Joanne Chang - Flour, too - Talks at google

SANDRA LEUNG LI: Thanks for joining us today for this talk. I am very excited to extend a warm welcome to chef Joanne Chang today. [APPLAUSE] JOANNE CHANG: Thank you. SANDRA LEUNG LI: So Joanne is an honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in applied mathematics and economics. She left a career as a management consultant to enter the world of professional cooking. Before opening Flour, she honed her skills working various restaurants, including the department at Payard in New York City, and was previously pastry chef at Rialto and Mistral here in Boston. In 2000, she opened Flour Bakery and Cafe in the South End. Since then, she's opened three other locations, including Fort Point Channel, Central Square, and Back Bay. In 2007, Joanne opened a Chinese restaurant in the South End, called Myers and Chang, with her husband, Christopher Myers. Flour has been featured in "Gourmet," "Food and Wine," "Bon Appetit," and "Boston Magazine," among other publications, and has received numerous Best of Boston awards. Also, you may have seen Joanne prevail versus Bobby Flay in the sticky bun "Throwdown," featured on the Food Network. And most recently, Joanne was awarded the 2013 Share Our Strength Chef of the Year award for her involvement with the No Kid Hungry campaign. So congratulations, Joanne, and thank you very much for joining us today. JOANNE CHANG: Thank you for having me. [APPLAUSE] SANDRA LEUNG LI: You just released your new cookbook yesterday, actually, right? JOANNE CHANG: Mm hmm. SANDRA LEUNG LI: So you must be ramping up for a very busy month of book touring. JOANNE CHANG: Yes. When the first book came out, I actually did come here to Google and you guys welcomed me just as warmly last time, so thank you. When the first book came out, I said to my publisher, so is there a book tour? And they said, no, we don't really do that anymore. I think with bloggers and Food Network and all of that, they really were putting all of their energies and monies in people who they knew would get a big audience. So they didn't book me anything, which is fine. And then I did a lot of stuff locally, and then I went to New York once. This time around, I don't know what has changed. I've never really asked them what happened. I think the success of the first book helped. I'm not really sure, actually. So this time, the book came out yesterday, and I'm going to the West Coast, Toronto, the Midwest, and Texas, all in the next couple of months, day trips here and there, and then three and four-day trips and taking advantage of being out on the West Coast. I'm pretty excited. I've never really travelled for the book, so I'm curious to see what it will be like. When I come to Boston, most people know Flour, and it's easy for me to talk about it, and people have questions that are all relevant to what I do every day. So I'm very curious to see what happens when I go to a place where nobody's ever heard of Flour or me. And I'm hoping it's not three people and me, but we'll see. We'll see. SANDRA LEUNG LI: I think it'll be more. JOANNE CHANG: I hope so. SANDRA LEUNG LI: What's your favorite city that you'll be going to? JOANNE CHANG: Oh, that's a good question. Well, we're going to San Francisco, which I'm really excited about. I don't get there very often, so I am excited to go there. And then I'm going to Dallas, which is where my parents are, so I'm excited to be able to do that. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Cool. So I imagine you have a lot of fans that come out to see you. Clearly, we have quite a few here at Google. What is the oddest encounter you have had from a fan at one of these events? JOANNE CHANG: Oh, boy. SANDRA LEUNG LI: There might be a weird encounter after this. I don't know. JOANNE CHANG: Exactly. If I'm describing you right now, I still think you're wonderful. So last night, I was actually Wellesley books. And when I came home, my husband said, so how was it? And I said, this was the first book signing that I've done where there wasn't some crazy person who came up to me. Every now and then, there will be somebody who is extremely enthusiastic about either me or sticky buns or pastry. It could be anything. And I don't think it's personal to me. I think they just latched onto whatever it is about me or the book that has resonated with them. And usually, at book signings that are kind of out in the world, versus here, where I feel like there's probably, hopefully, nobody that crazy, there's always somebody who will stay at the very end and stay at the table and want to talk for about three hours. Of course, I love talking to people who love Flour, I love talking about baking, and I could talk for three hours about the book. So it's not that talkative people are weird. It's just sometimes there are fans who get a little bit too intimate and want to know details and-- SANDRA LEUNG LI: Take note, guys. JOANNE CHANG: I'm just not ever sure how to graciously back away from that. I had one woman who basically followed me from book signing to book signing the first time around. And every time, at the very end, she waited until everybody left, and she spent a lot of time stroking my arm and telling me how much she loved me. She was very, very sweet, and it was one of those things where I just felt bad, because I didn't know how to-- It would be better if she were really rude, because then I could say, I don't want to deal with you. But she was so nice, so what do you do? You're too nice? I didn't know what to say. