Today’s newsletter is the second installation of my three-part pandemic bakery series. Here, you’ll read about two businesses that were just getting started heading into the pandemic, but really prospered in 2020, and how they’ve evolved since then. Along with Fan Fan Doughnuts and Bread & Butter Bakery from last month’s newsletter, these are two more excellent businesses to have sprung up during the pandemic.
Over the last few years, I’ve found myself increasingly using the word “vibes” to describe my moods and various general temperaments. Feeling unsettled after a conversation? The vibes were off. New York City on the first spring-like day after a long and middling winter? Vibey.
In the same way that “eras” has become shorthand for the rampantly evolving but ever-distinct phases of our lives, the word vibe is so good at capturing the whole essence of things.
For me, the pandemic put the usefulness of vibes as an expression front and center. As logic failed all around us (was all that cleaning good hygiene or just hygiene theater?), it seemed better to just go with your gut. The vagueness of the word also glossed over big truths that were otherwise too heavy or too complex to articulate. The disquieting reality that one measly virus could wipe out humanity, or at least bring it to its knees? That was too much to name explicitly. It was just bad ~*vibes*~.
One good vibe that I will forever associate with the pandemic is that of compassion. In those early days, especially for those of us in the restaurant industry, we talked about things like equity and visibility in a way that felt sincere. And for a lot of creatives in the food world, either freshly unemployed or just full of vibrant energy, there was all this new space to build something personal from scratch. As customers, we were eager to show them our support.
This is just my long-winded way of saying that I believe the pandemic irrevocably shaped the two businesses featured in today’s newsletter. Both concepts existed in some form before the pandemic, but the vibes from 2020 really fanned the flames of success.
Inevitably, the vibes today aren’t what they used to be. Naturally, our attention and interest has contracted as life resumed its normal rhythms. In some cases, this has been a welcome change. In others, not so much.
Regardless of how these two businesses have adjusted to the post-Covid landscape, they are each still holding on to the deeply personal narratives that got them here.
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