Part I — Dreams
About seven or eight times a week someone comes up to me at the Deli in the morning and asks me why I'm writing on a yellow legal pad when I have my Apple laptop sitting on the table next to me. The answer is that the former is for my journaling; the computer comes into play for pretty much everything else (though I do still like to send a real postcard now and again, my handwriting is so illegible that hardly anyone can read what I've written).
I journal almost every day. I start by writing the date (always just numbers), although the date is rarely anything all that emotionally noteworthy. Birthdays, anniversaries, deaths,... I have a pretty good sense of them in my head so I'm hardly ever caught off guard when I put pen to fine-lined yellow legal paper to start my day. But the other day as I got going with the morning's journaling, I was caught completely off guard. It was 1/1/2009. While I'd written the numerals "2009" about ten million times over the last decade and a half, what struck me so strangely that morning was that for the first time I was writing about the year in the present tense, not as some distant dream of the future.
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Bench Press
The story of Zingerman's 2009 begins way back in 1993 which is when my partner and co-founder Paul Saginaw sat me down on that wooden bench in front of the Deli and asked me a question that's grown to be almost apocryphal in our organization. But before I get to the actual question, I should back up further to the early '80s. 1982 to be more specific.
January 1, 2009 happens to be the 27th anniversary of the last time I woke up in the morning without a job. I'd given my two months notice at Maude's (a restaurant on 4th Ave. that some of you will still remember) at the beginning of November, and NY's Eve was my last night. Less than a week after I'd let them know I'd be leaving, Paul — who I'd met at Maude's where he was the general manager — had come by to see if I wanted to go look at a building at the corner of Detroit and Kingsley. It seemed like a good spot to do the sort of deli we'd been discussing for a couple of years. Long story short, it was a good spot; I stopped work on New Year's Day of 1982 and formally started up again 74 days later when we opened the Deli on March 15th.
And, here we are 27 years later. We knew from the beginning that we only wanted one deli; that we wanted something unique to us and to Ann Arbor; that we weren't going to open other similar spots around town; that we wanted to provide a lot of opportunity for the people who worked there and that we wanted to be able to get really amazing food and give really great service to customers of all classes, consciences and creeds in a fairly casual but very culinarily rewarding setting.
So, the story I started to tell you about Paul sitting me down on that bench out front of the Deli. I can't really remember exactly the words Paul used, but I know it was something along the lines of, "So... in ten years what are we doing?" Challenging our original vision (as he's so creatively wont to do) he said something like, "Is this nuts that we're not opening other Delis? We're turning down these offers from other cities, other people are opening up on campus and we're going to lose our market share... "
I really had no interest in having that conversation right then, nor for that matter any clue what I wanted to be doing in ten years. I tried, but failed, to escape back to setting up the cheese display; Paul countered my resistance with insistence; he just kept asking. We talked. We argued. Listened. Discussed. Lamented. Let up. Relistened. Learned. As we'd agreed early on in our work together, we kept coming back to the table until we could agree on where we wanted to go. Eventually a good year or so later, we had agreed upon a long-term vision for our future.
Set 15 years out, it was called Zingerman's 2009.
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Zingerman's 2009: 15 Years from Start to Finish
The vision outlined where we were going to be when we arrived in '09. It outlined a "Community of Businesses" in which we'd have a series of Zingerman's businesses, each with its own unique specialty, each led by a managing partner or partners who had a passion for what that business did and were ready to be in that business for the long term, leading it to greatness on every level. We would operate, the vision outlined, as one organization but with these semi-autonomous pieces within it, providing ever better service and food for our guests, while offering equally interesting opportunities to grow for those who worked here.
Shifting ahead from the early '90s to the year 2006. That's when we had the realization that 2009 was actually now just around the corner, so we fairly quickly started the work to write the next long term vision for the organization. This time it was Zingerman's 2020. What we came up with was drafted by consensus of all the 15 managing partners, finished only after having gathered insightful input from over 200 different people in the organization. In a nutshell, 2020 stays true to the '09 idea of growing locally and it commits us more specifically to working actively to leave our world better than we found it.
