BALTIMORE — Seeking out traditional handmade foods, made with regionally sourced ingredients, and prepared by a community of local and global employees — you might not expect to find exactly what you’re looking for in a Baltimore industrial park.
“We were looking for a building where we could do all these things,” said Ned Atwater, stepping between rows of Fresno pepper plants behind Atwater’s Traditional Food, the place where “all these things” happen.
Today, Atwater’s breads—and pastries, and jams, and cheeses, and crackers, and other “traditional foods”—is a year-round, fully-staffed operation.
Here’s part of our conversation with founder Ned Atwater about the story behind his business, how he’s taken a global perspective, and the economics of cheese. (Conversation edited for length and clarity.)
What are “traditional foods?”
Well, for us, it is making bread the old fashioned way, with sourdough, certified organic grains. Making cheese from local milk we pick up, and making things like jam from our farmer's market friends that we buy our fruit from, things like that. Soup. We make a lot of things, but those are like our foundation foods that we make.
How did your business get started?
So I've been a cook my whole life. I've trained in white tablecloth restaurants and did that for 20 plus years. And about 25 years ago, I wanted to be to simplify my life. And opening up a certified organic whole wheat bread bakery was what I chose, and what I really had always loved to do is to make a good loaf of bread.
And it started there. It started at the Waverly Farmer's Market, just selling a few loaves of bread on the sidewalk. And then it's grown from there to other farmers markets. We now have our own retail stores. But it's it hasn't changed in that we still want to make a good loaf of bread and a good real cheese.
Over the past few years, especially, a lot of folks have tried their hand at simplifying and baking their own loaves of bread. We saw that quite literally become a phenomenon during the pandemic. How has consumer taste ebbed and flowed over the course of your business career, and how have you seen people respond to what you're doing here?
Well, for better or for worse, we are not generally on the edge of trends Now, when when the trend is in that direction, we're a little bit behind. But because we make things, you know, comfort food, so to speak, like soup, like a hot, hot soup for the wintertime, I would say that we we've always tried to make healthy food, you know, and support local, you know, local agricultural economics. And so that hasn't changed for us. I think those kinds of things keep coming around. Even when the trends of different foods are there. People still want to support the local economy, still want to eat healthy food. So that's that's where we've always lived and I think will continue to live that way.
Tell me about your staff—how do they help set you apart?
Well, the most important thing is the people that are in the building, people that are working as part of a team. The restaurant business in general, I think has gotten a bad rap. I don't think it's as bad as what people say it is. However, there are some bad places, and I've worked in some. I promised that if I ever was fortunate enough to have my own business, that I would make it an environment that wasn't like that. And so we have an H.R. person that is always in the field asking questions, making sure that nothing is going, you know, where it shouldn't go. We have benefits like paid vacation, staff meals, health insurance, life insurance, a savings plan, all the things that were not available when I was coming up, so that this can be a business that people feel is a career, not just a pass through. One of the other side effects of getting out of the restaurant business, getting a lot of bad press, some of it well-deserved, is that a lot of folks that choose not to work in the business. It's been difficult to hire people. We've always said, you know, if you come to work here, we're going to pay you a living wage and we're going to offer you benefits if you have children and things like that.
And you have people from all different backgrounds not just breaking bread together–but baking bread together, too.
We have folks from all over working for us. We've had a long a long term connection with the IRC, the International Rescue Committee. And we have folks from Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Congo, Mexico, Honduras, from all over. And when they were all here working together and communicating and with the same goal, it's very, very gratifying that we can create a place like that. We don't have the conflicts that I remember in some of the restaurants where I worked. And with the right team, anything is possible.
You mentioned your white tablecloth background–restaurants are places where you are often pushed to do things differently and find a new creative edge. What does innovation look like for you now with your current business?
Things like cheese. So that's been a lifelong love of mine. And we started making cheese with a little pot, a couple second hand molds, and an old walk-in that we converted to a cheese cave. So in that department, it's more that we embrace, first of all, that technology, you know, better equipment. Then, better training. And we still use the same farm. We still you know, we started out [with] a farm that had Ayrshire cows, a closed herd of Ayrshire cows. And that was what we thought was best for the cheese that we wanted to make. So that is the traditional part. The technology that we've embraced in the cheese room has allowed us to make 500 pounds versus 25 pounds. So at the smaller end of the scale, it would never have worked economically, and honestly, cheese is something that's hard to work out economically anyway, because it's a tough business. But in this respect, we wouldn't have been able to keep making traditional handmade cheese had we kept our size that small. Economics would have prevented it in the long run. Now we're getting to the point where it will be a viable business. I hope. I hope this year it's viable. In the bread department and in other places, it's more of the same. You know, there's so much pressure on $1 . You know, you can only raise your prices so much. And at the same time, as you know, costs for everything have gone up. So it's just to continue to try to find ways to make ourselves work more efficiently in the kitchen.
