september 2005 newsletter

I. Hurricane Katrina
II. Dinner service
III. New items
IV. Upcoming events
V. Answers to commonly asked questions

I. Hurricane Katrina
All of us here at Flour are devastated, shocked, and saddened by the scale of tragedy that we have witnessed in this past week with Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath. Each person is involved in his or her own way in helping the relief efforts. Jake, our resident rock star, is playing at three benefit fundraisers; he is selling his CD (Cyanide Valentine) here at Flour and donating those sales to New Orleans. Heidi is opening her home to friends who were stranded and left homeless by the hurricane. Many of our counter staff members are donating their tips to relief efforts.

We are donating our sales from September 2 entirely to relief funds. At times like these we are reminded of how we are all linked together and how we must work together to help those in desperate need.

II. Dinner service
What started off as somewhat of an experiment for us has grown into a full-fledged, bustling part of Flour: dinner service! We are thrilled at the response we've received from customers and for those of you not familiar with our dinner offering, please check out the menu every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It is posted online (www.flourbakery.com) starting every Wednesday and on our front door as well.

Our dinner service was featured in the September issue of Bon Appetit (in which the article raved about our buttermilk fried chicken and huckleberry tart) and we also won a 2005 Best of Boston award for Best Takeout for our dinners. Our chef, Aniceto, and our cooks work hard every week to create delicious, fresh and simple meals for you to enjoy here at Flour or take home to eat. We hope to see you here!

III. New items
With the fall season comes a change in our rotating muffin selection. We will be phasing out our Ginger Peach muffin and introducing a more seasonal selection. On the roster are the return of the Bran and Good Morning muffin, as well as the Pumpkin Spice. We've recently introduced homemade granola parfaits in response to customer requests for a more healthy start to the morning. The parfait consists of layers of nonfat vanilla yogurt, homemade granola and fresh fruit. And of course every week we create a new dessert offering or two as part of our dinner menu.

On the savory front, we are taking out the Grilled Vegetable sandwich and introducing a Hummus, Cucumber and Tomato sandwich as a substitute. The Tuna sandwich is changing as well -- this is still in the works in the kitchen. And a popular sandwich from the past, the Grilled Italian, will be making a reappearance on a semi-regular basis. You'll see these changes in the next few weeks or so -- let us know what you think!

IV. Upcoming Events
We are participating in a Progressive Dinner benefiting the Children's Hospital on Saturday October 15 in Plymouth, MA. Along with Chefs Barbara Lynch, Marc Orfaly, and Michael Schlow, Joanne will be creating a course (dessert of course!) for attendants to enjoy as they get a sneak peek at a new community that has been developed called the Pinehills. We are making chocolate pudding parfaits, lemon meringue tartlettes and mini cookies. For more information, contact 888-209-8880.

On Thursday November 3, we are participating in a fundraiser at the Westin Hotel in Waltham called REACH, which is the only emergency domestic violence shelter program serving 27 cities and towns in Greater Boston. For more information please call 617-331-7676.

V. Answers
Many of you are aware that we have a suggestion box that we check every day. We try to respond to suggestions within a few weeks, and we post our responses on the bread rack where hopefully those who have written can check out our answers. Some suggestions, we find, are offered with enough frequency that we want to answer them again, more fully, here so that you can let us know what you think.

a. suggestion: can you make bagels?
Homemade bagels are delicious and personally they are one of my favorite things to eat. As with any offering, for us to make homemade bagels we would have to make and sell a certain number of them to justify the labor involved. And unfortunately that number is fairly high. That's why there are entire stores devoted to bagels -- you have to sell a LOT of bagels before you break even. So while we would love to offer bagels for our customers and we would love to experiment with making them, it would be difficult for us to include them in our menu unless we were willing to commit to making dozens and dozens of them. Right now we don't have the space or the staff to do so. We often suggest our country roll, raisin pecan roll or multigrain roll to those of you looking for bagels.

b. suggestion: why don’t you offer full sized cakes in the case?
We are committed to only offering the freshest of pastries and that includes our cakes. When we put cakes in the case for sale, sometimes customers buy them and sometimes they don’t. Then we are left with the problem of what to do with cakes that don’t sell. If we keep trying to sell it, it becomes at some point stale, old, and not up to snuff. If we throw it away, well that's not a great option either. So what we have decided is to ask our customers to order cakes in advance so they can be prepared specifically for you without compromising freshness. We do sell carrot cakes and dacquoise from the case on a regular basis, and on the weekends we make a point of making a chocolate cake or two for the last minute customer who is in need of a full cake.

c. suggestion: can you get another register to help the long lines?
We would LOVE another register. It bothers us as much as you, if not more, when we see a line that snakes through the dining room and outside. We love that our customers are so loyal to us but we feel your pain when you have to wait in a long line for your order! However, as always, it becomes a question of space. We physically have no space for another register. If we were to have another register, we would not have as much space for all of our pastries and cakes. We've thought and thought about how to get around this, and if you have any ideas we'd love to hear them. Our solution has been to focus on training our counter staff to be efficient and quick so that they can get you through the line as quickly as possible.

d. suggestion: please make such-and-such new product.
We love our customer product suggestions! We've tried to introduce as many as we can - peanut butter oreos, granola parfaits, lowfat chocolate cakes, cheddar scallion scones -- these are all regular menu offerings that started out as suggestions on a suggestion slip. We read all suggestions carefully and do try to include as many as we can. Because we offer so many different items and because our space in the kitchen is tight, if we introduce a new item we often have to remove an old item. So if you make a suggestion it may take us time to phase it in since we have to figure out what we are phasing out. But keep the suggestions coming; they help us in achieving our goal which is to make great food that our customers love.

As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions to this newsletter or to anything we do at Flour, please don't hesitate to write to Joanne at joanne@flourbakery.com or Aaron our manager at aaron@flourbakery.com. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your summer!