This idea of visioning, of starting with the end in mind, of working out first a positive picture of where we're going as opposed to just responding to problems and opportunities as they come up is one of the key contributors to our being able to achieve what we've achieved over 27 years. We teach visioning actively here and around the country through ZingTrain. In December, I was teaching our two-hour Welcome to Zingerman's class and one of the people in the group was a teenager who introduced herself quietly as "Frankie."
I didn't know her ahead of time though I did discover during the class that she's the daughter of Jennifer Konieczki, one of our long time Mail Order service center staff. Anyways, I didn't have to be an HR expert to figure out that Frankie was the youngest person at the table. Turns out she was born three days after our ten year anniversary — March 18, 1992.
As we move past the intros into the class content, I start talking about what a vision is when Frankie raises her hand for the first time. She looks at me and then quietly and calmly says, "So... for there to be a vision first there has to be a dream, right?"
I don't ever remember hearing anyone say it that way, but she was right. For a great inspiring, strategically sound vision to be put in writing someone first has to have had a dream. There was a big dream that we had when we started the Deli back in '82. And another in 1993 and '94. Those dreams are, in essence, the driving force, the fuel that gets the fire lit.
Although I hadn't framed it this way until Frankie said what she said, the dream is, I think, one of the key differences between what we teach about visioning here and what the straighter business world does. They're about data gathering, figuring, configuring, reconfiguring, trying to sort out some 'magic' answer about what one's supposed to do to get rich or find some rapid route to success. Here, the dream and then the vision that emerges from it are, by contrast, inside-out; they're what we believe in, what gets us excited.
So back to my journaling. What begins with a dream ends with a date. Visions in our world are time constrained, which means that they come to a conclusion when the clock runs out. When I wrote "09" on that yellow legal pad for the first time, I was completely caught off guard. 2009 had arrived. We were done. It began with a dream. That dream is actually pretty much now a reality and that's a cool thing because Frankie's question came while we were literally sitting right there in the middle of what once seemed like a silly/stupid sort of future that clearly now actually was working.
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Part II — Bagels
All of which brings me to bagels. You read it right. I know — a minute ago I was on anniversaries and all that goes with them, but, odd as it might sound, I want to come full circle (pun intended) to bagels.
While bagel is, as Ed Levine described in the New York Times, "a round bread with a hole in the middle" it's really so, so much more than that. Bagels, it turns out, are very much a bread-thread that pulls through all of the stuff I've been talking about above — our anniversary, hard times, dreams, visions, organizational development, good luck and good food.
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It Begins with a Dream
For two thirds of our organizational existence we bought bagels from others. But as the years passed and we grew ever more frustrated about the caliber of the bagels we were offering. Bagels here at Zingerman's basically then began with a dream of doing something better, from which came a vision that outlined what it was going to look like when we were actually baking bagels successfully at the Bakehouse. It's not like we were really getting a lot of complaints on what we were already offering. The few folks from the East Coast who lived here had long since acclimated to the reality that they weren't going to get a really good, true-to-tradition, hand-shaped, very chewy bagel that tasted great while working your teeth.
In this instance, the dream didn't come from Frankie, but from Frank Carollo, managing partner at the Bakehouse, who along with Amy Emberling, the other managing partner at the Bakehouse, me, Paul and everyone at the Bakehouse, made the decision to actually get going and do it! Everyone at the Bakehouse worked on bagels for ten months before we were ready to even sell them and we rolled them out in November of that year. We've been working to make them better all the time and I think they're actually one of the very best things we make. The credit for that, of course goes to Frank, Amy and all the bagel bakers — they're the ones whose touch and technique and tenacity has made the bagels a reality.
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Back to Bagels; A Hole Lotta Good History
 The bagel's known formal past goes back at least six centuries, and probably more than that. In her book, The Bagel; the Surprising History of a Modest Bread, Maria Balinska shares a couple theories of their origin.
First up is the possibility that they came east to Poland from Germany in a migration that dates to the 14th century. German immigrants were brought to Poland to help provide people power for building the economy (immigration was then encouraged, not discouraged). In Poland, that theory goes, the German breads morphed into a round roll with a hole in the middle that came to be known as an obwarzanek. They gained ground when Queen Jadwiga, known for her charity and piety, opted to eat obwarzanek during Lent.
