Wild Bread Co. started about 6 years ago when Christina Bailey-DeMille and Nelson DeMille decided to leave  their corporate jobs and buy one-way tickets to Europe. They knew that their jobs were not the right fit and they needed a change of pace. They spent the next few months traveling and becoming immersed in food and culture, typically opting for staying in people's homes rather than hotels or rental homes. 

“We’ve always had a passion for food and when traveling to new places it just felt like that universal language and the thing that can bring everyone together,” Christina said.

Throughout their travels, they found a work away program in Wales on a small town organic farm doing produce boxes. There they learned how to make bread from one of the owners of the farm. This bread was the best they had ever tasted and the ingredients were so simple. Christina and Nelson started to think to themselves, “How come the bread in America doesn’t taste like this” and “ Why does every bread in the store have all of these crazy ingredients.” 

They learned the ancient tradition and process of naturally leavened bread in hopes of being able to make their own starter and bread when they got home. Creating a business out of it wasn’t even on their mind. 

About 5 months later, they came home and built starters in their house mixing flour and water and feeding it until it became what they were looking for. 

At this point they were just giving loaves to their friends and family and the owner of Harmony House yoga in Pismo Beach found out about their bread and asked them to come and sell it at her maker's market. 

“We just decided to give it a shot. We made 20 loaves which was a huge production for us and we sold out in less than 20 minutes,” Christina and Nelson said. “We also got the opportunity to sample our bread and get some great feedback moving forward.” 

After their debut at the makers market, they got a permanent spot selling at the yoga studio on Saturday mornings. As they got busier and busier, they decided to pursue their business full time and really created Wild Bread Co., bringing you the most delicious and nutritious breads using the ancient method of bread making that yields far more complex flavors and superior digestibility.

Below is a Q&A with Christina and Nelson. Read more to learn about Wild Bread Co..

What were some of the biggest challenges creating your business/product

“One challenge will always be identifying when it's time to make the next jump and I think for a while  we've been pretty conservative with it. We funded it ourselves and the money we were making went right back into the business to grow it. Just like we learned how to make bread ourselves we kind of self taught ourselves how to run a little business. You go into it because you love making bread but you have to do all these other things and we’ve had to figure it out as we go which is challenging but also kind of really fun.” 

How did you and your business get to where you are today

“First and foremost I would say Kelly from Harmony House Yoga because she was really the first person that encouraged us to sell our bread and gave us the maker's market to try it. Jerry Rutiz from Rutiz farms also really helped us get our start by allowing us to sell at his farm stand and introduced us to the right kind of customers, similar to Harvestly, local people that care about what they put in their bodies and they want to support local food producers. With Harmony House and Rutiz we put a lot of energy into connecting with our customers and giving out samples which created a strong word of mouth in the community. I think one thing that has opened a lot of doors for us is that we are both from this area so we have a big network of family and friends that are all rooting for us. It gave us a lot of opportunities in the community to really have our 5 minutes to show what we can do and then it had legs and took off from there with the customers.”

What do you envision for you and your business for the coming future

“I think for us we’ve let it kind of grow organically and that is something that we like. People always say ‘maybe someday we’ll see your product in Trader Joe’s or something like that’ and that’s definitely not the route that we are looking for. I think we really like being a part of the community and making that footprint a lot smaller. We want to provide bread to everyone in our community, not necessarily to everyone across the world. We like being on the smaller side of things and focusing on the local area but there is definitely room to grow.”

“There’s more people in the community that would appreciate our product and the organic approach that haven’t heard about us yet. In the next year we plan to put more effort towards marketing and partnerships. We do plan on growing in the community but the business is based in sourdough so we can say confidently that we will only be producing sourdough based products. In the world of sourdough there are a lot of possibilities of products, and the sourdough process has many benefits in terms of health and flavor. Any way the business goes, that would always be true.”

What would you like your customers to know about you and your business

“We feel really lucky to do what we do and it’s really impactful for us knowing we get to play a little role in people coming together over food. We are both self described foodies and getting together at our parents house or at a friends house; food is a vehicle to bring people together and have that positive human connection and enjoy eachothers company. It really brings us a lot of joy to have the opportunity to make bread for the community and in our hearts we know it end up at a dinner party and people get to enjoy it.”

Get Wild Bread products delivered to your door on Harvestly.co!