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Try that next time. So why did you decide to come out with your second cookbook? JOANNE CHANG: After writing the first one, I definitely knew I wanted to write a second. I really loved the whole book-writing process. But I thought that the second cookbook would be "Myers and Chang," which is the Asian restaurant I own with my husband in the South End. And in fact, I had already started testing recipes and was ready to write a proposal to send off to Chronicle. And when the first book came out, immediately readers were sending me emails or tweets and Facebook posts or whatever saying, I really love the book. I'm making such and such. What happened to this recipe? What happened to that recipe? I thought the first book was relatively complete, until I started getting all of these inquiries, and people were asking about the egg sandwich or the brown sugar oat muffin or the lemon ginger mousse or other things that we do at the bakery that just, for whatever reason, had slipped my mind. So I started to get a number of these inquiries, and about the same time, my publisher, Chronicle, reached out and said, we would like to do a second book with you. I know you want to do "Myers and Chang," but we actually think there's an opportunity with the second part of Flour, basically the savory end. We originally had a savory chapter in the first Flour book, but it got cut because the book was too big. And so we took out that whole chapter. So I was already one up on chapters for this potential second book, and then I had this list of emails with literally probably 20 inquiries of different things that people wanted from Flour. So it became a natural next book, even though it wasn't what immediately came to my mind, to do "Flour, Too." SANDRA LEUNG LI: And it sounds like there could be a third book coming out too. JOANNE CHANG: Well, again, I think the third book should be "Myers and Chang," but my publisher has a different idea. So I am signing a deal with them some time this week to do a low-sugar baking book, which is interesting. I know that everyone's kind of like, wow, where'd that come from? I don't know where it came from. Again, they reached out to me. This is how it works. At Chronicle Books, the food/cookbook publisher, she is married to a doctor who is colleagues with the guy who wrote the sugar is toxic article that was in the "Times" about six months ago. I don't know if you guys saw it, but it was a really interesting article. And for me, as somebody who lives in plying sugar to others, it was a little bit nerve-wracking to read that and think, oh, gosh, what's going to happen now to my business? It was the same fear I had when we first opened Flour and Atkins diet was a big thing and no gluten and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, the editor, she called me and said, you know, we are really interested in thinking about what the future of baking might be. Because they spend a lot of time looking forward to trends, and so in order for them to come out with a gluten-free baking book today or a Paleo baking book today, they have to know that it's something that's going to be popular like three or four years ago. She's anticipating that low-sugar will be something that will be interesting in two or three years, and so she asked me if I would be interested in considering it. And honestly, for me, I read that article, the sugar is toxic, and I do know for myself I eat a lot of sugar every day, and I know how it makes me feel. I get that sugar rush, I get really energized, and then I crash. And I've just gotten used to it. It's just kind of what I do. But if I were trying to eat more healthily, or if I were raising a family, and if I was just trying to be more thoughtful about how I eat, then I would want to reduce my sugar. And so I tested a bunch of recipes, because I didn't want to say, yes, I'll do this book, without knowing if it was even possible. And I tested two really popular recipes from the first baking book, the banana bread and the oatmeal raisin cookie. And I was able to successfully make both of them with either a third or half the amount of sugar that's listed in the book. In fact, I made them for the bakers at the Flour South End location, and most of them preferred the new low-sugar version to the current version. So to me, that was a really good sign that, one, it can be done and then, two, that it would be fun. I really enjoyed the whole process. Baking, it's fun and creative when you get to do things like this. When you're doing things every day, it starts to get a little bit monotonous, and then you get thrown a challenge like this, and you're reminded of why you got into it in the first place. So that's the next book. I did ask my publisher if I was allowed to talk about it, because at first we weren't going to talk about it. And he said, yes, as long as we don't tell the publishing world. So I don't know if there's anybody in here-- SANDRA LEUNG LI: It will be on YouTube. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, I think they don't want it in "Publishers Weekly." That's what I'm assuming. SANDRA LEUNG LI: All right. Well, we'll make sure it'll stay in this room. JOANNE CHANG: In the bubble. SANDRA LEUNG LI: So what is your favorite recipe from "Flour, Too"? JOANNE CHANG: That's a good question. Gosh, favorite recipe. That's so hard. My favorite thing to eat from the "Flour, Too" book would be the Kouign Amann, which is the butter Breton cake, which is in the "Party Time" section of the book. I first had butter Breton cake 15 or 20 years ago when I was in Paris. It was before we opened Flour, and I remember biting into it. It is basically a croissant that is made with extra butter and extra sugar so that it becomes really, really crispy and caramelized on the edge, and it's still flaky. You know what? You know this whole thing with the cronut? I'm sure you guys all know about it. It's sort of like that. It's got the same thing that the cronut has going for it. It's got the crunchy on the outside and the flaky on the inside. So when I first had it 15, 20 years ago, I remember thinking, if I ever open my own place, we're going to make Kouign Amann. We opened Flour, and I developed a recipe. But it was really difficult to make on a day-to-day basis. And so we offered only at the holidays for 11 years. Then I started writing this book, and I wanted to put the recipe in the book. And I told my executive pastry chef, if it's in the book, we're going to have to offer it every day. So about a year ago, we figured out the production, and now we're offering it every day. So I would say that's probably one of my favorites. SANDRA LEUNG LI: That sounds delicious. And I am a big fan of the cronut. JOANNE CHANG: I haven't had it yet. SANDRA LEUNG LI: I want to go back in time a bit and have you think back to the first time you ever baked. When was that? And what did you bake? JOANNE CHANG: The first time I ever baked, I was probably 10. Let me think about this. No, actually, the first time, I think I was about 7. I remember this now. And it wasn't even baking. But for some reason, I thought, I'm going to make something with my friend. I can't remember his name, like Tim. We were little seven-year-olds, right? My parents both worked. And I