Tommy’s Whole Grain Bakery, located at 338 Powell Street, is a new bakery in the district with a special mission.

This bakery is all about experiencing and celebrating the rich flavours and incredible benefits of whole grains. They purchase grain from local sources, mill them in-house, and use every part of the grain to maximize flavour and nutrition, and reduce food waste. First and foremost their focus is creating great-tasting products. Their mouthwatering breads and treats will have you coming back for more. 

Owner Tommy Aird’s love for baking began as a child, influenced by his mother’s great baking and grandmother’s love for delicious pastry. He started cooking in restaurants as a young adult, later moving to Toronto to pursue culinary school and a career in baking. Over the years working in various kitchens he developed a deep appreciation for food and where it comes from. Attending a grain conference in Montreal was a pivotal turning point, sparking a passion for heirloom grains and supporting small-scale, organic agriculture. 

We sat down with Tommy to learn more about his story and his experience of running a business in Strathcona.

How does your work impact or engage with the community:

As a food producer, I think about the social and environmental impacts of what I do. The decisions you make as a food producer when you choose a purveyor is in fact a decision for thousands of people. So it really does matter for me to educate myself and have good reason to be partnering with certain purveyors or growers. Things I think about are making sure that farmers are getting paid a living wage, that employees are getting paid a living wage, and that the product I’m purchasing is nutritious and contains the building blocks for life. For environmental impacts, it’s making sure these businesses have integrity and are using water responsibly for example. We’re also trying to create as little food waste as possible. It’s what we’re trying to put into practice – be leaders in the industry, not heroes, because it’s not about being the only one, but setting an example and trying to inspire others to engage with the kind of work we do. Increasing the nutrition in our community, and reducing food waste, these are things that should be top of mind for us.  

What are the opportunities and challenges of being in this neighbourhood? 

I’ve been spending a lot of time in this neighbourhood, even pre-opening, since we started construction in August. This community has such a wonderful fabric to it and we feel so welcome and supported by our neighbours and the community at large that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the city, even given the opportunity. But at the same time, it does come with its challenges. Just looking across the street, there are vacant lots, and there is vacancy next door to us that likely won’t be transitioned into anything until it’s torn down. Upgrading and preserving heritage buildings, and also tapping into the kind of energy we see in the neighbourhood during events like the Powell Street Festival, I can see what it could become. This is a fantastic neighbourhood. I think it might not be obvious to those who look from far away, but when you spend time here, you realize there are families here, there’s community here, and it does have deep roots. 

Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who might be looking to start a business in this distinct?

Get here. Don’t be scared. I think it’s so fulfilling and rewarding. Entrepreneurship is just hard in general, so I don’t know if it’s any harder here necessarily. But I do feel we have such a warm response from the community and the neighbourhood, and from the people who choose to come visit us. And I think that we are able to add to the community in different ways as well. If we’re driving people here from the North Shore, or from Langley for example, I think we’re giving the rest of the neighbourhood an opportunity to be seen. There’s a lot of spaces that we could be putting some really impactful and meaningful concepts to keep contributing to the fabric of the neighbourhood.  

What is your favourite baking ingredient right now and why do you love working with it?

My passion is grains. It makes up almost 70 percent of our diets, and so often we’re just kind of missing the mark. They say 98 percent of people exceed their recommended grain intake, and only two percent of people achieve the recommended whole grain intake. It just demonstrates how much white flour we’re consuming and the shadow side of that is how much healthy food in the process of creating that white flour is being wasted in our food system. 15 to 45 percent of the crop is commonly discarded, and 20 of the 21 micronutrients and grains come out during sifting. You discard 15 percent and lose 95 percent of the nutrition. So I get excited about something that is just flour, water, and salt. It doesn’t need fancy imported ingredients. We love the flavour of the organic grains we get from the Fraser Valley, and how they transform during fermentation, and then further during the bake, all adding different layers of flavour. I also think the impact of whole grains is compounding and cascading in such a meaningful way, so that for me is the most exciting ingredient. 

Can you tell us a little bit more about the milling on site that happens here?

We have a little mill, called a Meadows Mill, and it has two eight inch stones, which is quite small. It’s about the size of a mini fridge. It’s actually on loan to us from the Bread Lab at Washington State University because they’re generous and supportive of our mission and aligned to our goals to perpetuate the whole grain movement. As an eight inch stone, I sometimes joke it’s like going on a bike tour with a single speed. But for us, we’re two and a half months old, and we have a lot of growing to do, so in the meantime is perfectly adequate for our needs. It’s straightforward – the grain goes in the hopper, comes out the boot, goes into the chamber and gets pushed between the two millstones and comes out the bottom. Ours comes out as a whole product and that’s how we use it. It’s where we create all our flour. 

Can you tell us about what products are available from Tommy’s Whole Grain?

So you can come in for coffee and buy the baked goods (breads, cakes, brownies, cookies, croissants and more). We get our beans from Honest to Pete Coffee, a wonderful little roaster in Olympic Village, so we’re proud to brew and sell his beans here as well. We have a roast beef sandwich and ham sandwich with meats that we get from Oyama Sausage. We use a 36 month old compte cheese on our ham sandwich that we get from Benton Brothers. We also have a quiche and a vegan flatbread that we do daily. Aside from the daily bakes, we have two products that are more shelf stable. We have a whole grain sourdough cracker that I just get really excited about. Then we have a granola, something I’ve been making for years. It’s bougie, it’s 50 percent nuts, so it is very protein and nutrient rich and very filling. While we’re not able to provide milled flour as a product line right now, we know a lot of our patrons are interested in supporting the farm Cedar Isle in Agassiz where we purchase a lot of our grains. They have a CSA program and grains available directly as well. This is very much still our phase one, we have so much more that we are looking forward to showing people once we grow our business. 

What more would you like to see from the Strathcona BIA?

The BIA has been interested in and supportive of this project since I first reached out in summer. So I think just knowing they are there is helpful. If there was ever an opportunity for the BIA to help outline or navigate grant writing, funding applications, or program opportunities that could benefit businesses, that would be nice to have. And then just amplifying our work, just like this, to help attract people to come here and to support us. Finally on the policy side, helping get policy created that encourages more businesses to adopt more sustainable practices, since there’s currently a lack of consequences for unsustainable practices in the industry. 

Learn more about Tommy’s Whole Grain Bakery on their website.

You can also follow them on Instagram here.