Steve and Sandy Jacobson’s Entrepreneurial Journey with Brick Oven Bakery
Brick Oven Bakery, which opened in 2019, was founded with the goal of making breads “as they should be made, bringing traditional baking methods to life,” and providing them to the Bismarck-Mandan community. What initially started as a small passion project for Steve soon turned into a storefront with a continually expanding audience in the area.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Steve and Sandy Jacobson, owners of Brick Oven Bakery in Bismarck. We discussed their entrepreneurial path, how they aim to work with more business owners and companies across town this year, their plans for future expansions, and much more.
The journey of Brick Oven Bakery began with a simple love for baking at home. In 2018, they were operating Jacobson Landscaping, which was “running itself” already, according to Sandy. With more free time to explore passions and hobbies, Steve wanted to get more into the world of baking, especially sourdough bread.
“Eventually, he was making a lot of bread loaves and we were giving it away to friends and family and eating a lot of bread at home. We started thinking, ‘Maybe people want this and we should sell it,’ so we decided that we’d consider doing a farmers market to start.” Sandy said. The hobby quickly outgrew their home kitchen, leading to thoughts of sharing their product with a broader audience.
After 16 years of successfully operating Jacobson Landscaping, Steve took a leap of faith to follow his passion for baking. Steve traveled to San Francisco, where he attended the San Francisco Baking Institute. Not long after, Steve was on his way back to Bismarck to explore their business opportunities moving ahead.
“We looked at converting a pole barn on our land into a bakery, but it would have cost us around $30,000 to convert, and I didn’t know how we would sell enough bread to make that money back,” Steve said. “So, we decided that we were going to have a small storefront as a hobby, but it was still originally supposed to be much smaller with one employee.”
The transition from a home-based hobby to a storefront was challenging for the Jacobsons. They began looking at potential storefronts for the business, but nothing leaped out at them until October of 2018 when they took a “haunted” tour in downtown Bismarck and their current building caught their attention. Within a few weeks, they started to look deeper into the location and began work on developing a formal business plan to showcase.
“We knew that we needed to know exactly what we were going to do before going to a bank and taking the next steps,” Sandy said. “Steve and I sat in our vehicle in front of the building a few times, counting and placing tick marks on a piece of paper whenever somebody walked by the building. Through that, we had a concrete idea to take to the bank and show how many potential customers could come to a location in downtown Bismarck.”
They were remodeling the space by April of 2019, with the business open to the public later in September of that year. In the five years since, business has boomed for the Jacobsons. As they continue to serve long-time regulars and first-time customers alike, still meeting and serving new people every day, they’ve achieved enough success and growth to recently open a larger production space nearby.
“We now have roughly 3,000 square feet of space devoted to production at another location, which is only a few blocks away from our downtown location,” Sandy said. “That tiny little bakery that we thought we would never outgrow, we outgrew within the last couple of years. We can produce even more now for all of our customers who have welcomed us with open arms.”
Brick Oven Bakery has recently expanded its seating availability to accommodate the downtown business growing population.
Community Support
“We’ve always worked very well with Dakota Refrigeration, and they’ve helped us out significantly in the past. They’ve helped us fix things that even they’ve never worked on before because there are things in our bakery that nobody else in this town has, such as proofers and brick ovens. Thankfully, we haven’t had many things that need repairing, so we’ve been very lucky in that sense.”
– Sandy Jacobson
Looking ahead, the Jacobsons and the Brick Oven Bakery team have no shortage of plans, goals, and ambitions for the very near future. This summer, Brick Oven Bakery is launching its plans for corporate catering to businesses and large events across the Bismarck-Mandan region.
“We’ve been putting the menus together for larger businesses now that we have the scale to produce hundreds and thousands of pastries a day and accommodate them with our lunch and pastry options,” Steve said. “Now, we can approach people who may order 300 pastries or 100 boxed lunches for their in-house meetings and other corporate events. There’s no way in the world that we could have done that before having the production site, so we’re excited to talk about it and looking forward to it.”
Furthermore, the team is also collaborating with the local food truck, Hensley’s Tasty Truck, another small business local to the area. Hensley’s Tasty Truck will be serving their pulled pork, burgers, and other items on Brick Oven Bakery’s freshly-made buns.