remember, because my mom got really mad afterwards, I crossed the freeway so that I could get to the 7-Eleven to buy ingredients, and then we crossed the freeway back. And we made-- This isn't really baking, but I assume this is kind of what you're going for-- little fruit kebabs. We bought whatever fruit you can buy over at 7-Eleven, and we cut it all up, and we put it on toothpicks. We put it in little baggies, and then we forgot about it for a day and brought it the next day to our teachers, at which point the bananas were all mushy and the apples were all yellowed. But we were so proud. And I do remember giving it to my teacher and just being really excited that I had made something and given it to her because I loved her. So it wasn't really baking, but that was like my first time in the kitchen. SANDRA LEUNG LI: And was that the beginning of what got you hooked? Or when was the first moment? JOANNE CHANG: I've always loved to be in the-- After that, I definitely spent time in the kitchen. My mom was a working mom. And so I would come home from school, and she would often need help, basically, just putting together dinner. I got to be pretty adept in helping her just prep stuff, so by the time she got home, she could just do a quick stir-fry. Or I would put stuff in the oven and get the rice ready, or whatever. So I'd always very comfortable in the kitchen. I think that the first time that I ever thought about it truly-- I thought about it professionally very, very late. It wasn't until after college. But when I was in college, I did make chocolate chip cookies in the dormitory kitchen, and I sold them to the dormitory Grill. And I sold them to the guys who ran the Grill for $0.25 each, and they sold them three for $1. I did it for two years, junior and senior year. And I remember I guess every semester they would write me a check for the proceeds, and it was like $60 or $70. And I would use the money to go buy running shoes, because I was a runner. So that was kind of my first foray into making food that then people paid you for. But I certainly didn't think at that point, oh, great. Now I'm going to go and open a bakery. At that point, it was a way to kill some time. SANDRA LEUNG LI: So you mentioned running shoes. And I did read how you ran every single Boston Marathon from '91 to 2006. Was that your strategy, run a marathon, eat, [INAUDIBLE]. JOANNE CHANG: No. I don't run as much anymore, which is unfortunate, because I really do miss it. But I definitely think that when you're working all day in a kitchen and you're surrounded by food and you're eating food all day long, there's something that's just very relaxing. And for me, it's good for my mind to go out and go for a long run. And so for years it was my thing. I calmed myself down, and it was my little zen thing. I'm not a speed runner. It took me like five or six hours each time, just plodding along. But it's just something that definitely helps balance the amount of eating that you do all day long. SANDRA LEUNG LI: You're a Harvard graduate and former management consultant turned chef restaurant owner. I come from your stereotypical Asian household, so the first thing that I would like to know is, what did your parents think when you quit your management consultant job to become a pastry chef? JOANNE CHANG: That's a great question. When it happened, it wasn't quite as black and white as that. I didn't say, I'm quitting and dropping everything and going to do this. I was at the end of my second year as a management consultant. And at that time, that's when people either went on to business school, or some people were staying within the company, and they were going to just kind of keep going up and up within in company. And I didn't want either of those. I didn't want to stay, and I definitely didn't want to go to business school So I was kind of stuck, and I didn't know what to do next. And I'd always loved to cook and to bake, and so I thought, you know what? I'll take a year off, and I'll try cooking professionally and see if I can support myself for at least a year. And then I'll figure out what I want to do. So that's kind of how I sold it to my parents. I didn't have this plan that it was going to be a career change. It was just taking care a year off to do something that I enjoyed. I think that for them was a little bit easier to swallow than if I had said, I'm chucking the whole thing, and I'm going to go become a chef. They were cautiously supportive. I think they were definitely very nervous. I was 24. And if you're 24, you think you know everything. But if you're 50, like my parents were, you think that the 24-year-old knows nothing. And so they were just really, really nervous. How are you going to support yourself? You're leaving this really stable job. It's got a lot of benefits. You're not going to have health insurance. What are you going to do? So I think they were more concerned about logistically how was I going to survive for year. And then when it became clear that it was more than just a passing fancy, at that point I think they saw how happy I was. And I was able to make it work financially, so they were more accepting. Then as I got pastry chef jobs, it seemed even a little bit more legitimate in their eyes. And then when we opened the bakery, then it was a real thing, and so they were OK with it. And now they love it. Now they come all the time, and they go to all the bakeries. In fact, they will always do Kayak or whatever to find out what hotel they should stay in. And they'll send me an email and say, OK, this hotel, how far is it away from the bakeries? And I'm always like, mom, what about how far is it from me, the one you're coming to visit? They will come for a week, and I might see them three times, but all the staff will see them dozens of times. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Do you have any siblings? JOANNE CHANG: I do. I have a younger brother, who went to MIT and studied-- mechanical engineering? Some sort of engineering. Chemical? No-- engineering of some sort. He's brilliant, and he worked for years for Harrah's out in Las Vegas doing some of their something, something computer-related. And then he just recently took a job with Darden Corporation, which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Capital Grille. So he's technically in the food business now, but he's still on the computer end. He's assistant to the CFO, or something. I don't really know. