From corporate world to baking bread

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Kim and Marty Kane, Great Harvest Bread owners, display an array of their products as well as some bakery humor with their T-shirts: "Buy our bread...We knead the dough." | Herb Shenkin~for Sun-Times Media

At Great Harvest Bread Company, owner and professional loafer Marty Kane gave me a tour of his bakery. Pointing to a long maple wood table top, he said, “That’s the largest kneading table in all 200 Great Harvest stores. We make 200 to 500 loaves of bread fresh every day, each one as fresh and great tasting as the next.

“We bake like grandma used to bake. You look at the ingredients on a loaf of honey wheat bread at the grocery store and there are 10-20 ingredients, many of which you can’t pronounce. My honey wheat (the store’s top seller) has five ingredients: water, fresh yeast, salt, honey and whole wheat flour.”

Flour is milled fresh daily. In the milling room each vat of milled grain had two, large diameter open copper tubes protruding. “Milling (the grain) heats it up to 110 or so,” said Kane. “It doesn’t make good bread at that temperature. Yes, even though it’s going to be baked,” he said, anticipating my question. “The tubes vent the heat.”

Before buying Great harvest in August 2009, Kane was a 30-year-old vice-president for a Chicago ad agency. His wife Kim was a project manager for a telecommunication company in the Sears Tower. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, she quit to raise the couple’s four children.

“I was leaving at six and getting home at nine,” said Kane. “She called me one day when I was stuck in traffic and asked how I felt about buying the Geneva Great Harvest Store. I said let’s take a look at it.

“I knew a lot about operating a company. I knew zero about baking bread. We had to go out to Montana to meet the Great Harvest executive board. You ever been to Dillon, Montana? I drove two hours from Bozeman, didn’t meet a single car in either direction. After we got approved, we did two weeks of training, closed the deal and took over from the previous owner. It was like buying a used car. You find out what they didn’t tell you, what doesn’t work. Fortunately baking equipment is extremely well made. You just need replacement parts.”

Kane said the freedom of owning his own business is great. “I love dealing with my customers, knowing their names, making them welcome. Small business is the heart and soul of America. I do a lot of things locally. I sell Arcedium’s coffee. He sells my sweets. In February, we’re introducing sandwiches made with fresh bread, the best sandwiches you ever tasted.” Great Harvest also sells fresh hot soups during the week.

Specialty bakery products such as ginger bread and pumpkin bread change with the seasons. February is chocolate month.

Great Harvest sells gift baskets throughout the year priced from $20 to $80. A $50 basket includes four loaves of bread, a large bag of cookies and a jar of jam, perfect for holiday giving.