Bakery Franchise Profits From Balance of Work, Play.

IN the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the mood of fear and anxiety has prompted many people to re-evaluate their working lives.

For many, this means spending more time with their families. For others, it means reconsidering the idea of working long hard hours now to save up for a great retirement later. Sacrifice in the short term may seem less attractive now that every day is more uncertain, and each day more precious.

This summer in Montana, we met a group of bakers at the Great Harvest Bread Co. who have been thinking about how to balance life and business for quite some time, and they have come up with a winning recipe. Pete and Laura Wakeman started the first Great Harvest bakery in Great Falls, Mont., in 1976. Two years later, their success led them to franchise their bakery, but in a way that preserved their ideals: no uniforms, few rules and an emphasis on community-building. "A lot of people think we woke up one day and thought, 'Let's be entrepreneurs.' It wasn't that way. We were in our twenties and out in Montana," says Laura Wakeman. "We just thought, 'Let's figure out a way to stay out here."'

Today, Great Harvest Bread is a mini-empire of about 150 "feels good, tastes great" bread stores across the country, operating under the "freedom franchise" umbrella. That's the term that the Wakemans came up with to describe a franchise in which the rules for franchise owners. are few. Everything but the name, the daily grinding of the flour, and the sources of wheat for the bread is up to the individual owner. The franchise contract even states: "Anything not expressly prohibited by the language of this agreement is allowed."

Great Harvest does operate according to the basics of franchising: Owners turn back 7 percent of gross sales to the franchise company, which, in turn provides a host of support, such as bread recipes and baking techniques and tips, accounting advice and store-design tips.

Working with music

One of the first tenets is the importance of music, the "heartbeat" of the store. In the Missoula bakery, upbeat reggae thumps from speakers as employees knead dough around a table in the middle of the store. They work in rhythm to the music, joking and laughing. Fresh bread turns, in the oven; and new loaves are moved up to the counter's bread board, another Great Harvest trademark, where everyone who enters the store is offered a free thick slice of freshly baked bread, slathered with butter and honey, if they choose.

Like all members of the Great Harvest franchise system, the owners of the Missoula Great Harvest bakery, Dave Scheel and Linda Tawney, live by the mission statement of Great Harvest Bread, written by the Wakemans. It reads: "Be loose and have fun. Bake phenomenal bread. Run fast to help customers. Create strong, exciting bakeries. And give generously to others."

As Scheel puts it, "If we decide one day that we want to become a pizza store, because that's more fun, then that's what we'll do."

Tom McMakin, former COO of Great Harvest Franchising is hoping to spread the ideas behind them through his book, "Bread and Butter: What a Bunch of Bakers Taught Me about Business and Happiness."

"People laugh when they hear that title, because you don't often hear business and happiness in the same sentence. It's almost an oxymoron," says McMakin, who himself moved to Montana almost a decade ago with his wife, Mary, in search of a better life.

"We're very mindful of the fact that business is not an end in itself' McMakin says "It's a means to create a happier life."

"It's a very different lesson than the dot-com ethos that says work like heck, cash out, and then move to Montana," says McMakin. "Here you have (Missoula store owners) Dave and Linda. They went ahead and moved to Montana first. They're not trying to make a billion dollars. They said, let's design a life that works for us and have the business be part of that design."

Scheel and Tawney may not be trying to make a billion dollars from their Missoula bakery, but profits are not a dirty word at Great Harvest. "We've always been interested in profits' says Scheel. "Profits are what buys the things you need to have a successful business. if you watch successful businesses, they're the ones that have the money to make those changes over time and keep the place looking good."

New owners

Though life may be idyllic in Dillon, Mont., Great Harvest headquarters, it is not static. This past spring, the Wakemans sold the franchise business after 25 years. The new president and chief executive, Mike Ferretti, was chief financial officer for a North Carolina. franchise, Li'I Dino Delis. Ferretti met the Wakemans through a friend of a friend, who thought Ferretti, a self-confessed "numbers geek" should buy the business. "I kept telling him. Bread company? Montana? Me? Forget it," remembers Ferretti. Ferretti bought Great Harvest with a group of other investors, also from North Carolina, who were excited about the company's potential.

"It's a sleeping giant" says Ferretti.

"I don't plan to change it, but my groups and my background are a more professional background," says Ferretti, who would like to see the franchise opening two new stores a month once the transition to new owners hip is complete.

Through. the terms of the loan, the new owners obtained to purchase the business, the headquarters must remain in Montana as long as the loan is out, but Ferretti says he. has no plans to move the company from Montana.

"The whole Montana. mystique is part of who we are. A lot of Great Harvest clones have tried to duplicate our business model, but never, pulled it off," says. Ferretti.