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Sounds really smart. JOANNE CHANG: He's very smart. And he just-- SANDRA LEUNG LI: I was going to say-- JOANNE CHANG: --got his first patent. I was very proud. SANDRA LEUNG LI: --if you have siblings, maybe you could deflect some of the attention in those early stages when you were trying to switch over, if your younger brother was doing something else. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, no. Because at that point, he was here at MIT getting his mechanical engineering degree, I think. They were very proud of him, as they should have been. SANDRA LEUNG LI: You opened Flour back in 2000. What were your greatest challenges in those early days? JOANNE CHANG: Oh, man. Something that I think I forget about-- and I don't know if it's just one of those survival things that do-- is the entire first year of opening the bakery, I wanted to close it. In fact, I have a diary that I kept at the time, and there's an entry about the 10th month where I said, can't wait to sell this place. Mom says I should keep it at least a year. At that point, I'd told my mom this isn't really working out. I don't really think this was a good idea. And my mom was just like, just keep it for a year, just to save face, to say that you at least did it for a year. And then you can sell it. And the biggest challenges, for me, were that I have this vision of what I wanted the bakery to be. I had recipes. I had, in my head, all these wonderful scenarios of customers coming in and getting great, friendly service. And the milk pitcher was full, so you could put milk in your coffee. Then you get your beautifully packaged pastry, and go home and enjoy it. You think about that when you're planning a bakery. Then the reality is the customer comes in, and the staff member is busy talking to their co-staff member, and the milk picture isn't full, and they pack all the pastries smushed in a bag. And you get the email from the customer saying, I ordered all these pastries, I spent this much money, and here's the picture of how my pastries looked when I got home. I really struggled with taking the vision that I had and then trying to disseminate that amongst the staff and trying to impart upon them the goal that I was trying to do with Flour and the missions that we were trying to do. That was the hardest part for that whole first year is that I was only one person. And I had a hard time and a really steep learning curve on learning how to delegate, learning how to manage. I'd been a manager at the various pastry chef jobs I'd had, but that was very different. And all of a sudden, at the time, it was 12 employees, all of whom were great people-- I still keep in touch with many of them-- but just had a different idea of what Flour should be on a day-to-day basis. And so that constant struggle of walking in and seeing the place be so different from what I had intended and what I had worked so hard to create, and then going home and coming back and having the same thing happen every day. I kept trying to right the ship. And I would go away for 15 minutes, and the ship would go off that way. Then I'd come back and right it, and it would go off again. And on top of that, in the whole first year, I didn't take a day off until about 10 months in. And then I was doing all of the baking. So that was coming in at 3:00 in the morning and doing the bake off and then staying there all day long. Also, again because I was a small business, I was doing all of the accounting, all of the payroll, all of that back office stuff. So that was happening late at night, and then I'd go to bed and wake up again and do the whole thing over starting at 3:00. So a couple months in, or however long, you just start to get really exhausted. And when the milk pitcher isn't filled, it just seems like, OK, this isn't worth it. I should sell the place. SANDRA LEUNG LI: When did it start to turn and pick up? JOANNE CHANG: Definitely between that 10th month and that first year where I had vowed to sell it. The key where it started to turn was I finally had staff that I trusted. Not that previously I didn't trust. They were all very trustworthy. But I finally had staff that could do what I did in the way that I wanted them. For me, the big thing was opening. It is being the first person to turn on the ovens, to take all the pastries that are ready to go, to put them in the ovens, mix the batters and get everything ready so that by 7:00 AM you can have the pastry display ready for guests when they come in. Around the 10th month, I trained somebody who's still with me. She's my executive pastry chef. She's been made partner. And Nicole learned how to open, and that gave me a breather. It gave me one day that I could actually sleep in till probably 5:00 in the morning. It was just something that gave me a little bit of perspective. It's just so hard when you're just doing it day in, day, in, day in, day out. And so having that person who could share a little bit of the responsibility was key. And then from that came a front of the house manager. When we opened, we had a front of the house manager, but he didn't end up working out. So then we didn't have one for a long time. And by about in the end of the first year, we hired somebody who is really terrific, so then she could do all of the hiring and training of the counter staff. The key was just getting a team around me that understood what we were trying to do. And once I felt that they understood, then the mistakes became, not irrelevant, but they didn't bother me as much. It's like, OK, we all make mistakes, right? So they would make a mistake, and it's like, that's OK, because I knew they wanted to do the right thing. It was in the beginning when nobody knew what I was trying to do that when mistakes were made they didn't understand, which was this constant struggle. SANDRA LEUNG LI: I think a lot of folks in this room have similar entrepreneurial spirit and may strive to launch their own business some day. What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs? JOANNE CHANG: For me, definitely it's about creating and developing a team of people that surround you and who believe in what you do. I remember in that first year just thinking, man, did I do this wrong. I should have gotten a little kiosk that was just manned by me with a little commissary kitchen, where I would be the only