CROISSANTS X COFFEE A match made in heaven! Espresso drinks are now available at the bakeshop. Enjoy a cappuccino or latte made with beans from Cafe Moto and grass-fed milk (oat milk also available). Or cool off with our Iced Potion (also available hot) - an herbal concoction of peppermint tea, thyme, fresh mint, lemon and honey.
THE IZOLA FAM When Jenny and I started IZOLA, we were at the very beginning of the COVID pandemic. We were all suddenly thrust into a completely different world, sheltering at home, facing something that we never had experienced before. While there was so much unknown at the time, one thing I did know for sure was that I was missing human connection, and no, it couldn't be found on a Zoom call. So when we started baking our croissants 12 at a time, our sourdough 5 loaves at a time, we would lower them out our 3rd story window in a picnic basket down to waiting customers on the street. Those brief moments of connection brought us so much joy each day. We were stoked when restrictions were lifted, allowing us to gather inside and we finally got to meet our IZOLA family face to face (or mask to mask at that time!). Fast forward to today - every Thursday through Sunday, the bakeshop fills with friends and family. I like to stop and listen for just a moment to the sounds of the bakeshop - the laughter, the excitement, friends enjoying each other's company, strangers meeting new friends...Jenny and I are so humbled by this beautiful community that surrounds us. Thank you for starting new traditions here at IZOLA, thank you for inviting us into your lives.
Pre-orders for the week are open now. If you have a pre-order, and can't find a parking spot, no problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY. Or if you just want to stop by on a whim because you're craving a Morning Bun, come on by. Pre-orders are not required! We set aside half of our inventory each day for walk-ins.
At IZOLA, we are on a mission to change the way Americans experience sourdough bread and croissants. To bring us a step closer to that, we want to share IZOLA with more folks throughout San Diego county. Next year we will be opening our new Dough Innovation Center in City Heights! Thank you to Heleo Architecture for the partnership as we work through the design phase and on to construction documents. Barbara, Carlos and the team are amazing. This space will become a place to gather and enjoy hot-from-the-oven croissants and sourdough. But it will also become our production facility which will allow us to create 10x-20x more croissants and share them to more locations throughout the county and beyond. It will also allow us to bring 20+ purpose-filled careers to City Heights. We have crafted the positions at IZOLA to be highly teachable - no need for a culinary degree or prior experience. We prioritize hiring for personal qualities: kindness, curiosity, integrity, self-awareness and promoting from within so that our team can grow alongside with us. If you'd like to learn more about how you can take this journey with us, join us for our next online Investor Conversation on Saturday May 6 and we'll share with you how you can become an owner in IZOLA. PS - Click here for the coolest fly through of the new IZOLA Main space (you'll need to open it on a computer, it's too big to load on mobile). You'll get to see our production area and how as customers you'll be able to peer into our sourdough production area, the beautiful sky deck that will overlook Manzanita Canyon and more...
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is! We publish the full schedule every Friday night in our Instagram Story. Head on over there and follow us now!
PRO TIPS
Pre-orders for this week are now open! Now (earlier in the week, Sunday-Wednesday) is the easiest time to get a pre-order in. Here is the rough schedule of when you can expect pre-orders to go live:
Each bake day, we set aside about half of our inventory for pre-orders, and the remaining half for walk-ins. So whether you have a pre-order or decide on a whim to pop on by, we'll have something hot from the oven for ya.
As we approach bake day we begin to limit pre-orders to just the upcoming day. We are currently using the most robust pre-ordering software available on the market, but it's still not enough for our unique model where we're crafting product that takes 3-4 days to make and baking hot from the oven. Our third party ordering system does not allow us to manage inventory by day, so as our inventory for an upcoming day gets slimmer, we must shut off future dates to sell through that inventory first.
That means from Wednesday night through Thursday morning, you'll see that we may be taking orders for Thursday only. Then around the 10-11a hour on Thursday we close pre-orders for Thursday, allowing us to re-open pre-orders for Friday-Sunday.
It's an incredibly manual and hands-on process for us that we know is far from a seamless experience for you. And with your help, we can change that...
IZOLA's Equity Raise
HAPPENING NOW!
