Congrats Grain Artisan Bakery on your three-year brick 'n mortar anniversary
Pandemic success story centers around 'Serious Cake'
“Almost all of our cakes and most of our cakes are gluten-free, and you wouldn’t know it. There isn’t a bakery offering things like this, especially on the north side. And yes, we will have a mini-market of sorts up front; we will have a fridge, freezer, and dried goods shelves filled with local and organic groceries and household staples! Things directly from our farmers that you can’t get in big box stores — the good stuff. It’s our way to help cultivate community!” — Lauren Anderson, farm-to-table artisan — Grain Artisan Bakery, “Grain Artisan Bakery opens First-of-its-Kind Snohomish Community Market + Bakery,” Nov. 2020
A beat before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I struggled with what Grain Artisan baker Lauren Sophia Anderson called “Imposter Syndrome.” The worst yet.
She struggled with it, too.
I know, because I had the great pleasure of interviewing her in her Bothell, WA home for the second issue of Welcome Magazine, a lifestyle publication in Snohomish County.
The cottage baker steadily grew word of mouth profits with her decadent chocolate cakes, chunk cookies, and assorted pastries not normally found this side of Italy (I’ve still yet to try her frosty, cream-filled bombolone) — most of them gluten-free.
I first enjoyed a bite of her chocolatey cake by happenstance, as I strolled the first and only, ill-fated Mill Creek farmer’s market the summer of 2019. I went back the next time to load up on pumpkin bread, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate chunk cookies the size of my head.
I kept going back, wherever she popped up, whether it was a crowded Everett tavern or a hard-to-find-parking farmer’s market up on hipster Capitol Hill.
My mission in life was to interview her for a new and burgeoning luxury lifestyle publication a musician friend of a friend planned to start. Maybe even a cover.
I never got the cover for Lauren, but I did get her a huge spread inside the second, Spring/Summer 2020 issue devoted to Farm to Table — one of 10 articles I wrote for publisher Fawn Clark…the best work I ever turned in after days and months of agonizing over whether I still had it in me.
My husband was forced to quit a good job at Amazon Kindle, which then forced me into finding a job. I even got a callback for a tech writer position with a plastic surgeon in Lynnwood.
The polite, professional attorney who conducted the interviewing process did more to gut whatever was left of my dwindling confidence than anyone in my life.
More than my verbally/physically abusive parents, more than the schoolyard bullies screaming at me to go back to Viet Cong “Gook!”
After putting me through two back-to-back interviews and gently pressing me on my experience writing technically, he told me I wasn’t qualified…I needed to be able to handle medical jargon.
It didn’t matter that I wrote well enough (about medical procedures) in a required writing sample to earn an interview in the first place, and in the past, handled all sorts of technical jargon while covering the building industry in Hawaii, including USTs, manufactured housing/RVs in Lynnwood, and everything else as a working reporter.
I wasn’t qualified.
I went to the movies after and considered quitting life. Maybe live off a rich dude somewhere in the Bahamas, I don’t know.
My husband found a software testing gig right away, and continued to improve after his bladder cancer treatments, thank god, easing the anxiety/job urgency somewhat.
At the same time, that friend of a friend wanted me to write about Destination Edmonds for her debut, Fall/Winter 2019-2020 issue. A ton of articles and sidebars and profiles. I must’ve written 10-12 pieces. But I did it all in a sleep-deprived, anxiety-ridden blur.
Man, this is turning into a novel…
I hated what I wrote with a passion. I re-proofed, second-guessed, and double-checked for accidental plagiarism and typo stupidity about a thousand times in one sitting, night after night for over month, psyching myself out.
I slogged through terribly conducted interviews and at least one hostile witness who refused to be recorded on the phone, forcing me to take terrible notes (“Are you recording??? Repeat what I said!”).
I kept seeing the plastic surgeon attorney’s pasty, placid face and heard his politely worded rejection, over and over, until I felt like blowing my brains out.
Everybody loved the premiere issue. Incredibly.
I was told the city of Edmonds signed on with more advertising because of my articles…the way I told their artisan success stories. I even scored a gig blogging for the city’s tourism website via another writer/editor friend.
But I hated myself. I hated myself so much, because I couldn’t land a job anymore, after 17 years as a stay-at-home-mom…because that lawyer rejected me as unqualified.
It didn’t matter who liked the articles. All I saw was shitty writing everywhere. Epic failure. Total imposter.
When Fawn approached me to do the next issue, I wanted to turn her down. I almost did. But a tiny voice inside me said to try again. Clean slate. Redemption Tour.
My friend Karyna died a few days before her Nov. birthday that year, just as I was about to write the first of 10 assigned articles.
How the hell could I do this again?
Then…
…I happened on an old Hall & Oates’ song, “Wait for Me,” listening to a YouTube playlist, after having heard a whiff of it out of the blue in a throwaway “Mr. Robot” finale the night before.
The catchy music, childhood nostalgia, and Karyna’s inspiring spirit led me back into the darkness, waving my flickering flashlight — my notes, the keyboard, and some weird, residual muscle memory — and I soon found myself writing…
Or, transcribing.
Words flowed out, freely, as if from another place, from someone else.
But it was just me, doing my thing, doing what I knew to do, feeling what I heard and saw and felt, from the halting, rehearsed, free-form stories of the artisans — an award-winning catering chef, dedicated small farmers, vegan restauranteur…Lauren.
I am so proud of their stories, of myself. So grateful for their patience, kindness, and generosity of time.
They let me in when they could’ve shut the door. These are ridiculously busy, productive people who fit me into their schedules, who trusted me.
I fought for Lauren Anderson to be on the cover representing Grain Artisan Bakery, as the ultimate farm-to-table artisan baker.
She was such a shoe-in: single, no-nonsense, hard-working mom, raising a young son by herself, and trying to make ends meet while building off a genuine, heartfelt passion for sustainable, local, farm-to-table baked goods, for everyone, regardless of dietary restrictions (she and her son Kaiden have a few to navigate).
The perfect candidate who, back then, had never been interviewed for a feature before.
In the end, I failed. But I did manage to give her three-four articles, most of them online.
When she decided to open a brick ‘n mortar in Snohomish right after the pandemic hit, I thought she was crazy. I worried for her health and her small business. Many had gone belly up.
But I did whatever I could as a writer to boost her exposure with those online articles. Whenever I visited Washington again (from Idaho), I tried to make it to her store and pick up my favorite gluten-free chocolate cake, plus some extra goodies.
Well, she made it. It’s her three-year anniversary since opening the storefront. Business for her is booming, because of her loyal customers in love with some serious cake.
Here’s to many many more prosperous, fulfilling years, Lauren.
Fuck “Imposter Syndrome.”
Hello, Grain Artisan…
“Grain Artisan Bakery: Serious Cake,” Welcome Magazine Farm to Table series, Spring/Summer 2020 issue
“Grain Artisan Baker Does Her Part Amidst a ‘New Normal,’” Welcome Magazine’s Small Business Series, April 19, 2020 interview
“Grain Artisan Bakery opens First-of-its-Kind Snohomish Community Market + Bakery,” Welcome Magazine bonus articles, Nov. 2020
Great article Carol, very engaging.
Will you release your memoirs soon?