Scott Kluger of Hartford Baking Company: 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand
An Interview With Vicky Colas
It sounds cliched, but we believe that good food and a good diet can be so transformative in people’s lives. Providing Hartford County with artisan bread creates healthier options, and we are also able to donate a tremendous amount of bread to those in need. We are currently in the beginning stages of launching a Hartford Baking Company charity that will focus on nutrition and development needs for at-risk children in our local communities, in addition to food education.
As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Kluger.
Scott Kluger is the Owner of Hartford Baking Company. He has over a decade of bakery experience. In 2010, during the Great Recession, he left the financial industry in New York City for a fresh start and built his bakery chain from scratch. Kluger has a Masters degree from Fordham University.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
My mother was always very into home baking. We grew up in West Hartford, CT, where the bakery is located, and I was spoiled after school with the best cookies and cake you can imagine. After graduating from Fordham with a Master’s degree in Economics, I embarked on a career on Wall Street, but after a few years, I decided to move back home and use my mother’s childhood recipes as inspiration for Hartford Baking Company. My mother still bakes for us a couple times a week too!
Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food brand you are leading?
Realizing how incredible fresh, artisan bread is, and how good well executed baked goods can be. When I founded Hartford Baking Company eleven years ago, there weren’t a lot of independent coffee shops in the area, and we were the first artisan bakery. We are proud to have been a leader for the craft baking movement in this area, and we provide artisan bread for many local area restaurants, including the Doro Restaurant Group and quite a few breweries with our famous artisan brioche giant pretzels.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Location, location, location! Any seasoned restaurateur will tell you how important a good location is for a thriving concept. While people will travel for a ‘hidden gem,’ you end up paying more in marketing and outreach than you would spend on rent for a good location to begin with. But understanding what a good location looks like also comes with experience.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food line? What can be done to avoid those errors?
It’s a complex business model with a tremendous amount of competition. What looks good on paper will rarely work as smoothly as you think it will. If you don’t have restaurant experience — talk to someone who does before you make the plunge.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Research, research, research. Does this product already exist? If not — why not? Is it cost effective to produce? Is there a market for it? Is there a marketing plan? In my first business brief, I wrote “the product is so good, it will market itself.” Guess what? It doesn’t work like that. Understanding how you’re going to sell what you’re creating and who your target audience is before you launch will save you a lot of time and money on the back end.
Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?
Business is not emotional. It’s a numbers game. If you’re too set on doing things a certain way, you may not achieve profitability. Listen to your customers’ feedback. Online reviews can be tiresome to manage, but that feedback can be tremendously vital in terms of what’s working and what’s not. When something is failing, don’t be afraid to let go of it quickly. People can lose their life savings chasing a dream that never becomes a money maker.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Again, for someone without experience, particularly for the restaurant industry, an experienced point of view can be tremendously helpful. But don’t hire someone with a retail and ecommerce background to tell you how to set up a bar. Look for someone with direct experience and a history of successful ventures, and be clear about what you want to accomplish before engaging them to ensure success.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
As a bootstrapper myself, there’s something to be said about owning what you create and not having to answer to a partner. But it truly depends on the situation and what you’re looking to do. Capital, or an experienced partner, can provide tremendous resources for growth. We are family owned and operated however, and I never regret having gone that route for Hartford Baking Company.
Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?
Again, research, research, research. Don’t just sign the first contract you see. Your numbers and bottom line will thank you if you take time to compare costs and negotiate. In the restaurant industry however, cost alone cannot be the deciding factor. We use high quality ingredients, such as King Arthur Flour and Stumptown Coffee, in order to ensure that our customers receive the best quality product. Be aware of fluctuating commodity costs too — the rising costs of goods is currently impacting the bottom line of our industry in a very serious manner.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1 — A great concept.
2 — A successful location or marketing plan for ecommerce distribution.
3 — A brand that tells a story and a marketing strategy to match it.
4 — Something that your customers truly enjoy — at the end of the day, people aren’t going to spend money on something they don’t like, no matter how much money you pump into it.
5 — Finally — hard work. There is no substitute for it, and running an industry business is not for people who love their weekends off and hate the idea of getting up at 2 am on Thanksgiving morning to fix a leaky pipe, etc.
Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?
Personal taste drives all the products at Hartford Baking Company. We believe in doing things the artisan way — a longer proofing time for bread, a sourdough starter that naturally breaks down the ingredients and very clean, natural ingredients. That’s not something our customers are necessarily thinking about when they order a sandwich from us, but that incredible fresh bread taste is what keeps people coming back for more.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
It sounds cliched, but we believe that good food and a good diet can be so transformative in people’s lives. Providing Hartford County with artisan bread creates healthier options, and we are also able to donate a tremendous amount of bread to those in need. We are currently in the beginning stages of launching a Hartford Baking Company charity that will focus on nutrition and development needs for at-risk children in our local communities, in addition to food education.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Again, food is our passion and our home. Showing people what clean, natural ingredients can do in terms of their health and wellbeing is tremendously inspiring to me, and knowing we have that mission at the core of our values helps me get through the tough days — and there have been quite a few tough days since 2020!
Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to give my mother the chance to have coffee with Martha Stewart. Without my mother’s recipes and vision, there wouldn’t be a Hartford Baking Company. Let us know if you’re available Martha!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