You’re relying on the consumers to understand what it is that you're doing. You're relying and you're hoping that they get why a loaf of your bread is more expensive than the store brands that they can get for half the price. How do you convey that message?
That's exactly right. That's one of the hardest things we do. So making cheese, jam and bread is hard, but educating the public is harder. So and that's on us to do better. First and foremost is training our own staff. So the person that's going to help you with a loaf of bread at the store or at the farmer's market, they know where we get the flour, how we make the bread, what's our dough, how long it takes to make sourdough. All those things are what we need to train our staff. Make proper signage, encourage our staff to interact with the customer so that, like you said, the customer can see ours and say, okay, this is worth an extra $2, something like that. So absolutely, all all about training, communicating, constantly learning on our end and constantly teaching.
Give me a quick little Economics 101 on why cheese is something you’re focusing on–and what makes it a difficult business venture.
Well, I love cheese. I think it's one of those, you know, wonderful things that has evolved over time. So we looked at cheese to make. And first it was a hobby, honestly. And then when we thought it would become a business, you know, part of our business, you know, we did some investigation and we've grown probably three times. So the biggest challenge is the upfront investment. Those machines are very expensive. The pasteurization vat, cheese press, aging room--aging room was very expensive. That was our last big purchase because we got to the point where we realized we could spend all the time sourcing great milk, using good techniques in the make room, but then not aging it properly and having it go bad, you know, go sour in that way. So that was a big investment. Then if you start with the cost of the milk at the farm, the dairy farmers are very stressed because their price is set by a milk co-op. So you know, they're going to get X amount of dollars per 100 pounds of milk. And our relationship with our farmer is that I let the farmer set the price. So the farmer will say, you know, the price of milk right now is $25 per 100 weight. And she would like us to pay $35. So we always pay a good percentage more than they're going to get at the co-op because we want them to stay in business. We want them to have a living, and we want the relationship to be beneficial to both. But that's not a that's not the majority of the cost to make the cheese. There's certainly the equipment and the person or people to make the cheese. That's the biggest expense. Even if you do all those things well, so far, it's more of a break even thing. But we're getting there. This fall and winter, I think, which is when you sell the most cheese, I think this will be like a turning point for us. I certainly hope so.
When you think of the great cheese regions of the world, you don't always think of our region. Can you make good cheese here in the Mid Atlantic?
I think you could make good cheese anywhere, if you start with good milk and you’ve got good techniques afterward.
What does it mean for you to be rooted in your community?
Well, it's very important for us to support our local economy. And it all it just comes around and around. It's not again, it's not one of those things that it's a game that you win. It's just that if we can afford to pay the farmers so they can afford to pay their staff or, you know, take care of their families and so forth, or, you know, the person that builds the furniture, the all the tradespeople, all that just, just, just comes around and again and again. And we've met and still know people that we met 25 years ago at our first farmers markets that we still buy from today and still interact with. And it's a great community and I hope that we're always part of it and that we all of course, do our part in that.
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This fall, “Love Where You Live” is paying special attention to our neighbors who keep us fed. Wednesday mornings on Get Up DC, from Oct. 18-Nov. 22, we’ll highlight the region’s makers, growers, and purveyors who share their harvest with the DMV at weekly farmers markets. From a mother-daughter kimchi company putting a new spin on a cultural staple, to a first-generation organic farmer cultivating in all seasons, to a culinary-artist turned pickler—we’ll ask about their process, what keeps them going (and growing), and why the DMV is where they’re rooted. It’s a celebration of what it means to be homegrown in this diverse community, and a closer look at the economic and environmental importance of supporting local.
Each of the businesses profiled in “Love Where You Live: Homegrown” is a vendor at a local FRESHFARM market — a year-round, producers-only community of markets across the DMV featuring farmers and makers from around the Mid-Atlantic.
At nearly 30 markets, shoppers have the opportunity to support local businesses based within 200 miles of Washington, DC. FRESHFARM also supports the local good system through educational programs and food distribution and access programs.
To find a market near you, click here.