Part of the funds raised will go toward building a better pre-ordering system that will allow us to manage our inventory by day, meaning we can keep pre-orders live at ALL times, allowing you to order anywhere from minutes to weeks in advance!
Why is the Equity Raise Important?
Our Equity Raise empowers justice and profit. Here are a few examples:
Environmental Justice: Our new flour silos (and related material handling system) allow us to take 25,000 lbs of paper out of the waste stream each year. Boom! Not just recycled....never made! And buying in bulk (by the semi-truck load) reduces our organic flour cost by 15-20%. Win-win!
Racial, Sexual Orientation, Gender Justice: With a focus on members of underserved groups, our extensive training program allows us to hire based on personal qualities like kindness, curiosity, integrity, and work ethic, even if candidates don't have experience in baking. Then we train, train, train in the IZOLA Process. Defined, Measurable, Repeatable. Within days new team members are contributing members of the team, and often earn leadership positions. And it increases the size of our talent pool exponentially, it's how we have been able to stay fully staffed throughout the pandemic.
Economic Justice: We want to pay people more. How do we do it? Productivity. How do we increase productivity? Upgrading with cutting-edge equipment from around the world that increases our production by 10x (and improves our quality) with the same size team. We are currently certified as a living wage employer, but frankly, it's not enough for our employees to comfortably live on. So as IZOLA's efficiency and hence profit increases, each team member will earn more.
We are building the factory of the future - leveraging automation in a way that has not been done before, to create artisan croissants and sourdough at an even higher quality than handmade.
Here's a sneak peak at our plans:
Q1 2023's Equity Round Closes in 44 Days
At IZOLA we break up big tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. And that's exactly what we are doing with the Equity Raise. Over the next year, we will "Rolling Close" the equity offering on June 1, Sept 1, Dec 1, and March 1 (2024). Each quarter has a goal of $975,150. And we invite you to join us, to reach our our Q1 goal. Please visit our IZOLA Equity Portal for more information.
What does "Rolling Close" mean?
It means that we will ask each person who has invested in the previous quarter (in this case March 1 to May 31, 2023) to re-confirm their interest in investing. And for those who re-confirm, we will finalize the investment, issue the needed documentation and transfer the investment to IZOLA.
How Do I Get Involved?
Visit the IZOLA Equity Portal: Hint - Please visit the DATA room (tab at top of the page) where you'll find tons of important info:
Risks
Share Purchase Agreement
LLC operating agreement
Audited financials
Anticipated use of funds Attend an IZOLA Investor Conversation via Google Meet: Please register below to join an upcoming conversation. Hosted by Jenny and me, they are a fun way to meet community members, hear about IZOLA's past, present, and future plan from the co-founders and ask all the questions you can think of, get some good laughs at all the mistakes we've made and funny stories.
How Does it Work? In a nutshell, your investment purchases shares in Tallgrass Pictures LLC, the parent of IZOLA. The same shares that Jenny and I own. Somewhere far in the future, if IZOLA does well, you'll do well. If not, (and this is statistically the most likely outcome - most small businesses fail) then you'll probably lose all your investment, just like Jenny and I. The Securities and Exchange Commission asks that I remind everyone that the IZOLA Equity Portal is the sole official source of information for this equity raise, please review it carefully. What if I Have Never Invested Before? Not to worry, we have created an inclusive, welcoming environment. We intentionally set a modest minimum investment of $1000. And even if you don't end up investing, there is a lot of good business information, including our novel approach to capitalizing a company (and lowering risk), to be gleaned from attending an Investor Conversation (signup below). So much so that UCSD's student-run Triton Consulting Group (TCG), a pro-bono, student-run strategy consultancy at UC San Diego specializing in market research, competitive intelligence, marketing strategy, data analytics, will be collaborating with IZOLA this spring to give its members the opportunity to work with a disruptive company with an evolved justice and profit focus Want to help build something amazing? Join us! Jeffrey + Jenny
IT'S BACK!!!!! Espresso drinks and Potions are officially back at the bakeshop! Come on by for a hot cappuccino - made with a double shot of Cafe Moto's Papua New Guinea beans and grass fed milk. Or try our Hot or Iced Potions - a peppermint tea infused with thyme, honey, and lemon.
