Who Wants To Own a Bread Company?

[KQ]

This is it - your chance to change your life, to be part of the hottest little town in Washington full of wheat, wine and weed.



Walla Walla Bread Co. up for sale



Walla Walla Bread Co., the Main Street bakery-turned-full-service restaurant that helped put the community on the foodie map, is for sale.

Owners Michael and Rachel Kline, who started the business when their kids were 9 and 11 and Michael doubled as chef at then-Creektown Café, plan to turn their attention to Rachel’s multiple sclerosis as her health becomes a greater focus on their future.

“There was always a plan, only two ways this could go,” Michael Kline wrote in an announcement. “Open a couple more and try and grow a franchise, or sell.”

With their youngest now a junior in high school, they’ll soon be looking at an empty nest.

“For nearly 20 year we have talked about what we will do when the kids are gone. When it’s just us ... and suddenly here we are,” he said.

The hope is for the business to continue.

“We hope it will proudly carry the Walla Walla name for many years to come. That new owners, smarter owners, better owners would come along and breathe fresh life into it,” Kline said. “ ... Rest assured we will be selective about who we pass the torch to.”

To be clear, he said, the business is healthy. The decision to sell — however short or long that will take — is a life choice.

The staff of about 20 were told of the decision Sunday night during a holiday gathering of the employees. A listing went live Monday.

The business started at 225 E. Main St. in 2009 and relocated to its renovated space in 2016 at 201 E. Main St. According to the information on the listing, the build-out alone was $450,000.

The lease expires May 20, 2026, and carries two five-year options. The space includes 2,801 square feet inside, about 70 percent of the building, the information said, and there is a potential of expanding to up to 4,028 square feet in the future.

More specific details of the private listing will only be released to serious potential buyers with access to capital and previous restaurant management or ownership experience.

There is no immediate hurry to sell. “We’re kind of continuing as business as usual,” Kline said.

He plans to move forward with plans to rearrange and remodel the dining room through the winter. In the summer, the Klines want to reconfigure the patio for service.

The decision to sell what is the culmination of a long journey together was not an easy one, the pair said.

Kline, who was raised in the corn fields of northwest Ohio recalls intimate Sunday lunches after church and time around the table with his large family and ending up at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado after his troubled high school years, according to a bio on the business’s website.

“It was there that food became more than just fuel and a paycheck. I began to understand its importance in my everyday life,” he explains in his story.

He and Rachel, a Kansas native, married young and had children from the start.

After The Broadmoor, he worked in California, Chicago and Las Vegas before coming to Walla Walla to help with the now shuttered 26brix. He went from there to Basel Cellars, delving into the pairing of wine and food before moving on to CreekTown Café.

A regular customer there offered to back him for his own place. Planning began, but then a mass closure of five restaurants in one month put the brakes on the project. Instead, Kline and his wife explored her idea of a bakery.

With their two kids, home-schooled by Rachel at the time, and just two employees, they opened in July 2009.

Seven years later, the business expanded to its current spot and began offering full-service food as well as its original baked goods.

The announcement to sell was made for the sake of transparency, the duo said.

“It’s mostly for our staff,” Michael Kline said. “We want them to be able to answer comfortably when they’re posed with a question.”

And now that it’s out in the open, people can move on and continue to focus on the food and experience of business.

“We’re well-supported,” Kline said.

[SB]

Paging Baker Bob to the bread phone

[mtnjam]

Close it down as a lunch place and go back to baking bread for the restaurants, OR buy the old Walla Walla dairy, team up with them and bake bread there.

There IS another market I could see this doing well for in the near future if the AG Keebler Elf gets rejected by WA, start baking infused breads and then sell to the Weedery or W2Cannabis Co. as edibles.

[KQ]

There IS another market I could see this doing well for in the near future if the AG Keebler Elf gets rejected by WA, start baking infused breads and then sell to the Weedery or W2Cannabis Co. as edibles.

I had that thought too. Inslee is on board with fighting for our state's right to have legalized marijuana so that's a plus.

W2 currently has two luxury hotels and corresponding restaurants on the horizon plus a destination resort that just opened AND we will finally, after 10 years, have a Mall again in 2018.

[mtnjam]

A destination resort? Really? Where, behind the VA?