one baking and then the only one selling and then the only one washing dishes. Because I was feeling like I'm the only one who can do this right. So for people who want to start their own businesses, unless you're one-man show, you need to rely on other people. And so the biggest advice that I tell anybody, usually people come up to me and they say, I want to open a bakery. What do I do? And it is creating those relationships around you and developing people around you who understand what you're trying to do and who believe in it and who can help you get to where you're trying to go, because you really can't do anything by yourself. When I was planning for the bakery, I was in New York City working at Payard, and at the end of my stint at Payard, I spent about three or four weeks with Amy Scherber of Amy's Breads. She was very generous and said, yep, you can come and hang out with us for a month and learn what you want to learn about brand. And I asked her, in exchange for my working for a month, can I pick your brain for an hour or so? So at the end of my month there, I asked her the same question. I'm like, I want to go open my business. What do I need to know? And she said, human resources. You need to find people. You need to find people. You need to find people. So I had ended my internship. My mom came to New York to pick me up. I had two days in New York with my mom. And the very next day, after my goodbye interview with Amy, she called me the next morning and said, is there any way you can do the whatever, whatever shift, because so-and-so just walked out. And I couldn't, because my mom was there with me, and we were getting ready to leave. But it just really hammered home that, man, without people you can't do that much. You can have a great idea. You can personally be a great baker. You can be a great salesman. But unless you're willing to do every single thing on your own, you're not going to succeed. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Yeah. Great advice. So here at Google, we are always trying to innovate and stay ahead of the curve. As a chef, how do you innovate? JOANNE CHANG: That's a great question. Because we have challenges in that area, in that, for us, people who come to the bakery-- I think at a certain point you have to just decide what is your audience and what are you trying to do and to be true to what you want to do. So we try to innovate. We try to add new sandwiches. We try to change things up. We are physically limited by what we can produce to a set number, a rough number of things, so we can't just constantly add things. If we add something, we have to take something away. And what we have found over the years, especially as Flour's gotten bigger and people associate us with certain things, it's really difficult for us to innovate without *** off a lot of people. We tried last summer to change the turkey sandwich. I don't know if any of you guys are turkey sandwich aficionados, but my gosh, you would've thought I stole people's first child. I got so many emails like, what did you do? Why did you do this? What is wrong? For every person who was upset, we probably get 10 "what's wrong with you?" to 1 "we really like the new sandwich." So we stuck it out for, I think, six or eight months, and then I was continuing to get the emails. And finally, we just said, OK, let's just switch back. So it's hard for us to try to come up with new products. But in terms of innovating in terms of how we run our business, we are constantly trying to think of ways. You guys are an inspiration, what you guys do within the company to try to create good working environments and to foster creativity. I read all the articles about Google, and I think, oh, what can we do from that to help inspire the staff who work for me? We have a very different group of employees. A lot of them, it's their part-time job because they're in school. Or they've taken a year off from something, and then they're moving on. So there's definitely a different environment, but there's still the same capacity to inspire people to take that moment that they're working for us at Flour and be the best Flour person they can. So for us, we try to innovate in terms of how do we energize them and get them excited and make them understand that even though this is only your part-time job and you're only here for three months, it's still really important for us that you view this as if this is your life goal, to be the best counter person or baker you can. We brainstorm a lot, and we just think about what we can do, what we can offer to the staff to give them that environment. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Very cool. How did you decide on the name Flour Bakery? JOANNE CHANG: Flour came from my husband. I was in New York, and I called him. We weren't dating at the time. He was just a friend. And I called him, and I said, I'm thinking of coming back to Boston. I want to open my own bakery. Do you have any ideas? And he came up with a list of names, none of which I can really remember. Flour was one of them, and I remember thinking, that doesn't work. There's a list of them, and I thought, that doesn't work, that doesn't work, that doesn't work. None of them worked, basically. And then I think a week or so later, I was just looking at the list again, and I was playing around with the word Flour. It just seemed weird. Why would you name a bakery Flour? It just sounded so plain and uninspired. And then it kind of grew on me. And then I thought, it's like anybody's first name. If you have an unusual first name, it sounds weird to people until they get to know you. And after the fifth time, it just becomes your name. So for me, Flour was the same. Flour sounded weird, and then after thinking about it, I thought, OK, this could work. And now it just seems like a no-brainer, and I'm very grateful for him for coming up with it. SANDRA LEUNG LI: It sounds like he inceptioned you or hypnotized you in some way. JOANNE CHANG: That might have happened. SANDRA LEUNG LI: You mentioned in the early days you were waking up at 3:00 AM. What is a typical day like for you today? JOANNE CHANG: Totally different. If it weren't for the book, typically I try to go to two Flour locations a day, morning at one, afternoon at the other. And then three or four times a week, I try to go to the restaurant in the evening. What I'm doing now is a little bit of what I was talking