Bread and Butter: What a Bunch of Bakers Taught Me about Business and Happiness

By Tom McMakin

Bread and Butter is a book with three parts: First, it's the story of the birth of an extraordinarily successful kind of business called a "freedom franchise": Great Harvest Bread Co., which began as one bakery 25 years ago, is now a $60-million-a-year company with 140 stores in 40 states. Second, it's the story of one employee's success--the author, Tom McMakin, who was looking for a job and found a lifestyle. McMakin's immersion into Great Harvest is a model for modern entrepreneurship and an inspiration in this age of failed dot-coms and dissatisfied young employees. Third, McMakin uses GH's experience to provide advice for everyone from dreamers starting their own multi-million-dollar companies to small-business owners to someone who doesn't know what she wants to do. Things like: creating a "learning community" using email and an extranet; operating without loans, relying instead on profits for reinvesting in the company; GH's "40-hour" rule so no one works more than 40 hours a week; and more. Bread and Butter can help you discover how, instead of living your life in service to the business, you can create a business in service of your life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312265913
• ISBN13: 9780312265915
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Practical Advice for Business and Life

If you know anything about the franchise business, you will realize how truly subversive "Bread and Butter" is. No required recipes for the bread? No approvals necessary for décor or signage? And then there's the home office: no one can work more than forty hours a week. Vacations are required. There is no debt. Great Harvest's owners care about people as people: they expect and want their employees and franchisees to have lives outside of work. That's not a new story right now: everyone is jumping on the "fulfilled employee" bandwagon. But Great Harvest has been living this story for twenty-five years, and living it very successfully. It's a fascinating story.But that's not the only story in "Bread and Butter." There's the story of its author, Tom McMakin, of his quest for meaning and happiness in life. You will not put this book down without asking yourself some deep and serious questions you may not have asked yourself in a long time. If you are not in touch with your spiritual side, watch out - your spiritual side is about to hit you in the side of the head like one of Elly Mae Clampett's rolls. If your "to-do" list is bothering you, I have a suggestion. Add reading "Bread and Butter" to the top of your list, do it first, and when you finish, you get to tear up the list for good.

Bread and Butter

I loved Tom's Bread and Butter and urge everyone to read the book and try the bread. Even in retirement, or perhaps especially in retirement, Tom's How-to recipe offers inspiration as well as practical guidelines on how to make our remaining years happier and more fulfilled. Tom Donnelly says this, "First thing I did was to rush out and buy two loaves of Great Harvest bread. Fabulous! Second thing was to buy another copy of the book to pass around to my kids for inspiration. Hopeful! Tom's Mom and Dad sure did something right.

10 Stars....

Tom McMakin is a special person. He has to be; how else can one explain such a book from a corporate COO. I picked this book up on a lark when I read the jacket and learned that McMakin was the COO of Great Harvest. My wife and I love the bread and joke, at times, about junking our careers and getting a franchise. After reading Bread and Butter, we might just do it.It is a Siddhartha for our times. Bread and Butter is a book that causes the reader to reflect on their life's path. McMakin weaves stories together in a way that makes baking bread a metaphor for introspection and renewal. The characters are role models for those seeking transformation.All this and the book is a great read as well. McMakin gets your attention and keeps it with a writing style that is story telling at its best.Get this book!

Work and the Meaning of Life

I've spent my career thinking about how my life and work intersect. Bread and Butter is a book precisely about this question. In it Tom McMakin describes a philosophy of life and a philosophy of work that are one and the same and interviews many folks who have put this philosophy into practice. Regardless of whether or not you want to bake bread, if this question is important to you, this book is for you.

Life -- Keep it Simple

It's readily apparent to readers of Bread and Butter that Tom's words come from the heart, not just the head. The story of Great Harvest as well as Tom's business and spiritual awakening will melt your cynicism like a slathering of butter on hot whole wheat bread. Great Harvest is a unique enterprise, as those of us who labor under other corporate regimes can attest. At its heart, Tom's book and Great Harvest itself is about goodness: be good to customers, the community, employees, the franchise system and your family, but most importantly, be good to yourself and you will reap the benefits, both in material and emotional reward.Buy this book, you've never read anything quite like it.