[fastfred]

T
The business started at 225 E. Main St. in 2009 and relocated to its renovated space in 2016 at 201 E. Main St. According to the information on the listing, the build-out alone was $450,000.

The lease expires May 20, 2026, and carries two five-year options. The space includes 2,801 square feet inside, about 70 percent of the building, the information said, and there is a potential of expanding to up to 4,028 square feet in the future.

.

so how over priced is the business sale price and how are the books be presented to make it look like a good deal?

my guess is the current owners are in debt big time, like the 450k mentioned above for build out plus some, trying to get out from under the debt so they are selling, new owner is going to have to have a big trust fund

[charles martel]

I dated a girl from Walla Walla.

Super amazing hot!

Sent from my SM-G930T using TGR Forums mobile app

[fastfred]

I dated a girl from Walla Walla.

Super amazing hot!

Sent from my SM-G930T using TGR Forums mobile app

like "sam the butcher bringing alice the meat"

[Marshall Tucker]

FWOW. way way back in the day, I worked on a thing where an ex president of a major national player in this industry (you would know the company name) quit his job and bought a couple of decent sized bakeries. The resulting entity he put together was doing about $200m a year. The margins then, in what was otherwise a recessionary economy, were very, very good. not mind blowing but very good and very steady. Bakieries get my CPA stamp of approval.

[capulin overdrive]

so how over priced is the business sale price and how are the books be presented to make it look like a good deal?

my guess is the current owners are in debt big time, like the 450k mentioned above for build out plus some, trying to get out from under the debt so they are selling, new owner is going to have to have a big trust fund

Yup, 450k of crap on top of a lease. Kind of hard to get excited.

[old goat]

What about all the gluten?

[iceman]

What about all the gluten?

I think that's free. At least I see signs that say that all over the place.

[Conundrum]

But I love gluten.

[iceman]

But I love gluten.

Give this a minute. still kills me.

[fatnslow]

FWOW. way way back in the day, I worked on a thing where an ex president of a major national player in this industry (you would know the company name) quit his job and bought a couple of decent sized bakeries. The resulting entity he put together was doing about $200m a year. The margins then, in what was otherwise a recessionary economy, were very, very good. not mind blowing but very good and very steady. Bakieries get my CPA stamp of approval.

But at this point this is part restaurant most likely sucking the life out of the profit rich bakery.

[skaredshtles]

Mmmmm... gluten.

[charles martel]

like "sam the butcher bringing alice the meat"

Even better.

Sent from my SM-G930T using TGR Forums mobile app

[Marshall Tucker]

^ hard to argue with that point. Hard to make much with a restaurant.

[Norseman]

I think that's free. At least I see signs that say that all over the place.

Nice

[Mazderati]

My favorite pizza shop has shelves of this stuff sitting above one of the counters.

[cmcrawfo]

Do they serve soup?

[Ted Striker]

Give this a minute. still kills me.

I've seen that bit a few times, and yeah, laughing my ass off. The facial expressions alone are perfect.

My favorite pizza shop...

My friend used to manage one of the popular independent pizza joints in this town (full of pseudo-hippies and self-absorbed anti-glutenites), and he'd get calls for gluten free pizzas all the time. He'd say sure they can do it, but there might be some cross-contamination considering that pizza literally equals flour. Get a few drinks into him, and he'd launch into a tirade about, "have you seen a pizza kitchen? There's flour everywhere. It's like that scene from Scarface! I have flour in my pockets when I get home from work. You could make bread from my laundry basket!"

[KQ]

A destination resort? Really? Where, behind the VA?

Eritage

[Dantheman]

My friend used to manage one of the popular independent pizza joints in this town (full of pseudo-hippies and self-absorbed anti-glutenites), and he'd get calls for gluten free pizzas all the time. He'd say sure they can do it, but there might be some cross-contamination considering that pizza literally equals flour. Get a few drinks into him, and he'd launch into a tirade about, "have you seen a pizza kitchen? There's flour everywhere. It's like that scene from Scarface! I have flour in my pockets when I get home from work. You could make bread from my laundry basket!"

Only idiot posers order gluten-free pizza. Anyone who's actually celiac knows this^^^ and doesn't bother. Morons who do are just paying extra for shitty pizza. It's possible to make respectable GF versions of certain baked goods, but pizza is not one of them, full stop. This shit needs to end.

[Dantheman]

Give this a minute. still kills me.

RIP