vacay so um you're very unique you're always a pleasure to talk to you're one of my best friends i'm gonna thank you so much please close however you want whatever you want to tell our audience and then i will wrap it up well this um thank you very much for supporting local businesses think that hawaii is a beautiful platform that does a lot of work creates a lot of quality content thank you maria for bringing me to your show it's really a pleasure and an honor and if there is anybody that either knows our baker would like to know more about what we do we have five locations and we're always you know waiting with their arms open our shell full of bread and hoping that everybody finds something that they love uh yeah i don't know anyone who doesn't go to the store and falls in love with it as i don't know anyone who meets you and uh doesn't um love the person that you are and your family thank you very much alberto thank you very much maria and uh thank you to all our audience again for joining us in uh in our staying janet harso and we look forward to seeing you in the uh in the next show thank you aloha