about earlier. The innovation with the staff, which for me really is getting to know the staff, and so I come in and I taste products and I talk to everybody. And I just try to get a sense of-- They're in the middle of their day. They're either serving coffee, or they're baking off cookies, or they're making soup or something. So I try not to interrupt their day, but I do try to find good times within the morning that I'm there to stand next to certain staff people and just talk to them and find out what they're doing and how's this working and, hey, we just got this new piece of equipment. What do you think? Or in the front of the house, wow, we just got this new iced tea. How's it selling? So I spend a fair amount of time just trying to actually just connect with the staff. Because we have so many people, and I feel like if I don't stay connected with them not that I'll forget what Flour's all about but I will forget that connection of the staff to the customer. So it's really important for me to stay close to them. And then I spend a lot of time in the office doing either managerial stuff. We have a lot of manager meetings. Each location has its own manager meeting that I attend. And then I have a manager meeting with my director of operations, and with my executive pastry chef, and with my human resource director. So there's a lot of meetings. And then from the meetings, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer summarizing the meetings and doing followups to the meetings. So it's just a lot of office work. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Sounds a lot like Google. You could be here. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, really? SANDRA LEUNG LI: From the sound of it, it seems like you probably don't get a chance to cook at home very much. JOANNE CHANG: I don't. I miss that a lot. In fact-- Where was I? Oh, I was just driving down, I don't know the name of the street, but in downtown where there's a grocery store where used to go all the time. And I was just driving down there last week, and I thought, man, I haven't been to that grocery store in-- and then I start counting, and I said-- six years since we opened Myers and Chang. There's really no reason for me to cook. I enjoy it, but it's so easy just to go to the restaurant to get take out and bring it home. So we do a lot of that. SANDRA LEUNG LI: And so you must be an expert, obviously, on all the dishes at Myers and Chang-- JOANNE CHANG: Oh, yeah. SANDRA LEUNG LI: --with the take out. What do you usually take out? JOANNE CHANG: Let's see. We get the salmon. It's a pan-roasted, soy-glazed salmon. It's very, very simple. It's definitely not the dish that I recommend when I'm trying to show off about what Myers and Chang is all about, but it's my favorite dish. It's really simple and delicious. We get the lamb belly. It's a lamb belly stir-fry with slippery glass noodles and leeks and sesame seeds. The spicy salmon and apple tartare with sesame crisps is one of my favorites. We always get a vegetable. Yeah. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Sounds good. I want to leave a little time for audience questions, but just a few last fun questions before we finish up. What would be your last meal? JOANNE CHANG: My last meal, I would have-- I love-- Wow. OK. I would do lots of things. SANDRA LEUNG LI: That's cheating. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, really? Is that really cheating? It's your last meal-- SANDRA LEUNG LI: OK. Go for it. JOANNE CHANG: --so you could eat everything. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Go big or go home. JOANNE CHANG: Yeah, I can't think of a composed last meal. I would probably go to Oishii and have omakase. And then I would save a little room, and I would go to Picco and have a pizza. And then I would go to the 7-Eleven and buy Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and eat the whole thing. SANDRA LEUNG LI: That is a healthy meal. What is on your music playlist? JOANNE CHANG: This is sad. I don't listen to music. In fact, last night driving out to Wellesley, I thought, I should turn on the radio just to see, what are people listening to these days? I don't even know what playlist means. I don't listen at all. I used to listen to a hip hop station, pop station, KISS 108, because I used to run to headphones. And then my headphones got stolen three years ago, and I just stopped listening. When I'm listening, if I were to ever listen, I actually, at this point now, I feel like I've gotten old, but I really do like classical music. Because my dad loves classical, so there's a lot of fond memories when I listen to certain things. I have a couple CDs that I'll stick in the thing, whatever it is. But I'm not really a music person. SANDRA LEUNG LI: It sounds like we need to work on getting you headphones. What do you do for fun? JOANNE CHANG: I love going out to eat with Christopher and friends. That's definitely something that I enjoy a lot and look forward to when we can schedule it in. I still run and exercise every day, which might sound not fun. But for me, it's very fun. I love to read. I don't have enough time to just sit and relax. So my ideal is on Sunday mornings to wake up and have breakfast with Christopher and then just read the paper slowly over the course of the day. Yeah. Those are the three things that I like to do. I like to shop, but I don't spend a lot of time shopping. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Oh. And the last question, I noticed the Flour motto to "Make Life Sweeter. Eat Dessert First." So do you really eat dessert first? JOANNE CHANG: Well, I'm kind of eating a dessert all day long. So by the time I get to dinner, I actually feel like I need to eat some food. I'm very conscious of the fact that I don't eat real food usually until dinner time. But on days that I'm not at the bakery, I think it's important to eat dessert first, because you might not have room. I've had plenty of dinners where I've run out of room by the end of the dinner. So if I can, I try to sneak it in. It's a little odd. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Love that strategy. JOANNE CHANG: Sometimes the servers are like, are you sure? But we've seen customers at Myers and Chang do that. They'll order the nasi goreng and the arctic char roll and coconut cream pie. And I'm always like, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, we want to eat dessert as well. