A HOUSE DIVIDED
There is some tension in the Brown-Chen household these days...the cause? Tiny, boney, salty, squishy, squirmy, smelly anchovies. They just don't belong in sourdough.
(record scratch sound effect) Alright, alright - that was Jenny above, doing an unauthorized takeover of the newsletter. Jeffrey here, the more level-headed, rational half of this partnership (😇). What am I excited about these days? Well, LOTS! But especially our newest Anchovy Sourdough, where we have whole anchovies adding a briney depth to our sourdough, paired with roasted heirloom garlic cloves and zesty radish. Chef Lane also made a delish anchovy butter...YUM!
What do you think? Excited about Anchovy Sourdough? Head on over to our Instagram Stories and VOTE in our anchovy poll!
Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. (Almost Famous, 2000)
REOPENING UPDATES
As many of you know, we're currently closed for kitchen renovations needed for a new health permit. Over the past several months, we've hit many challenges along the way, which is an expected part of renovating a 100-year-old building...and we've worked through them. Until now......During the 2nd review of the 13th St. plans, additional requirements were placed on the renovation, such as the requirement to increase the structural capacity of the dining room up to 2024 standards in order to obtain our kitchen renovation permit..... to 140,000 lbs. Argh....that was a sucker punch. And it's just not economically feasible. With a heavy heart Jenny and I have decided that IZOLA must move. Heartbreaking! We raised our son at 13th St. We started IZOLA at 13th St. And we met all of you at 13th St. So many great memories.
Where will we move you ask? We have an open mind! We are already in discussions regarding three potential new locations. And they have the following characteristics in common:
Valid health permit in place. (any of the 3 work for us)
restaurant kitchen space or:
industrial food manufacturing space or:
space that would hold both our production and bakeshop.
Available now.
Minimum 400a 208/120 3ph power available.
Lease Length: We're flexible!
If you know of an available space that would be a great spot for an IZOLA, we'd love to hear about it. A year of free croissants (52 x 6 packs) if you connect us to our new home.
EQUITY CLOSE
Our equity raise is now closed. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the IZOLA community....just WOW. We can now call over 500 of you owners in IZOLA!
We have raised $1.6M to help propel our mission of
GROWTH.
JOBS.
JUSTICE.
Amazing...and it's not enough. Building IZOLA Main, a zero-emission dough factory and bakeshop in an underinvested, urban San Diego community, is a $7.5 million dollar project.
Why are we doing it? We can't achieve our company vision or justice-based goals by baking the same way it's always been done.
Investing in efficiencies like automation and purpose-built production facilities at IZOLA Main will increase the quality of our croissants and sourdough. We're also improving the guest experience like providing a parking lot to make it easier for you to pop by for a hot-from-the-oven pastry. IZOLA Main will create opportunities in the community with high-quality jobs (training included!) and build a safe community space that improves social health. IZOLA Main will increase the value created per hour worked to pay our team members higher wages and maximize the return of our investors.
Missed our last investment round? Don't worry! We're working on opening a new equity round later this spring. Stay tuned! We'll announce it in our newsletter first!
THIS IS IT!
Jenny and I didn't set out to change an industry, we just wanted a hot loaf of tasty bread and community. When it comes to baked goods, if you are lucky, you have a local artisan baker in town, but most people are picking up bread at the grocery store.
IZOLA is more than about our single location. We are on a mission to change the way America thinks about Croissants and Sourdough Bread, all served with genuine hospitality.
How? We are taking existing automation equipment and applying our handmade methods to create artisanal products at scale.
We've already been fired by a handful of manufacturing companies who say it's not possible to increase our quality while using their equipment. So we partnered with two manufacturers who believed, and successfully replicated our handmade croissants and sourdough with their equipment, simply by using their equipment in unconventional ways.
Not only will automating allow us to finally meet our natural demand (instead of constantly selling out because we just can't make it fast enough), but we'll be able to pay our team more by increasing their hourly output.
Change is an expensive endeavor. We have already raised almost $1.5M from over 500 investors, but designing and building a zero-emission automated factory in an underserved community is a complicated, capital-intensive, challenging project. We will be ready to begin construction in about 6 months with a total project budget of $7.5M. We’ve raised about 65% of the capital through a mix of debt and equity investment from our customers.
We are on the home stretch for this round - our equity raise ends this Thursday, February 29th. Will you join us today on this journey and become an IZOLA owner?