“We’re very excited about that collaboration and putting ourselves out into the community more often,” Sandy said. “The biggest reason that we haven’t been able to do those things is because we got so busy, so fast, at the beginning. We didn’t have the time to take a step back and consider what more we could do for Bismarck-Mandan, Now that we’ve settled into the operations, and have plenty of space, we’re able to do that.”
Fear not, downtown residents, as they will continue with their current location as well, for the time being.
“Over time, we’ll be expanding our team with our second location. We just really want to serve more of the community. So many people come here, even to this day, saying ‘This is my first time here because I live way up north,'” Sandy said. “We want them to be able to enjoy the pastries and coffee that you just can’t get anywhere else but here.”
A Q&A with Sandy and Steve Jacobson
Q: In terms of marketing and customer engagement, what has proven most effective for getting the name “Brick Oven Bakery” out there?
Sandy: Word of mouth, social media, customer reviews, and feedback have significantly helped us out. I do five-minute segments or appearances on “North Dakota Today” and “Studio 701,” which have really helped us in getting our name out there. We recently hired a full-time social media specialist, focusing on platforms like Instagram and Facebook to help promote the brand. The positive reviews and feedback there have been so encouraging to us. We’re deeply grateful for the support and recognition from our community, acknowledging the effort we put into our work. Their appreciation for our products and understanding of the challenges we face are invaluable to us.
Q: Has any specific customer feedback ever encouraged you to make a change within Brick Oven Bakery for the better?
Sandy: Absolutely. Oftentimes, people will suggest different kinds of sourdough bread that they may want to see, so we’re open to suggestions. Furthermore, many people wanted more seating, which has been huge for our growth. While we can’t take every single piece of advice and follow through on it, we try to accommodate our customers the best that we can. Now that we have the new production space, gluten-free options will be coming soon (sometime this summer), which is another recommendation that we’ve received.
Steve: We’re still settling into the new production space. However, our goal is to offer a gluten-free sourdough bread to the public within the coming months, so keep an eye out for updates on our social media. We hear the community and know what they want; it just takes some time to develop a process and make sure that it works, and that the final product looks great. We would never throw something together, try to sell it, and let it fail because it was rushed. So we’re trying everything five, six, seven times before we approach the community with it.
Entrepreneurial Tips with Steve and Sandy Jacobson
1. Try not to let anybody’s negativity stand in the way of your goals.
“90% of the people we talked to in the beginning thought that this would be a terrible idea to pursue. If you love what you’re doing, just go for it, because there’s no way that you’re going to know if you’ll succeed or fail without trying. Even if you do fail, it’s a learning experience and you can move on to something else. When we first started, we wanted to do fruits and vegetables at the farmers market as well, and we completely failed at that but moved forward. Don’t let people tell you that it’s not going to work, because you have to make it work for yourself.”
2. Reach out to local small businesses for startup advice and support.
“It’s important to reach out to small businesses, even those not in the same industry, for startup advice. They can share what they might have done differently and the mistakes to avoid. We called some bakeries that we thought would be similar to us in Montana and North Dakota, but there was nothing similar to us, so we didn’t reach out and call on many others, but it could have helped, looking back. We’re happy to help anyone with startup questions, across any field, because we understand the value of having support and guidance from the start.”
3. Be prepared for the long haul.
“Sometimes, people have the financial backing to try out whatever they have in mind for a business. We didn’t have that money to put into it, especially with a large remodel right at the beginning. We were working 90 hours a week for something that we wanted badly. If you want something, you have to be willing and ready to put the proper time and effort in. If we hadn’t worked so hard at getting Brick Oven Bakery off the ground, it probably would have failed. There were many times when we were at a crossroads and had to keep building the business to keep up with growing demand. It’s tough, but you have to keep pushing forward and put in the work.”
4. Recognize your background.
“It’s great to know your worth, your skills, and what drives you at the end of the day. At the beginning of Brick Oven Bakery, for example, we were originally going to just do black coffee, but then we decided to offer lattes. I had a background in working at coffee shops and Steve had a background in cooking, so we just went for it, using what we had.”
With concrete plans for a new location expansion and ongoing efforts to engage more deeply with the Bismarck-Mandan Community, Steve and Sandy Jacobson’s future with Brick Oven Bakery looks bright. Stay tuned to their social media for the latest updates regarding corporate catering, new additions, and more!
BrickOvenBakeryND.com
701-751-0147
[email protected]
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112 N 4th St, Bismarck, ND 58501