On The Menu September 01, 2024

Yes, listeners,

and you're going to be talking to Michelle Mayfield of Beatrice Bakery.

We've had a lot of Beatrice Bakery products roaming our house

for quite some time now,

so it will be really interesting to talk to Michelle.

Michelle, you are the marketing chief, are you?

Yes, I am the national sales executive

in the marketing department at Beatrice Bakery.

Great.

Let's start with where is Beatrice Bakery?

Sure.

Beatrice Bakery, or we call it Beatrice, but it's...

Oh, Beatrice.

Yeah, that's okay.

It is interesting.

Not sure how that came to be,

but we're located in the southeast corner of the state of Nebraska.

We're about 45 minutes south of Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska,

and about an hour and a half south of Omaha.

Well, now, how did this company, in the middle of nowhere,

get to be this major online bakery throughout the whole country?

Sure.

So there were a couple of brothers that had immigrated from Germany,

and they were originally set up in Missouri, in St. Louis,

and they found a recipe for their grandmother's fruitcake in an old trunk,

and they started producing.

They were doing it in Missouri, but they outgrew that facility,

and so they started hunting in the Midwest for another location,

and that's when they came to Beatrice,

and we've been producing the fruitcake as Beatrice Bakery since 1964.

Wow.

The recipe, yeah, is that we're 100 years old.

It's from 1917.

Yeah, well, as marketing director,

you should...

You've done a major promotion here because you ship all over the United States.

We do.

We ship all over.

We've really ramped up our brand awareness the last couple of years,

so fruitcake has been around forever,

but we feel that ours is a little bit unique in that we don't use any citron or orange peel,

and so we wanted to make sure.

We wanted to make sure that people were aware that they could get a quality fruitcake,

something that tastes good and not something that you re-gift or use as a doorstop,

so we have really ramped up our...

Yeah, you know all those stories about the fruitcakes that keep being shipped around

and re-shipped around.

Yeah, re-gifted every year, yeah.

Yeah.

So...

Omaha has a very...

Well-known citizen who's in the finance business.

Yes.

Does he buy your cake?

I hope so.

Who is that rabbit?

Maybe, you know, that's a great...

I should send him one and make sure he has had ours because...

You absolutely should.

Warren Buffett is the head of...

What's the name of the company again?

I forget now.

Berkshire Hathaway.

Oh, Berkshire Hathaway.

Oh, that's who it is.

Okay.

Right.

And he's very...

He's very rich, so he can afford lots of cake.

He can.

I'll send him his first one for free, and then he can buy the rest of them from there.

He can certainly afford to do that, as you said.

Yeah, well, I have a list of what you said to us as samples.

Oh, okay.

And it's the southern pecan ring, the chocolate squares,

and grandma's fruit and nut cake bar box,

and another ring of a chocolate rum liqueur cake ring.

Yes.

Yeah, and Peter's the one to really talk about this

because he's the one who ate it all.

Well, he must have liked it then.

What is it about fruit cake?

You must know better than me.

What is it about fruit cake in the United States?

In my native land, the mother of the house made the cakes herself.

Yes, and we...

And my sister started making hers according to her about-to-be-mother-in-law's recipe.

Recipe.

And if she didn't do it right, the wedding was off.

Yeah, the funniest thing was they used to have these...

These bachelor boxes, and our relatives in England

would send us a piece of the wedding cake,

which was a fruit cake, in one of these bachelor boxes.

Wow.

And you know how it would come through the mail.

I mean, it was all chewed up.

I can't even imagine what we were supposed to do with it.

Yeah, I'm not sure if you want to eat it after it's...

Oh, we never touched it.

But anyway, the secret is the original recipe was from Germany.

Yes, and there's three different alcohols.

So we put bourbon, brandy, and rum in our fruit cake.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so we have all three of those.

Brandy is the most prevalent, but we put bourbon, brandy, and rum,

and then it's 67% fruit and nuts.

So there's not a lot of cake or batter there,

but it's really loaded with the good quality.

It's really fruits and nuts.

And we start making this...

Did we get a sample of this one?