If you have questions, would like to hear more about our 5 year growth plan, and more, join us on Google Meet for our final investor call - Wednesday February 28th at 7p PST. We welcome any and all conversations and questions.
And don't forget - investors will receive special access to our grand re-opening! Come join us for an exclusive and private event before we officially open to the public.
Can't make the call? You can see a past recording of an IZOLA Future Conversation below. (Nerd alert....me!)
Want to learn more about why Jenny and I launched IZOLA and why we named the bakeshop IZOLA? Find out below!
*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.
REOPENING UPDATES
We so VERY much wanted to be able to provide you with more concrete reopening updates before the close of our equity raise, but unfortunately, it's not in the cards for us today.
I've been working day and night with our team on some big updates about our renovation, but much of it has become a waiting game as we await word from various stakeholders. You can blame Jenny for holding me back from announcing anything until our i's are dotted and our t's are crossed! 🤣
So, THANK YOU for hanging in there with us...I do think it will be worth the wait! Stay tuned...
PLAYING WITH FIRE
Here's a little sneak peak at another new croissant flavor that got approved this week - the s'mores croissant!
Homemade marshmallow...✔️
Brownie and graham cracker filling - wha?!
Sticky fingers guaranteed!!!
We've had a few special guests attending our chef's table this past week, including one of the winners from our Instagram giveaway, MV and her dad Andrew. Both were just a hoot to have at our chef's table...And we got some really great feedback from them too.
What has truly humbled us as we've welcomed three separate Instagram winners into the bakeshop over the past couple of weeks is how supportive the IZOLA community is. Each and every guest has independently asked us "What can we do to help you?" Y'all are AMAZING - thanks for the love, the support...we truly can't wait to have everyone back in soon!
For some folks, one way that you can help is by participating in our equity raise...because....
THIS IS IT
Our current equity raise closes in less than two weeks on February 29th! And that is it! We won't be able to reopen the raise until we make a new SEC filing...and given our focus on our renovations right now, the timeframe of us kicking off a new raise is TBD.
It is because of the over 500 investors that we've been able to withstand this closure. But I will not lie, this closure has been expensive and we still have important investments on the horizon that will help build the foundation for a scalable, longterm future for IZOLA.
So if you've thought about investing, NOW IS TRULY THE TIME! It's a super easy process - takes just minutes!
If you have questions, would like to hear more about our 5-year growth plan, and more, join us on Google Meet for our final investor call for a little while Wednesday, February 28th at 7p PST. We welcome any and all conversations and questions.
And don't forget - investors will receive special access to our soft grand re-opening! Come join us for an exclusive and private event before we officially open to the public.
Can't make the call? You can see a past recording of an IZOLA Future Conversation here.
*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.
Hey folks, it's that time again! We're working hard on creating some amazing new flaves for you and looking forward to coming back strong! Would love it if you could vote for us for Best Bakery and Best Service.
Voting ends this Friday February 23rd - so just under 3 days left to make your voices heard!
Thanks all!
Check out our IG page for the full story on the arrival of our new ovens and proofers from Salva. Salva builds the most beautiful and best- quality ovens out there. We're stoked to be adding their proofers to our lineup as well.
Serving our croissants and sourdough hot-from-the-oven requires an integrated ecosystem:
1) INVENTORY: First, we must have to have the product available to sell. Sounds easy enough right? But when you consider that our croissants and sourdough are 3-4 day process to make and are all crafted by hand, we're then constrained to how much our team can make in a 7 day week. It takes us 7 days a week, 2 shifts a day to make just enough to sell for the 4 days or 20 hours a week we're open. The build of our new Dough Innovation Center in City Heights, IZOLA Main, will help us automate our production so we can increase our production capabilities by 20x!
2) REFRIGERATION: There are also important rest times for both the sourdough and croissant before they can be baked, and that requires both refrigeration and freezer space, all of which we're maxed out on at the moment, but we're working on getting MORE before reopening.
3) PROOFING: For our croissants, they also proof for 4 hours prior to their bake. Up until now we've been using our single automated proofer and proofing everything else manually. With the arrival of our new Salva proofers, we'll have much more control over the proof of the entire bake!
4) OVENS: Because we are baking in smaller batches more frequently to serve everything hot-from-the-oven, it's a challenge keeping pace with demand with our existing single croissant oven and 2 deck ovens. We'll now have 3 croissant ovens and 3 deck ovens! HALLELUJAH!