One other version of this dates the first bagels to the late 17th century in Austria saying that bagels were invented in 1683 by a Viennese baker trying to pay tribute to the then King of Poland, Jan Sobieski. The King had led the Austrian Empire (and hence Poland as well) in defeating invading Turkish armies. Given that the King was a big horse guy, the baker had the thought to shape his dough into a circle that looked like a stirrup (or 'beugel' in German).
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Bagels and the Fight Against Bias
At the same time that Germans were making their way to Poland, so too were a good number of Jews. In that era it was quite common in Poland that the baking of bread was prohibited for Jews because of the holy Christian connection between bread, Jesus, and the sacrament.
The bagel as Jewish food really came of age during the Nobles' Democracy. Unlike everywhere else in Europe where the crown passed, from father to son, the Polish model dictated that the King was actually elected by the nobles. Decisions at the national level were made by consensus of all the hundreds of nobles, including the King. Essentially the King still led the country, but the nobles held a veto over all his decisions. In turn, the nobles — about 15 percent of the Polish population — were responsible for acting in the interest of the entire kingdom, not just their own districts.
While intolerance and conflict reigned elsewhere, Poland at that time was probably the preeminent place to be if one advocated for tolerance, acceptance, education and understanding. Unlike almost every other country in Europe, the people of Poland identified themselves as citizens of the country, not in a divisive framework derived from their religious, ethnic or linguistic origins. Which is the mindset that created an environment where Jews were first allowed the then radical opportunity to bake, and then sell, bread, of which bagels were an integral part. This shift started to take place in the late 13th century. At some point, the theory goes, Jews were allowed to work with bread that was boiled, and that they then created the bagel to comply with his ruling.
So if all things come full circle (as anything bagelesque must of course), this one has as well. Good things can start and actually happen when you get good people, good dreams and good vision and good work together. It's easy to talk about the need for innovation as most everyone's doing these days with the current economic setting we've got going. But that's hardly new. I can't imagine when one wouldn't want innovation. And generally there's always an opportunity to do it.
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Bagels and a Better Tomorrow
The first written records of the bagel date to the year 1610 in the community regulations of the Polish city of Krakow, which dictated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women after childbirth. Back in medieval Poland, round-shaped bagels were believed to have magical powers. Like the round loaves of challah we eat at Rosh Hashanah to symbolize a full and complete year to come, the circular shape of the bagel was believed to bring good luck in childbirth and long life.
In our efforts to bring back the flavors and traditions of days gone by, we thought we'd revive this old Polish-Jewish custom. So we offer anyone who comes into the Deli, Bakehouse or Roadhouse on their birthday a half-dozen Bakehouse bagels for free! It's our contribution to a positive future for each of our customers, and our way of backing up the belief that for either magical, meditative or possible merely placebo-effect reasons, eating a really nice, chewy, very flavorful bagel on your birthday is likely to increase the odds of living longer and of being in a better mood while you're doing it!
In synch with our 2020 vision I hope that we can continue to contribute positively to the lives of the folks we work with, to the folks we buy from and the folks we serve and sell to, like you. Thanks for the opportunity to do that and for the patience to stick with us when we err and as we continue to try to figure out what the heck we're doing, what we're dreaming and how to do it with at least a modicum of grace and kindness in giving for the next 27 years... Have a bagel and enjoy the day!
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Outstanding Additions
Amazing bagels need great ingredients and we make our bagels with the best stuff we can get our hands on.
· Parmigiano Reggiano from Modena
· Zingerman's amazing Cinnamon Sugar
· Tellicherry black peppercorns
· Unhulled sesame seeds
· Dutch blue poppyseeds
· Toasted fennel seeds
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Ever tried Zingerman's Creamery's Hand-Ladled, No-Vegetable-Gum Cream Cheese?
 It's cream cheese like it was made 100 years ago from fresh local milk and once you try it, you'll never go for the supermarket stuff again!
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