Yes, that would have been the One Town Grandma's bar box.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Yep, that's the original fruit cake.

Okay.

That's the original.

We do get a lot of calls from people that this will remind them of, you know,

nostalgia, family traditions.

We love fruit cake, things like that.

A lot of fruit cake companies do put citron and orange peel in their fruit cakes.

We do not do any of that.

So I think that sets us apart from a lot of the other fruit cake companies that are out there.

We don't have that bitter citron in our fruit cake.

The funny thing is I can vaguely remember that my sister's recipe from Mrs. Benson

contained potatoes.

Oh, really?

That's interesting.

In some quantity, although dried fruit was really the staple.

Yes.

Yep, definitely.

So it was raisins and sultanas and things like that, and some nuts.

Yep, we put almonds, pecans, walnuts, pineapple, cherries.

Dates and raisins.

That's good.

Yeah.

How did you end up working as a marketing director for a bakery?

Are you doing the background?

Well, I'm a native.

Yeah.

So I like to tell people I work here because we are the largest consumer of alcohol in

the state of Nebraska.

Because we put so much of it, yeah, in our cake.

Yeah.

My mother-in-law, Ann's mother, used to make a cake she called bourbon cake.

And the outstanding thing about bourbon cake was that it only had one liquid ingredient.

It was bourbon.

Correct.

Which was old granddad.

It had to be old granddad.

That's funny that you should say that.

Because the only liquid we...

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's the one liquid what?

What?

You're sorry to say?

That's the only liquid...

Yeah.

That's the only liquid that we put in our grandma's original recipe, is the bourbon,

the brandy, and the rum.

That's the only liquid ingredient.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you.

And then not only did you make it, it had its own special tin for storing it, and the

plate for putting it on, and all this stuff, and the baking thing with the stuff, the thing

in the center.

Yeah.

You had to feed it.

You had to keep pouring the liquid over the cake as it aged.

Over the cake.

Right.

So, yeah, we make those.

We age them for anywhere from six to nine months, depending on what size of the cake

it is.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Well, that would mean it's pretty well fermented, so it's probably very healthy.

Yes.

Let me tell you a really funny story.

My mother...

My mother used to make her cakes, her Christmas cakes, as they were called, and we would open

them at Christmas, but one year, she forgot to put in the sugar, and she doubled the flour.

Oh, no.

So there was a gathering of the family.

Quite a lot of members of the family were there for a special occasion.

My mother used to entertain on Christmas Eve, because it was my sister's birthday, but

the fruit cakes were opened, and they were dry as all get out.

Oh, no.

Because of the mistake with the recipe.

Yes.

You won't forget that.

Now, the other thing, and this is interesting, do your cakes have icing on them?

No.

We do not put icing on them.

Okay.

So a true British Christmas cake, and a British wedding cake for that matter, has cake in

the middle with the fruits as we mentioned, but it has marzipan and sugar on the outside.

Okay.

And that...

Yes.

So you could say ours isn't British, but we do not do the icing or the frosting.

There you go.

But you're prospering in Beatrice, Nebraska, nevertheless?

Yes, we are.

We've been here for, like I said, since 1964, and we can make anywhere from, depending on

how sales are for the year, 750,000 to 950,000 pounds of cake each year.

Good grief.

Amazing.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Marie Antoinette would be proud, right?

Yes.

Did she do...

No, I mean, people order it...

I mean, you have a brick and mortar place, too, huh?

Yes.

That's where the factory or the production facility is located here in Beatrice, and

then just about two years ago, we purchased a building.

I've been there...

that is in the same block, and so it's just across the parking lot,

and that's where we have our marketing and sales team,

and also we have a store, so people locally can come in

and purchase the cakes from us here.

But they're, yep, everything is made right here.

We're all in the same location here in Beatrice.

Well, you know, the packaging is so specific.

I mean, there was nothing ruined in the mail at all when we got the samples.

So you must have invested a lot of time and effort and money

into getting the proper packaging.

Yes, and I've only been here three years,

and so I'm not sure how many trial and errors they've had with packaging,

but what we're doing now works really well.

