With Love and Quiches (29 page)

This period was also when the story of Love and Quiches began. I started my accidental business in my home kitchen in that year, even before the founding of the National Association of Women Business Owners in 1975. Back in the beginning, during the sixties, I was living Ms. Friedan’s suburban housewife model. But I wasn’t unhappy; I was developing my grand passion for everything culinary and honing
my cooking (but not baking) skills.
Then
came the offer to teach some courses for a local charity—and get paid for it.

That was it!
The time had come to jump in, and I have never looked back. Yet I have never been very active in the women’s movement. I was always too busy doing what I had to do, putting one foot in front of the other, fighting myriad challenges, then picking myself up and moving on until, finally, I succeeded. My contribution has been to share my story as it all unfolded.

Now there is a new movement on the horizon, with Sheryl Sand-berg, the COO of Facebook, publishing her book,
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
, which talks about women in the workplace. Ms. Sandberg reread Ms. Friedan’s book, and she wants to start her own revolution: a new conversation, a new movement, but this time centered in the workplace.

Ms. Sandberg has been criticized for accusing women of just not trying hard enough, when most women simply have not had the advantages that she has had. Hers is a loftier perch than most of us sit on; that is, those who are more earthbound and who struggle with the more mundane issues of balancing family, careers, and the search for new ways to break through the glass ceiling that definitely still exists. As of January 2014, there were still only twenty-three female chief executives of the current Fortune 500 companies. And so on down the line.

Ms. Sandberg may be trying to promulgate the idea that women can have it both ways, easily balancing family and career. A new discussion of this is always welcome. Nevertheless, in my opinion the “mommy wars” are over. Everybody is now free to choose their own path.

Feminism, as I have said, has never played a role in our organization. I was merely a pioneer who found myself in the manufacturing sector, a brutally competitive arena.

I was more of a bull in a china shop than anything else in my home business, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and to be. I took it from there to where we are today through the series of moves described throughout my narrative: from my garage to a small storefront, from there to a small factory, and ultimately to our present home where we have, during our thirty years here, grown the business from local to international supplier with major customers worldwide.

I beat the odds. I started supplying quiches to a variety of establishments that had no way of preparing quiche from scratch, as well as quiches that could also be served
any
time from breakfast through late night. I had settled on a versatile product that served as the catalyst for the growth of my business. And I had the perfect marketplace to hone my skills. The metropolitan tri-state region (New York, New Jersey, and lower Connecticut) provided me with thousands of potential customers: there were pubs, restaurants, hotels, gourmet shops, etc. almost everywhere I looked. My idea turned out to be a very good one. I
created
the need for what we sold. I had found my market, and I was off and running.

I built the business slowly, one quiche at a time. With drive and focus, I learned what business is. I made lists and sweated the small stuff, all of which adds up to the whole. To this day I find that keeping lists and ticking them off helps to keep me organized. I still keep my “to do” lists on index cards just as I have since starting my business forty years ago. It works for me. Pen to paper helps me get my head around what I need to do. I still give myself
deadlines
. That was my trick, whether it was for my grocery list or for following up on customer leads: I wouldn’t stop until I got it all done.

Without this focus, I don’t think Love and Quiches would be where it is today. Thank goodness that what I started and spearheaded for the first twenty years has been gradually taken over—I gratefully concede—by a cadre of people as organized as I have been. More talented, too.

I got help wherever I could find it. I never stopped seeking advice from my mentors, my customers, my suppliers, my professionals, my
industry contacts and friends, and later from my employees, consultants, the SBA, and various NY state and local economic development agencies. In the early years, I took my many embarrassments and small failures in stride, and I would not allow myself to be sidetracked. I was stubborn, and I would not allow my optimism to falter. Small though it was, I slavishly adhered to my budget; early on we had no reserves and could not afford any errors that may have proved fatal. I remained patient, and little by little the dollars started to build and we were on our way.

One step at a time I developed the knowledge and skills I needed to run a business and become a leader, all by just living it, by doing it. And as the organization and the volume grew, so did I.

Do not forget that when you are a boss, the workday never ends. I used to say I would kill simply to have a
job
because the stress of business ownership was so high, but I eventually learned to live with it and to cope. I accepted that I could not have it all: perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect leader, perfect executive.

I have been in business for a long time, and I have had plenty of time to hone my skills in becoming an effective leader. I often look back on my business life and replay scenes, trying to view them from an outside perspective. I see mistakes, I see poor choices, but I cannot change them. They are done, so I have just kept going.

Many of the answers lie within. It is always good to seek advice from mentors, colleagues, and other industry leaders, but true leaders intuit what is best for their particular business, and that is a skill that
can
be learned. I was not born a leader.
I had to learn how to do it.

A great business idea is only half the battle; you must be an effective leader to move it forward.

First and foremost, I had to believe in myself. I have been responsible for the livelihoods of so many, and I still bear that burden. But as
we grew, I hope that I have shown my organization both passion and
patience
. I gratefully acknowledge that all I did was
start
the thing. Our organization is bigger than any one of us. Together we have a shared sense of purpose that creates in us a willingness both to weather difficult times and to go for the gold.

Some people think it is best to lead from the back of the bus, and some think it is best to lead the charge from up front. I’m still pondering this, but I think it may be a combination of the two. A good leader defers to the experience and expertise of others. I would certainly have achieved
nothing
without this very strong organization, built slowly with the help of my family and others who share top positions at Love and Quiches. Our management teams, as I have demonstrated throughout, were built through a combination of promoting from within and bringing in outside talent when needed. They are a passionate group, very diverse, and together we make up an organic whole.

