3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Work as Progress Towards Your Ideal Life, September 7, 2001
Bread and Butter combines five perspectives, and you will get more from the book is you can keep them separate in your mind:
(1) An American business success story built around superb bakeries;
(2) How entrepreneurs can choose stability and steady progress instead of overwork and riding a high risk roller coaster;
(3) A new business model for franchising fairly simple operations;
(4) How the right work can center your life around your authentic self; and
(5) The author's search for his purpose in life.
The book has a twin tale to tell, the history of Great Harvest Bread Company and how Tom McMakin found himself through his connection to the company. Arriving at the company in 1993 on a fluke, Mr. McMakin and his wife began working on a variety of jobs. Rapidly being promoted, Mr. McMakin was soon the chief operating officer of the company. But he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Faced with that crossroads in 1999 by the founders, he chose to write this book.
Great Harvest is a somewhat loosely aligned network of over 140 independently owned and operated bakeries located in 34 states. The company's headquarters is based in the small town of Dillon, Montana near lots of good outdoor recreational sites. The business succeeds because of a unique approach to providing fresh bread (selecting the farms where the wheat is grown one-by-one and testing the wheat by baking bread with it, freshly stone grinding the wheat every morning in the bakery, using high quality ingredients, offering samples to all who enter, being friendly, and expressing the unique personality of each bakery's owners and the employees), the interchange of good ideas among those who operate and own the bakeries, and the quality of the people selected to be franchisees. It's a sort of small town, homey version of an Internet study group dedicated to advancing the art of creating and serving terrific, healthy baked goods in a friendly way.
The founders and the franchisees are just as likely to share ideas about meditation, exercise, and spirituality as they are about the latest bread recipe. "How do we create health and strength in our personal lives and in the communities in which we work?" The answer they have found is to "work first on yourself." A key element is to "create business or work that is truly in service of your life." As an example of this philosophy, those who work in the company punch a time clock . . . to help ensure that no one works more than forty hours a week. Extra work would just drain the joy from the work and the giving to customers and employees. Many new franchisees have been top employees in franchised stores.
Chances are you have never worked for or even heard about a business like this one. I think you will find it interesting. At times, it does come across a little like an infomercial for the chain or its franchising, but take that with just a little butter and honey on your hot slice of bread and you will be able to swallow it all right.
This book is very hard to grade. I think the company's franchising model is probably a step forward for those with reasonably simple businesses to operate. So that aspect is definitely a five-star effort. The description of the company's history is not well hung together, so although it is fascinating, the writing is about a three-star quality. The work on how to avoid excess risk in start-ups and unbalanced lives is outstanding, and is worth five-stars. The descriptions of how the right work can improve all of your life is told at about a three-star level. The author's personal history is very jumbled and disjointed, and comes across as a two-star exposition. The book's structure is certainly awkward, and the style is more than a little preachy. So Bread and Butter is somewhere between a three and a four star book as a work of business thinking, management practices, or spiritual living. The author and the people described have a lot of heart though, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and rounded up to four stars.
If you like your business books cut and dried like a professor would do them, you will not like this book. Go visit a Great Harvest store instead,and talk to the people you meet there.
After you finish this very interesting and unusual book, I suggest that you think about where your work is at odds with your values and natural preferences. Where is your work drawing you towards doing better than you would do otherwise? Where is the opposite taking place? How can you change how you do your work to make it integrate into your life better?
Open up to the potential of building on your uniqueness!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life -- Keep it Simple, May 31, 2001
It's readily apparent to readers of Bread and Butter that Tom's words come from the heart, not just the head. The story of Great Harvest as well as Tom's business and spiritual awakening will melt your cynicism like a slathering of butter on hot whole wheat bread.
Great Harvest is a unique enterprise, as those of us who labor under other corporate regimes can attest. At its heart, Tom's book and Great Harvest itself is about goodness: be good to customers, the community, employees, the franchise system and your family, but most importantly, be good to yourself and you will reap the benefits, both in material and emotional reward.
Buy this book, you've never read anything quite like it.
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