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Cool. Now I want to open it up to audience question. So if anybody has any questions, you guys can line up here so we can get you on the mic. Don't be shy. AUDIENCE: I'll come up. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Yeah. AUDIENCE: Do I really have to go? SANDRA LEUNG LI: Yes, you do. AUDIENCE: Oh. All right. Just curious, so now you're in four locations around Boston. How connected are you to the communities and the other restaurant owners and bakery owners? Do you guys help each other out and stay in touch? JOANNE CHANG: The restaurant and bakery community in Boston and Cambridge is extremely tight-knit. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody sees everybody at events and goes to everybody's restaurants. So yes, we're very connected. I feel very connected. In fact, we're looking for a sous-chef position at Myers and Chang. And I just this morning sent an email out to all of my chef friends just saying, if you know of anybody, or if there's anybody on your team that is ready to move on and you don't need them, send them our way. So we all feel very connected. I will reach out to Maura at Sofra on a periodic basis, or vice versa, if she needs something or if I need something, her advice. The woman who runs Tatte Bakery, her pastry chef used to work for me as my pastry chef, and so Kristin and I stay in touch. And then, all the chefs, they just all know each other. We work really well together. AUDIENCE: I was just wondering, I like to test around the kitchen as well quite a bit, but I never actually remember the recipes. So I didn't know, when you go into testing a new recipe, do you take down the measurements? Or what's your process for doing that so you can remember it again? JOANNE CHANG: I definitely write it down first. One of the things I tell people what I'm doing a demo, for example, is you know when you're watching on Food TV, and they have all the little cups with everything all measured out, and they go, boom, boom, boom and it's done? That's actually how I bake. If I'm testing a recipe-- like right now I'm in the middle of this low-sugar thing-- I write down a recipe that in my head I think will work. And then I go and I measure everything out, and then I have my piece of paper with a pen next to me. And as I'm baking, if I see an adjustment-- I'll add a cup of milk and realize ooh, it needs more liquid-- then I'll add it and I'll measure another quarter, and then I'll change the recipe. For me, it's not like cooking. If I'm just cooking at home, I wouldn't think so much about it. But because I need to replicate it, I have to be really careful about taking really detailed notes. It can be a little bit less fun, because you're trying to just make something delicious, and then, aw, shoot, I got to remember to write this down. But I've gotten used to it over testing these two books these past couple years. So it's definitely the best way in order to be able to replicate it going forward. AUDIENCE: You have a few successful businesses that you've started. You've written a couple of books. At this point, you said you make it into some of your businesses some of the time, depending on what you can fit in the schedule. So they're obviously sustaining themselves in ways that was not possible at the beginning. How self-sustaining are your businesses? And what's next for you, given that you've been able to free up some of the time in your schedule? JOANNE CHANG: Sure. The businesses, at this point, if I were to just drop off the face of the Earth, there's a couple things that I do that I'm still the only one who does. But it wouldn't be hard to teach somebody. So for example payroll, which happens every other week, I have an HR person. She runs payroll. She talks to all the managers to make sure everybody's time clocks are correct. But I physically enter it into our accounting system, because I want to see how much we're paying everybody. That's easy enough. If I were to move to Tahiti, I could just teach her how to do that part, and she could do it. Honestly, I think that's the only thing that I do that I have-- And I field a lot of the email. We get a lot of emails, either complaints or requests for information or charity requests. And I tend to answer most of them, especially the complaint ones, just because they are important to me, and I want to stay on top of them all. But that, again, I could also easily give that to my director of operations, who would gladly do all of that for me. I think what would be missing, and it's one of the reasons why I don't want to not be at the bakeries as much as I can, is the connection that I have with the staff, trying to make them understand the story of Flour. And we're at this point where some people call us a chain. And I don't want it ever to feel like that. We were talking earlier about how Google's gotten really big. And I'm sure that whoever the big people are wish it were still small. And so trying to maintain that small company atmosphere, even though it's gotten bigger, is something that I think I'm uniquely positioned to do, simply because I don't have a job title. My executive pastry chef, she's in charge of pastry, so she spends all her time actually working on pastries. And the HR person, she does HR. But for me, I'm just owner. So what do I do? I try to make sure that the place that they are working at is what I intended it to be. Because I think it's very easy, without guidance, for it to, like I was saying earlier, just veer off, and not necessarily in a bad way, but just in a way that's not what I intended. And so it's not that my way is the right way, but I think there's something to be said for running a business that has a clear vision. And if there's not one person or one group of people that's kind of setting the vision on a daily basis and having that be their focus, I think it's easy for companies to lose their way. I don't know if that really answers your question. It's not like a specific job thing that I do conscious-- I do it consciously, but there's not a list of things I do to do that. It's just kind of how I try to stay connected to the various bakeries. AUDIENCE: And what's next? JOANNE CHANG: Oh, and what's next? Writing the third book, and then after that the "Myers and Chang" book, definitely. [LAUGHTER] JOANNE CHANG: No. This time I made Bill, my publisher, commit