YEP, WE TESTED THAT TOO... When Jenny and I started IZOLA three years ago, neither of us had any professional baking experience. Jenny had spent her entire career in e-commerce. I have a degree in civil engineering but then after graduation I called my folks and said I was going to become a photographer instead - thanks Mom and Dad for telling me I could do anything! So you could say our industries and expertise couldn't have been further from baking! But with my engineering background and Jenny's passion for great food, we began with the croissant recipe on the side of the flour bag and worked our way to a decent croissant. We would test, taste and refine, then test, taste and refine some more until we finally could make a good croissant. And we continued to strive to make it better each time by changing just one element - whether it was the type of butter we used, the ideal temperature the dough should be when we handled it, or the type of flour. So of course when it came to what chocolate we were going to use for our chocolate croissants, we tested it! We tested 5 different brands and it was clear that we were loving the pureness of flavor and the silky mouthfeel that Valrhona chocolate provided. Valrhona not only makes some of the best chocolate in the world, they align with our environmental and economic justice goals - as a Certified B Corp, Valrhona creates lasting partnerships with their cocoa farmers, ensuring fair pay and they invest back into the local communities. After narrowing in on Valrhona we tested a total of 4 options from their line considering varying shapes and varying levels of cocoa to finally land on their dark chocolate batons with 48% cocoa. The way we roll the chocolate into the croissant and the number of batons we use were all tested too to ensure a great balance of flavor while not adversely affecting the loft of the croissant. We are serving our chocolate croissants hot from the oven every Thursday - Sunday from 8a-1p. Enjoy the melty chocolate in each bite, with rich chocolate flavor without being too sweet or too bitter. Pre-orders for the week are open now, or just pop on by. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
WHY INVEST IN IZOLA? We have the opportunity to create high quality jobs, zero-emission manufacturing, increase IZOLA production 20x, and positively impact the San Diego region for decades to come. To find out more, join Jenny and me next Tuesday, September 26th at 7p on Google Meet for our next Investor Conversation. We will share why we are asking you, the IZOLA community, to join us in our $3.5M equity raise, where with a $1k investment, you can become an owner in IZOLA. IZOLA is powered by our community. Your dedication to this movement is what allows IZOLA to invest in American Manufacturing, create living wage jobs and expand IZOLA across Southern California. If you're ready to join us now, chip in here:
Or join us at our online event to learn more:
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
HIP HIP HOORAY!
This week, we jazzed up the power situation at the bake shop. Until now, we've been doing a bit of a juggling act with our power supply, making sure the laundry and ovens weren't competing for electricity or that every appliance was in its designated spot to avoid overloading. Some of you might have experienced the fallout when our power decided to take a nap during service, taking all of our comms down with it – not fun, right? It's been a real productivity killer for the team, but now we're absolutely thrilled to have power to spare! Big shoutout to Zaki and Dean from Mike Electric, the IZOLA team, our fantastic guests, and our awesome investors who made this power upgrade possible. Thanks a million!
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is. We post our full musical line-up every Friday night on Instagram - follow us here! Here are a few of the performers that will be at the bakeshop this weekend.
THE SOURDOUGH JOURNEY IZOLA sourdough is crafted over a three day period, beginning with the team tending to the leaven. The natural leaven is just good ole' water, flour and the local microbes unique to our location in the East Village in San Diego. In place of yeast, the leaven is what will power the sourdough to give it its loft. The team keeps an eye on the growth of the leaven - when it's 2.5-3x in size it's good to go!
On day 2, our sourdough team kicks the morning off with the autolyse step - when a mix of organic high protein flour, whole wheat flour and dark rye are combined with water and we let them chill for a bit before the leaven and salt are added. This allows for the enzymes to start doing their thing and contributes to a more extensible dough.
The leaven and salt are then added to form the final dough. After a short rest, this is when we add the extra flavor bumps - like whole cloves of slow roasted, heritage garlic. Or whole Castelvetrano and Kalamata olives, pecans, fresh lemon zest and herbs de Provence for our Olive Sourdough. Our team hand shapes each loaf, then cold fermented overnight.
Bake Day! The IZOLA bakers score and stencil each loaf, load them into our Salva stone deck ovens and bake them throughout the day so that we can serve them to you hot-from-the-oven. And when the loaves are ready, they must pass our QA check - checking them against defined parameters for minimum length, width and height, target color and interior crumb structure. Hungry for a hot slice of sourdough?? Pre-orders for the week are open now. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
SEE YOU TOMORROW! Join us tomorrow to learn about the state-of-the-art dough innovation center and bakeshop we're building called IZOLA Main. It's the beating heart that will feed a dozen IZOLA Bread Cafes throughout Southern California, plus retail and direct-to-consumer channels. It will be powered by technology enhancements like -
FOOD TECHNOLOGY: We are automating our croissant and sourdough production with cutting-edge equipment from the USA, Japan, Germany + the Netherlands. Our tests show the ability to raise our production by 10-20x and improve our quality.