As Love and Quiches gained its position in the industry, I became known as “The Quiche Lady.” I was a poster child for the era, a 1970s pioneer who built a bakery manufacturing business out of thin air. To my great surprise, on some level I am considered an industry icon that has helped forge a path for those who came after me. I have chosen this life, have achieved a measure of success, and if I have inspired others, that is one more element that has made it all worth it.

As chairwoman and founder, my most important role now is to know when to do less, to be a very good listener, to ask what I can do to help make my teams more effective, and to inspire them to push beyond their comfort zones (the story of my life). I ask a lot of questions, but I let them come up with the answers and solutions and execute them. My hope is that I am respected and not feared.

Real leaders know they don’t have all the answers, and so it is my staff that have made me a good leader. They make me look good. By handing off many of the day-to-day responsibilities, as it should be, I am often there with my hands behind my back, but I am there. Our company is like a living and breathing organism, and, as its founder, I am part of its lifeblood. But now, happily, I am just one part of the whole. Perfect!

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.
—John Quincy Adams

H
ere I am at the end of the chronicle of my accidental business. I have described my journey from my home kitchen to today, and my hope is that my story has entertained, informed, and inspired. Given a thousand chances, I would never have guessed that a simple idea—just one quiche—would start me on the road to where I find myself today.

I’ve told my personal story, the Love and Quiches story, drawing on my experiences during the past forty years as we grew from home kitchen to local business to international supplier. I learned so much during each stage of our development, and my hope is that other budding entrepreneurs and business owners will find wisdom and rules of the road to take away from my stories too.

Although for decades we have flown hundreds of millions of our brownies all over the world with our name on them and although we’ve recently developed a Gourmet Grab and Go line of prewrapped snack products with our brand, Love & Quiches Gourmet is, nevertheless, an important “behind the scenes” supplier. We are not a household name yet, but we are an integral and well-recognized member of the foodser-vice community. We make our customers look good by supplying
them
with superb products, products that are on trend and of the moment. If our products are presented as their own, that makes us happy; that is our game; that is what we do.

Our growth as a business continues to benefit from the fact that high-quality desserts are growing in popularity and demand in every conceivable channel, including the fast-food industry. This is an exciting time for us with new opportunities to explore.

As I have demonstrated, our road forward has not been an easy one. First, we had to overcome my utter lack of preparation for business ownership. Over the years, we weathered a flawed business model, economic recessions, 9/11, key account loss, and other storms, many of which were well beyond our control. Each time, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and moved on, myself a little smarter, Love and Quiches that much stronger. We are still here, and we are now in a position to overcome almost any obstacle placed in our path. We can use even a bad economy to fuel our growth.

We have learned to focus on what we are good at, and we do it well. People will always have to eat, and if we operate smartly, a good share of all that can be ours. Our eyes are laser focused on the prize. We stay on message, and our market knows they can depend upon us. We are now well into the new century, a well-oiled machine that is ready for the future. Our organization has developed a sense of urgency to see what comes next. Our focus will be on sales growth, improving processes, increased efficiencies, cost reduction,
and
the bottom line. We will build only what we can
sustain
; if we aim for a star, it will be a
reachable
one.

We are still evolving and improving. Our walls are once again stretching to their limits, and we have just taken an additional twenty thousand square feet of warehouse space around the corner. We can grow another 20 percent or so in this facility, and then, perhaps, we will be in a position to move to our dream facility—the next leg of our journey—so stay tuned.

By owning my own business, the weight of responsibility on me to my family, my organization, and my customers is always there. Like breathing. It will
always
be there, but the burden has lightened as the years have passed and Love & Quiches Gourmet has grown. The responsibility is now shared by all of the talented people who work here and help run the company. I can step back quite a bit without worrying and let the others bask in the victories.

Business ownership has allowed me in many ways to control my own destiny in spite of the many roadblocks thrown in my path. The many years of grating cheese, rolling dough, schlepping samples, scrubbing floors, suffering burns all up and down my arms, knocking on doors, and on and on, has toughened me. And I needed toughening to fight my way to the position we enjoy today. The scars have faded, but the lessons are still there.

Little by little, one step and some leaps at a time, we took a lesson from each and every foible, from each mistake and heartbreak that kept moving us to where we are today. Every business has its own story, but I truly believe that we would not be where we are today without what had come before—every bit of it.

Along the way, I have strived to become a good and effective leader. At the same time, I’ve provided encouragement to others who have a good idea, ambition, and a dream. In being able to inspire and motivate others to succeed and keep moving the company forward, I have achieved my most important accomplishment.

And I’ve had fun doing it. It has been a great ride. If I had to do it all over again, all the pain and the glory, would I make that choice? In a heartbeat, I would.

J
ust as I never, in a thousand years, thought I could start a business in my home with just one quiche and bring it to where it is today, it was even less likely that I would write a book, so I have a lot of people to thank who helped me all along the way.

First, Aaron Hierholzer, my talented editor at Greenleaf Book Group, who worked with me 24/7 for months on end as I wrote this book, and then rewrote it, over and over, until we got it right. Thank you, also, to all the other talented people at Greenleaf who contributed greatly to the final product: Neil Gonzalez, Justin Branch, Linda O’Doughda, to name just a few among the Greenleaf team who touched it.