Bakery Holding Its Own After Cutting Workforce
Outside Boston, the Dancing Deer Baking Co. sells all kinds of cookies and brownies to restaurants and stores. Last year, during the worst of the recession, the owner had to lay off some of the employees. Would the bakery be helped by President Obama's efforts to get banks to loan more to small businesses?
LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:
Since the president is hoping to help small businesses, we went to talk to some entrepreneurs about the challenges theyre facing right now. We have two reports.
We begin with Chris Arnold, who takes us to a commercial bakery in Boston that had to lay off workers.
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CHRIS ARNOLD: The Dancing Deer Baking Company sells all-natural brownies and cookies to online and through retail stores. Their Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are particularly good.
Ms. TRISH KARTER (Founder and CEO, Dancing Deer Baking Company): You like it, by the way, don't you?
ARNOLD: Yeah. That's really good.
Trish Karter is the founder and CEO. She has 65 full-time employees, and the business was growing steadily until the economy fell apart.
Ms. KARTER: And we had lots of financial services, customers - so that kind of evaporated overnight.
ARNOLD: One day in January a year ago, the company had to lay off 20 percent of its office staff.
Ms. KARTER: I'd never been there before. We've always been growing. It was the hardest day of my working life.
ARNOLD: Since then, the company's been holding its own. But Carter says that access to credit has been an issue. President Obama is trying to get banks to loan more to small businesses. And if that works, Carter says that would be good. She says that last year, she had to find a new bank when her old one started getting squirrely about renewing her line of credit.
Ms. KARTER: Our growth was constrained in the sense that I spent three or four months working through a banking crisis instead of working on the business and switching banks. You know, we wasted a lot of time. When you're fussing around with bank covenants and talking to bankers, you're not selling, and you're not coming up with some great new product.
ARNOLD: And Carter ended up having to pay a higher interest rate, which is a drag on any business.
Ms. KARTER: And I have a lot of friends that run small-to-mid-size businesses, and we're all in the same boat.
ARNOLD: Still, the biggest problem is just that sales are sluggish. Carter says that that's the main reason that she's not planning on hiring anytime soon.
Ms. KARTER: This will not be a hiring year for us, unless something just crazy wonderful happens. And those things happen, you know, and we're working on it.
ARNOLD: Carter says she's been talking to one of the airlines about a contract for a million cookies for in-flight snacks. If she lands that, she'll be hiring some more people.
Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