OPERATIONS TECHNOLOGY: Develop scalable, enterprise-grade technology. My beloved Jenny, co-founder, and powerhouse COO, built the IZOLA Operating System (izOS). It tracks every croissant and sourdough loaf on its multi-day journey from production all the way through the bake so it arrives hot from the oven to your plate every time. Now it's time to rebuild our existing software workflow on a more robust and scalable platform.
ORDERING TECHNOLOGY: We want to make it fun and seamless to order hot croissants. One-click for bread and it will point you to the nearest IZOLA where your hot from the oven order will be waiting for you when you arrive.
WHY? We want to improve our guest experience, enhance wages and the workplace for our team and lessen our environmental impact while increasing our profit margins and the quality of our Croissants and Sourdough. GUIDING PRINCIPLES: We are Justice Driven. For us, that means taking action on Environmental, Racial, Sexual Orientation, Economic, and Gender Justice. It's in IZOLA's DNA...so much so that we added it to our Operating Agreement. Over 400 members of the IZOLA family have already joined us in our equity raise and have become owners in IZOLA. We have now raised over $1.2M solely from the IZOLA community and we are humbled...We still have roughly $3.5M to go to fully execute on the IZOLA Main vision. So join Jenny and me tomorrow, Wednesday September 13th, at 3p on Google Meet to learn more about where IZOLA has been, where we're going and why we're coming to you, our IZOLA community to help get us there.
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
MAKE-A-WISH WINE AND WISHES GALA The Make-A-Wish Foundation of San Diego is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. Celebrate and support their amazing work at their upcoming Wine and Wishes Gala on Saturday, October 14th. Tickets are almost sold out....
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is. We post our full musical line-up every Friday night on Instagram - follow us here!
THE TVK
Our Tahitian Vanilla Knots, also known by the team as the "TVK," is a favorite here at the bakeshop. Made with a croissant dough that has been infused with Tahitian vanilla beans, the sweet, perfumed scent wafts through the entire Dojo when the team is working with the dough. It is laminated with Beurre D'Isigny, the same butter from Normandy that we use in our croissants, creating super thin layers of butter and dough. The layers puff up in the hot oven to create a pillowy soft interior. The team hand cuts the dough into strips (5 cuts for each Tahitian Vanilla Knot!), they are then braided and knotted before being proofed and baked. The final step is our house-made Tahitian vanilla glaze, made with hand-scraped Tahitian vanilla bean caviar. As the knots make their way out of the oven, they are enrobed in this icing for an extra bump of sweetness and delightful vanilla flavor. Hungry?? Pre-orders for the week are open now. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
OUR DEEPEST APOLOGIES For any folks who came in last weekend and had a difficult time picking up their pre-order, we struggled mightily to fulfill orders on time and we accept 100% responsibility for that failure. We have reached out to those we believe were affected, but if we missed you, please email us. If you were not delighted with your IZOLA experience for any reason, please let us know and we’ll make it right via our IZOLA Almighty Guarantee. On Saturday we had a power outage just before 10:30a, and it affected cloud based communication of all our POS ordering, inventory and packing technology. The same occurred on Sunday. At IZOLA we know that to err is human, but to recover well is IZOLA. And so that is why we've been dedicating the last several days to put immediate improvements in place - Backup power is now tested and up and running at the bakeshop. We're upgrading our main power supply. Additional team training is in work to improve our communication out to customers through both our "order ready" messaging and in person. We've adjusted our Expo screen settings to ensure closer tracking of all orders. Thank you for your grace and understanding. Regards, Jeffrey + the IZOLA Team
THANK YOU Thank you to the over 400 members of the IZOLA fam that have joined us and become owners in IZOLA this past year. Our Q2 rolling close ended with a bang, at almost $300k raised this year. We have now raised over $1.2M solely from the IZOLA community. Wow... But the hard work isn't over yet. We still have roughly $3.5M to go to fully execute on the IZOLA Main vision. So join Jenny and me next Wednesday, September 13th at 3p on Google Meet to learn more about where IZOLA has been, where we're going and why we're coming to you, our IZOLA community to help get us there.
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is. We post our full musical line-up every Friday night on Instagram - follow us here!