We keep them in a cooler until we ship them,

but everything that we ship out, no matter where it's going to,

we ship it ambient or at room temperature,

whatever the temperature of the truck

or whatever process it's going through, you know, UPS, FedEx.

And we don't have a lot of trouble.

And we have to put it in the refrigerator when we get it.

No, there's some.

There's some requirement there because we did not put all of it in the refrigerator.

Right.

The main reason to put it in the refrigerator is because it will slice much easier.

That's it.

Yep.

It won't crumble if it's chilled.

And if it's at room temperature, it tends to crumble a little bit.

I mean, you can eat it chilled or room temperature,

but we said when you're going to slice it, it's best if it's chilled.

It cuts into nicer slices.

Well, now, when we interviewed them, the fruitcake company in Texas,

they said, I mean, that's supposedly the biggest fruitcake provider around.

Right.

They said that when they were baking it, the whole town smelled of fruitcake.

Is that the same thing with yours, too?

Yes.

You can go outside and take a whiff, and you'll know what we're cooking that day.

Whether it's chocolate, rum, or some of our breakfast breads smell really good when they're baking.

And we have had other, you know, neighbors in the area that have insurance business

or the gas station or whatever, they'll ask, oh, what are you cooking today?

Because they can smell it.

So same thing happens here.

Wonderful.

What about the chocolate cake?

The chocolate cake was really different.

The chocolate rum?

The chocolate rum cake, yes.

Yes.

So that's a special process.

That didn't come from Germany.

No.

We created that one.

We have a line of liqueur cakes.

And so we take a, we make a batter, and we bake the cake.

And as soon as it comes out of the oven, while it's still hot, we inject it with a warm butter rum syrup.

And you'll get that moisture in the room.

Yeah, we hand inject those, but we have to do it while they're still hot out of the oven.

And so we have the chocolate rum, we have the vanilla rum, lemon drop, which is a vodka syrup.

And then we also just created a new one.

It's called chocolate raspberry rum.

So it's got a raspberry liqueur that's injected.

Okay.

Now I understand that cake a little better.

You were going to be sending out a sample by way of promotion.

Do you have any, like, big-time glamorous customers that help promote it?

You know, we had a gal that was on one of the social media sites.

I can't remember her name.

Well, I don't know of any celebrities, per se, but we do have some bigger customers that maybe you wouldn't think of.

We do sell it in Dillard's, in Macy's, Bass Pro Shop, Vermont Country Store is another big customer of ours.

You know, and then the groceries, a lot of the grocery stores take our cake as well.

But we're pretty seasonal.

It's, you know, our business.

Busy time is usually we're making it now, so it's ready for the end of the year.

But that's why we have the other lines of cakes to try to, you know, fill in that time when people aren't craving fruitcake.

Well, you have a website, and that's how people get a hold of this cake.

Yes, yep.

Can you give it to us?

Yeah, www.grandmasbakeshop.com.

Grandma.

Grandma's Bake Shop.

Spell it, Michelle.

Bake Shop.

Sure.

Yeah, Grandma's Bake Shop.

It's G-R-A-N-D-M-A-B-A-K-E-

Oh, not S?

There's no S.

No.

I better double check that for you.

They can also do a search for Beatrice.

Beatrice Bakery, and it will come up that way as well.

But we did change our website.

I'm sorry, it is.

It's www.d-r-a-n-d-m-a-s-b-a-k-e-s-h-o-p-p-e.com.

Oh, let me write that one down.

P-P.

P-P-P-E-O-K-E.com.

Got it.

All right.

Well, anyhow, I'm glad we finally got a hold of you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's been great to visit with you guys.

Yeah, well, it's fun.

And, yeah, it's a big business.

I mean, it's amazing.

It is.

Yeah, I know.

It is.

Don't think people really like fruitcake.

Until you work in the fruitcake business.

And, yeah, there's a lot of people that still crave it and still want it.

Yeah.

Well, yours travels better than the wedding cakes we get from the U.K.

That's good to hear.

Yeah.

So, all right.

Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

And I'm glad we've finally connected.

And, yes, I'll talk to you again soon.

That sounds wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Michelle.

Bye-bye.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

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