We run our bakery out of shipping containers. It was an unexpectedly cost-effective solution to scaling our business.

"I had to mix my pizza dough in his mixer and that's kind of how we met. Before, I worked on Madison Avenue in marketing and brand strategy, and in 2008, the economy crashed and my job crashed too. When that happened, I moved into food. I took a job on an ice cream truck and just fell in love with food work."

"While working in the industry, I was unhappy with the way that they treated employees. I was in management at the time, so I could see the full round numbers. I thought, "There has to be a better way, but it's not my job to change this business owner or this business." Ben and I talked a lot about it, and we were going upstate frequently - I was working at a place upstate as their first chef."

"We love farming and being close to what's happening on the ground, literally. In 2017 we said, let's get out of the city. We didn't have a ton of money, and we had to be scrappy and thoughtful about how we deployed the resources that we had saved. We wanted a place where we could live and work, so we wanted property and land - that was important to us."

Chrissy Traore and her husband Ben Salif Traore met working in adjacent bakery and restaurant roles and transitioned from city food work to upstate life. Chrissy shifted from marketing into food after the 2008 economic crash, taking an ice cream truck job and later various food-industry positions through 2017. Observing poor employee treatment while in management prompted desire for change. The couple decided to move upstate for outdoor space, farming opportunities, and improved quality of life. With limited funds they adopted scrappy, thoughtful resource deployment. They sought a property that allowed living and working on site and found a suitable site in Cairo, New York.

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