Kiwi Business Story: Ed Hemming from Volare Bread Ltd

Ed Hemming is the co-owner and co-founder of the award-winning Volare Bread Ltd, an artisan bakery which specialises in baking the highest-quality handcrafted sourdough breads and pastries for restaurants, cafés and good food stores in the Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Auckland. Breadbox is Volare’s online service, which delivers to the Waikato, Tauranga, and Auckland.
 

(Ed, pictured right, with co-founder Ryan Simmons)

Location: Hamilton
Business Type: Food 
Founded:  2009
Number of Employees:  85
Current Business Situation: New Gluten Free business launching in 2022 and revenue returning to pre-Covid levels
Relationship with The Icehouse: Owner Manager Programme Alumni

‘The Icehouse Owner Manager course has helped bring balance to Ed's approach to the business. It’s helped him set his own boundaries with work/life balance and that lets him bring the best version of himself to work, resulting in better leadership and direction.’ Robert Atkinson, Operations Manager

Tell us about yourself and why you decided to become an entrepreneur? 

I’m a civil engineer by trade who decided to start a bakery. I have always loved business. It was the only thing I ever really thought about at school – not that it was ever a subject or even really talked about. I decided to be sensible and study something that was safe and was relevant to what my father and brothers did. As much as I liked (and still do) engineering, I still had an urge for business.

Why did you choose your type of business?

I didn’t! Ryan (Simmons, co-owner and business partner) and I have been friends since school. We got talking in 2008, and decided to research the possibility of taking an artisan bakery to market, as he has an amazing talent for baking. I have never made a loaf of bread and probably never will! Why would I bother? Leave it to the experts.

We could see a market and I was willing to do whatever to make it work – delivery, marketing, financials, sales, HR and everything else that is not baking. We naively, you might say, jumped in feet first. We had a lot of doubters, a lot of raised eyebrows… and a lot of banks and finance companies saying “no”. So we had to prove them wrong!

How does 2022 look for you compared to 2021?

Confusingly unpredictable, but things are in general looking a lot more positive. Business is okay – we’ve had no redundancies, and launching Breadbox, our online service, has helped with that.

We went from having no online presence to going online within three days during the first lockdown, and when business got back to normality, we let the online run its course. But with new lockdowns we’ve given Breadbox a new impetus, hired our own marketing manager and everything’s in-house now.

Through the 2021 lockdowns we were down 85% but it hasn’t taken too long to crawl out of that and now we’re running at about 95% of where we want to be.

Generally, I think some business owners may get a bit of a reality check over the first three months of 2022, where things will go backwards or there will be a bit of unrest. Even though I hate the phrase ‘the new normal’, it will take about six months for New Zealand to work out how to cope with this new situation.



What are currently your biggest challenges?

It used to be the constant state of limbo, but we decided to stop worrying about that at the end of 2021. Another obvious challenge is the cost of goods, whether due to logistics or general lack of stock. If costs of ingredients are going up and revenue is down, then we need to adjust.

You have to pick yourself up and make the best of whatever situation you are put in. Moaning and whinging creates a negative atmosphere within the business, which is a great segue into what I now think is the real issue for us – staff wellbeing and, specifically, mental health.

Whether it be the proposed mandates, reduced revenue, workload, inability to travel to see family and friends, having staff with correct visas stuck overseas since March 2020 – the list goes on and on – we’re focused on the wellbeing of our team.

What kind of support have you received from The Icehouse and are you looking to keep working with them?

I completed OMP 46 in 2019 – a great experience. I can’t recommend it highly enough; great facilitators and a really fantastic cohort. I know OMP has been a real life-changing experience for so many of OMP 46, and I loved every minute of it. I am also running other members of the Volare team through other Icehouse programmes.

How have things changed since working with The Icehouse?

In general, the business has grown well, but being able to step back from the daily grind was one of the big takeaways – hard, but worth it. For many of us, as business owners, OMP gave us a chance to get back into the driver’s seat and reminded us, and showed us, how to retake control.

OMP helped me confirm that we’re on the right track, so it just tweaking things in a few areas. The learning around resilience was huge, and how important it is to move people to work to the best of their ability, learning not to be so hard on yourself, and so on.

One of the great things about OMP is that unexpected things can happen when you do an Icehouse programme. A few of us cohorts – thanks to the smarter folk in OMP 46 – have started an investment fund. It’s going to be exciting to see what that leads to. That wouldn’t have happened without OMP.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs who are looking for help?

I’ve done a few talks for The Icehouse in the Waikato. I always say, talk to the right people, allow yourself to step away for a day or two and stop thinking about work or Covid or whatever it is that is troubling you. Your business will not fall over. The situation we’re in now will improve and won’t last forever.

Follow the links for more information on Volare Bread and Breadbox, and their range of products and services.