Today we’d like to introduce you to Kat Sawyer.
Hi Kat, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My baking/Sourdough journey started about 4 years ago when I started heavily cleaning up mine and my family’s diet. I removed all artificial sweeteners, preservatives, colors… really any ingredient I couldn’t read or know what it was, I eliminated. Due to the terrible state of our food industry, that led me to making basically everything from scratch. Bread seemed to be such a staple food, it only made sense to start making our own bread. I had been reading about Sourdough and being someone who was diagnosed with a gluten sensitivity year prior, I decided to go that route. I put a request in my neighborhood Facebook page to see if anyone had a sourdough starter I could buy or get from them, and the rest is history. I immediately was hooked from my first loaf. I was a full-time fitness coach at the time and when we would have gatherings, I would bring my bread. Gym members started hitting me up asking me to bake them a loaf and said they would pay me. I didn’t except payment, I truly just really enjoyed being able to provide that for friends and family. Christmas time rolled around though, and 4 kids are not cheap! That’s when I decided to post on our local bulletin board about selling my bread to raise some money for Christmas gifts. Well, IT BLEW UP. What I thought would be something I offered for the holidays quickly became much more than that. The demand was shocking. My customers begged for more and I’m not one to turn anyone down. I just kept rolling with it. Within a couple months I was out of space. We purchased a commercial mixer and oven to keep up with the demand. That was a huge help for a while, but Christmas of 2024 really was the first time I thought to myself ” I either have to start turning people away…or I’ve got to get a storefront”. Twenty-five people lined up at your door in your neighborhood for cinnamon rolls is just too much chaos. Not to mention what the inside of my home looked like after baking for 72 hours straight. My goal for after the holidays was to start scoping out another option for pick up locations. I contacted Clean Juice in Germantown to see if they would let me use their store for pick-ups and in turn, I would encourage my customers to grab a juice. That was working great for non-holiday time, getting some of the foot traffic out of my neighborhood and giving my kids a break from handing out orders every day after school. A couple months into that, the owner of Clean Juice reached out about me possibly renting out the kitchen which I was 100% interested in. When we sat down to meet about the logistics on that, we ended up learning they were actually interested in selling. The owners really wanted to leave all equipment as is and just asked for a price. We gave them a price and March of 2025, the place was mine. It was a whirlwind of a time and I’m still absorbing all that took place so fast. Even since opening day, so much has changed. I kept 4 clean juice employees but as far as bakers… it was just me and one other employee (bless her SOUL) I had started training out of my home. Now, 8 months in… I have 24 employees and we are rocking and rolling. Its been quite a wild ride but I’m here for it! Excited to see whats to come!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Far from smooth! Merging a Bakery and a Juice Bar was definitely harder than I could have imagined. At first it was like “oh, juices and smoothies are easy… that compliments bread well… this should be fine” Says a true amateur. Clean Juice was a franchise and was built from scratch specifically to be a juice bar. Not a bakery, not a restaurant…and we were both of those. That hit me about 2 months in as I kept trying to figure out why functionally speaking, there were so many challenges. From running out of electric space, to ovens not being able to meet the demand, to temperature issues with needing to keep the bakery warm for the bread, to no walk-in freezers and fridges (a MUST for a bakery)… the challenges were plentiful. We still have a long road to go but I’m beyond proud of the staff for their flexibility as we figure everything out.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We are a Fully Fermented Sourdough Bakery. This is our specialty. We make ZERO shortcuts. Everyday we make fresh Sourdough Breads, Bagels and Cinnamon Rolls from scratch start to finish. We also have a Coffee and Juice Bar where we strive to bring fresh organic produce and healthy eating to the community. I most proud of our clean ingredients. It has been the biggest challenge avoiding artificial ingredients, preservatives and food colorings as our suppliers simply don’t carry products WITHOUT these things. What does that mean for us? The HUGE hassle of buying small quantities of ingredients at higher prices at various different stores. We sacrifice convenience and price to bring this to our customers. I KNOW no body else around offers this because my large suppliers tell me I can’t get the products I need because there’s no demand for in our area.
What are your plans for the future?
I want to supply all of the surrounding areas with GOOD BREAD. That’s my goal. So when someone goes out to eat they can have peace of mind knowing they are eating Kats Bread and therefore is clean.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.katsourdoughandjuice.com
- Instagram: @katssourdoughandjuicebar
- Facebook: Kats Sourdough and Juice Bar