to this. I said, OK, so I'll do this one, and then-- He actually had a good point. He said that with the timing of it, if I do the "Myers and Chang" book, it will come out at Myers and Chang's 10th anniversary, which seems to make sense and works and feels good and all that. And after that, I honestly don't know. Even though I'm talking about how you have to have a clear vision, I haven't had a clear path about what I want to do next. I don't want to open more bakeries, but I feel like I have to be careful when I say that. Because I'm pretty sure when I came here last time, when we only had the three bakeries, I probably said the same thing. And yet, we opened a fourth. But what's stopping us this time from opening a fifth is that physically we are limited with how we're doing our production. If we were to open a fifth, we would have to build a commissary kitchen, which we don't have now. And so, for me, if we were to go that route, that's a huge, big next step. That just changes the business model. Because right now, I can still, in my head, convince myself that I just have four little bakeries. But once you go commissary, then you become commissary. You're welcome. AUDIENCE: Very interesting connection with [INAUDIBLE]-- excuse me-- is how do you define yourself-- I didn't come for the beginning, so I might have missed something you said-- compared to the other bakeries in the area? Iggy's obviously has a different business model. JOANNE CHANG: Sure. AUDIENCE: But the product has a lot of similarities. Hi-Rise seems to be focused on high price, which applies to all of you. How do you define yourself, compared to the other bakeries? JOANNE CHANG: One thing that we try to do is we try to spend a lot of time just staying focused on what we do and not spend a lot of time looking at what the others do and how we relate vis-a-vis them. When I started Flour 13 years ago, it was a couple of things. It was, from a point of view, making sure that that was always a priority. Which it sounds obvious, you're opening a food business, so of course food should be obvious. But it's very easy for a food business, after a certain number of years, to just kind of go on automatic. And so we spend a lot of time really working on-- even though the menu doesn't change much-- constantly trying to tweak the recipes and make them a little bit better or figure out how to do it a little bit differently so that we're interested but the customers don't get upset that we've changed something. Then, again, part of my mission statement 13 years ago was trying to create an environment that, as a customer when you walk in, you feel like-- it's cheesy, but I always say it's like "Cheers"-- it's a home away from home. And that's what I want Flour to be. I want Flour to be a place where people in the neighborhood come to the bakery and feel like it's their place. And in the South End, for example-- that's the first one-- we have a ton of regulars who we know on a very personal level. And they come in, and it is their bakery. They tell us what to change. They clean up for us. And it's become a really nice community. Obviously, people flit in and flit out, but, for me, that's something that-- I don't even know if it sets us apart, because I don't know what the other bakeries are trying to do. But I think all of the bakeries around us-- I love Iggy's. But to me, they're wholesale. And I know they have the little outpost I think on Fawcett-- AUDIENCE: Every Sunday. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, really? OK. AUDIENCE: That's where I go every Sunday. JOANNE CHANG: Oh, OK. Yeah. I think they're great. But they're focusing on wholesale, which is different. AUDIENCE: That's why I said about the business model. Yeah. JOANNE CHANG: I think the closest to us, at this point-- Hi-Rise is very similar to us, to what we do. But he doesn't do the fancy cakes, and so we have that focus. And then, Tatte Bakery I feel like recently has become similar to what we do. Bread and Butter, which just opened up in the North End, I haven't been yet, but I think it's similar to what we do. I think there's enough people out there to kind of be able to have numerous bakeries and just each place be a little bit different, just based on their own personalities. Again, I'm not trying to define myself vis-a-vis them. I just try to define myself vis-a-vis what I'm trying to do. And to the earlier question about what would happen if I were to move or stop being involved every day, I feel like that's what I'm always doing is just trying to set the tone of the place and the spirit, so that when you walk in it is clear that it's Flour and not just one of the various bakeries that you can walk into. AUDIENCE: Thank you. SANDRA LEUNG LI: I think we have time for one more question. AUDIENCE: So from the new cookbook, what one recipe would you say, oh, you've got to try this one? JOANNE CHANG: Uhh-- [LAUGHTER] AUDIENCE: All of them. JOANNE CHANG: Well, the book is divided into breakfast, lunch, dinner, party, drinks. Give me a category, and then I'll tell you. AUDIENCE: Party. JOANNE CHANG: OK. Party time, I would say-- OK. This isn't my answer, but I'm just going to throw it out there, because we have samples. The Spectacular Spice Pecans, which don't look like much and aren't like a sexy treat to bring to an event like this, the reason why we brought them is that we did a book launch party with this a couple weeks ago and had this open house with snacks from the book, and the spiced pecans are the one thing that everyone wrote about and said to me, oh my god, I love this. But if you were to make one thing from that, I would say either-- I know I'm hedging here-- either the Pithivier or the Croquembouche, simply because I think they're both really dramatic and really beautiful. They're both delicious. And I think they're the type of dessert that if you want a project and you want to do something that's going to impress, I think those two would do the trick. They're both desserts that we only offer at Christmastime, and I spent a lot of time working on the recipe to make it accessible to people. So they are a little bit long. But if you follow the recipe step by step, you'll get this glorious dessert that you can present of friends, and it's pretty impressive. You're welcome. SANDRA LEUNG LI: Thank you very much, Joanne, for coming today. JOANNE CHANG: Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE]