may 2006 Newsletter

I. Warm Weather
II. July Closing
III. Employee News
IV. Flour2
V. Commonly Asked Questions

I. Warm weather is finally here!
And with the warm weather comes the unveiling of the outdoor patio, the commencement of our Sunday summer hours, and the introduction of new summer time items. Many of you have already enjoyed a cappuccino or grilled roast chicken sandwich out in our outdoor seating area; for those of you who haven't we invite you to spend some time people-watching and partaking in Flour treats a fresco. Our patio is open till 9pm during the weekdays, 6pm on Saturdays and 5pm on Sundays.

"Till 5pm on Sunday??" I can hear you say. Yes we are now open from 9am until 5pm on Sunday for the summer! And don't forget that we are also open until 9pm every weeknight with a take-out dinner special menu that changes weekly. Check them out online at http://www.flourbakery.com/ and click under "dinner specials."

We will be adding a new roster of summer items to go along with the warmer weather. As soon as berries and melons come in season, we'll feature fresh fruit cups each morning. We've already gotten a lot of enthusiastic feedback for our raspberry-rhubarb pound cakes - we'll keep these on until spring rhubarb becomes scarce and then we'll move onto some of the berries and stonefruits that come available during the summer. An apricot streusal bar is in the works as is an apricot cream cheese brioche. We've bid adieu to the apple honey buns but we'll bring them back in the fall. Corn muffins have replaced bran muffins and plum tarts will make an appearance when plums become plentiful. The summer is a really fun season for bakers, and we hope you'll enjoy the new products as much as we enjoy creating them.

II. July Closing
Every July we close for a short period to rest and renovate. This July we will be close starting Tuesday July 4 until Saturday July 8, reopening for business on Sunday July 9. We hope to make some minor changes to our appearance so let us know if you like the new look.

III. Employee News
We've got some great family news to report! Congratulations to Jim Morris on the birth of his son Michael James Morris. We've got pictures of little Mikey out front near the cash register if you want to see him.

And congratulations to Aaron to his upcoming nuptials in July to fiancee Melissa and to Michelle for her wedding to fiance Colin the following week. Whoowee!!

IV. Flour2
We swore it would never happen...Flour2 is on the way! We are wildly excited about bringing Flour food and friendliness to a whole new neighborhood - we'll be a few miles away in the Fort Point Channel area. For those of you not familiar with this area, you will be soon: the new ICA is opening up there this summer, the new convention center has been booked several years out, the Children's Museums is expanding their current location, several new hotels and shopping areas are being planned, along with a number of new residential areas with lofts and condos galore. We plan on offering much of the same menu there as we do here, and you'll see some familiar faces there as we transfer some people over to help us with the expansion. But don't worry: Flour will remain the same here - we'll always be dedicated to bringing you the best food and the friendliest service we can. We'll just be doing it in two places! We hope to open by the late summer or early fall of this year.

V. Commonly Asked Questions
A few newsletters back I answered a bunch of questions that we regularly get from customers and some people have asked that I reprint those answers. So here they are. And we'd love to hear from you as well - questions, suggestions, ideas, problems, anything. Let us know how we can continue to make your Flour experience as wonderful as we can! Email us here, drop us a note in our suggestion bin, or talk to me or a manager on your next visit. Hope to see you again soon and as always thank you for your patronage!

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.