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY
Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is! We publish the full schedule every Friday night in our Instagram Story. Head on over there and follow us now!
A DAY (OR 3) IN THE LIFE OF... IZOLA sourdough takes a three day journey before it reaches your mouth. Ever wonder what that journey looks like? Here's an in depth behind-the-scenes - a day (or 3) in the life of a loaf of IZOLA Sourdough...
Before our sourdough starts to take shape, the team carefully scales all of the dried ingredients for the week. They prepare the amendments that will go into our sourdough like roasting whole cloves of garlic and mixing whole kalamata and Castelvetrano olives with pecans, freshly zested lemon and herbes de Provence.
Day 1: On Tuesday the team warms up our leaven three times throughout the day (once at 5a, again at 11a, then again at 4p), carefully monitoring temperatures and rise. Instead of yeast, we use this natural leaven which gives our sourdough its rise and loft. It's powered by the microflora here in the East Village. If you want to try your hand at sourdough at home, we're happy to share our starter with you! It will become uniquely your own as you feed and work with it in your own neighborhood.
Day 2: First thing in the morning a team member will feed the leaven one last time. We then begin to mix the dough in three steps - the initial mix occurs, and we let it soak for an hour before adding in the powerful leaven. That then sits before we add the salt. Once the dough is ready, we begin the folding stage. In tubs we lift and stretch the dough 4 times throughout the day (we do not knead the dough). Throughout this process the team is monitoring and managing the ambient temperature in the room, watching the rise of the dough, and measuring the temperature of the dough.
When the dough is ready, our team begins the pre-shaping process where they remove the dough from the bins, divide the dough, scale it, then give it an initial shape and let it rest.
After their rest, they get a final shape and into the reed baskets they go, where they will rest overnight in our walk-in cooler. It's a long and active day for our sourdough team get each loaf to this point on day 2!
Day 3: SHOWTIME! On bake day our Bake team will unload the sourdough nine loaves at a time onto our loader, removing them from the reed baskets. They will stencil and flour each loaf, then score each one before they head into our Salva stone deck ovens.
Once the loaves have baked and come out of our ovens, our job isn't over yet! The Bake team checks them for quality - they measure the loaves to ensure the scale is accurate and they will slice into a loaf as well to check the structure of the crumb. All of these QC checks are reported to our Sourdough team via Slack as daily feedback and metrics to help our Sourdough team perfect their craft each day. Once the bake has passed our quality checks they move onto our packing and running station where the team will deliver the sourdough to you, hot from the oven! Pre-orders for the week are open now. If you have a pre-order and can't find a parking spot, no problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
NEXT WEDNESDAY Join us next Wednesday to learn more about our equity offering and how you can become an owner in IZOLA. Jenny and I will share with you how against all odds IZOLA is changing the way San Diego thinks about croissants and sourdough: Super premium ingredients. Hot from the oven all day. Great service. Amazing hospitality. Community. Justice. And our guests are coming back day after day after day even with all of the obstacles - hidden on the 3rd floor, no parking, selling out every day...imagine what we can do with your help. We are planning a future with IZOLA croissants and sourdough available hot from the oven at BREAD CAFES throughout San Diego and Orange County, and via IZOLA Bake at Home available in grocery stores, restaurants and shipped overnight to consumers across Southern California. All driven by equity and justice. How? The key is the IZOLA Dough Innovation Center + Bake Shop in City Heights. It will bring 20 + living wage careers to the neighborhood, increase our production by 1000%, increase our quality and increase our profit margin. The design is almost finished and it will be filled with cutting-edge technology from all over the world: Germany, Japan, Netherlands, USA, France. Round 3 of our Equity Offering is live now! Please visit our IZOLA Equity Offering Portal for more information. And we invite you to attend one of the Investor Conversations (next one is Wednesday April 19, register below). They are a relaxed discussion and peek behind the curtain of IZOLA's Future. Want to help build something amazing? Join us!
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is! Here are just a few of the folks that will be by. We publish the full schedule every Friday night in our Instagram Story. Head on over there and follow us now!