(upbeat music) - Welcome to A Shot of Ag.

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

I'm a farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM Radio show, which led into a national television show, which led into me being right here today, but today, today is not about me, today is about Craig Janssen.

How you doing Craig?

- I'm good, Rob.

I'm good.

- You are from Dunlap.

- I am, yep, living in Dunlap now.

- Originally from Roanoke.

- Yes, that's right.

- So, for the people that don't know, where is Roanoke?

- It is, I will say about 30 miles east of Peoria.

- Okay, yeah, that's getting outta my area.

- Yeah, a little bit, that's right.

Yeah, but we're right off of 116.

A lot of people say, "Oh yeah, we drive through there on the way to Chicago."

And we're the town that has the blinking light.

- Ah, Bradford has one of those too.

- Yeah, one of those?

Okay, I read on that.

That's how you know your small town America, right?

We have just a flashing light, no stoplight.

- Do you have a dollar store?

- There's a Dollar General there now.

Yes, correct, yeah.

Yeah, got Dollar General.

- Bradford will not get a dollar store, a Dollar General.

We got a Casey's that's like 70 years old.

- Yeah.

- And either- - At least you got one of those.

- and several bars.

I think it's a travesty, a national issue that we don't have a Dollar General.

- You'll get one.

They're- - They keep saying that.

They said, if you have like a pile of dirt, that if you water it, a dollar store will pop up.

- Will grow, it'll grow.

Yeah, you just probably not get enough sunlight up there in Bradford.

- I've been trying.

All right, you are.

What do you call yourself?

You are a owner of a Great Harvest store.

- Yeah, that's correct.

So, technically I guess I'm a franchisee, but I own the Great Harvest Bread Company here in Peoria, in Morton and soon it be downtown Peoria.

So we're gonna have three stores- - Oh, really?

- here in a few weeks, yeah.

So yeah, but I technically I am a franchisee.

Great Harvest is a franchise based out of Dillon, Montana.

- So, nobody's ever been in Great Harvest before, describe what they're gonna see.

- Yeah, so we are a scratch bakery, so we- - [Rob] I don't even know what that is.

- Scratch bakery, we make it from scratch.

- [Rob] Oh, okay.

- You know, nowadays they say, "Hey, we have a bakery," but they just pull it out, it's all frozen.

Comes in on a semi (indistinct) or (indistinct) and they pop it in an oven and they say- - You have flour in your store?

- Yeah, we got flour.

Yeah, we actually, you know, I brought you the wheat berries there.

So we mill our flour- - All right, whoa, whoa.

We gotta describe that because probably nobody knows that these are called berries.

- Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it doesn't taste like a fruit berry.

- Yeah, but like a corn how they got the kernels or you call 'em niblets or whatever, (indistinct), green giant, these are actually berries.

- Those are.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, wheat berries.

So that's a Red Hard Spring Wheat.

- Which is not grown here.

- Not grown here.

It's grown in Montana.

The golden triangle.

So it's Southeast corner of the state of Montana.

Is where that's grown.

- The wheat grown around here is called Soft Red Wheat and the thing about wheat is, if it's soft wheat it's made into hard products, like your taco shells, if it's hard wheat, it's made into soft products like your bread.

- Right, so hard wheat is better for like baking for breads and even like pastas and stuff like that.

So, pastries obviously, muffins and yeah.

- But is the key?

Cause your bread is amazing.

Is the key to it starting with the wheat berries?

- Yeah, I mean that's one of the advantages and the whole benefit of milling your own flour on site is you're using fresh product that has obviously a greater nutrition value.

When flour is commercially milled, they obviously they added additives and preservatives into that flour to give it a longer shelf life.

We're not adding anything into the flour so it's not creating a shelf stable product.

- So in your kitchen, you've got like a mule that's walking around a big stone?

- Yeah, right.

Exactly.

- Just grinding wheat all day?

- Yeah, just keep 'em fed and they keep going.

So we have a, no.

So we have two, actually we have two mills that we can use.

We have a stone mill, which is actually, yeah.

Yeah, so we have a stone mill, so we can do stone mill, and then we have a hammer mill.

A hammer mill is just like metal blades.

So, right now we typically use the hammer mill just cause it gets a little finer.

We can, it's a little bit easier to adjust the consistencies of the flours rather than having it too fine.

You don't want a bread that's too fine or excuse me, flour that's too fine nor do you want it too coarse cause then- - Why not too fine?

- Well, yeah, so it, when you mill it too fine, then it doesn't, it just affects the way the bread.

You don't get that spring for a loaf of bread, kinda that spring.

- Oh, okay.

- So it would.

- What do you call a person that's an expert on bread?

- Are you looking for like a pun or?

- No, I don't know.

- Oh, you really want.

- Like if you do you just say a bread expert or a breader?

I don't know what y'all say.

I mean, when you go to work at Subway and you go to their school, they're called a sandwich artist.

- Sandwich artist, yeah.

- I didn't know if they had a name for being a bread expert.

- I don't think so.

- I think you should come up with one.

- I then call it millers and bakers, millers and bakers.

- [Rob] It's boring.

- Yeah.

(Rob laughs) - But did you know that you were gonna be this expert on making bread?

- No, no.

Never in my wildest dreams growing up that I ever think this was gonna be kind of the focal point in my life.

- Well, growing up, you kinda split your time between, what a farm and a furniture shop?

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Rob] Tell me about that.

- Yeah, so grew up in a small town, Roanoke, Illinois.

One side of my family were farmers in the Benson, Illinois area.

So I got plenty of summers walking beans with my grandpa, hoeing beans, hoeing weeds.

So I did that.

Oh, it's the worst.

It is the worst, but you know what?

It's humbling and it gives you a start and it makes you appreciate the finer things in life.

- Well and for the people that don't know it, it's literally, you've got a hoe and you're walking through a bean field and you get to knock out the weeds.

Which if you go by a field and you're like, "Oh, there's just a few weeds out there.

We should go get 'em with a hoe."

It will take your entire life to do.

- Yeah, it does.

It's one of those things that I don't even know if anybody does it anymore, but my grandpa was all about it and I mean, the guy had an eye for like a milk weed.

I mean he could see one in the middle of the field, so we'd drive along and he'd say, "There's one, go get it."

10 minutes out, 10 minutes back.

So yeah, so i did, I got plenty of time to walk beans and then my family, my other grandpa owns a furniture store in Roanoke and that's where, as I got older, I spent more time helping him working in his shop.

- So you said one was 115 years old, is that the farm or the- - Yeah, so that's actually the furniture store.

- You're kidding me.

- It's Sauder Furniture, Roanoke, Illinois.

It's still open.

My uncles are currently owning it.

They're fourth generation.

I have a first cousin, Wade.

He's fifth generation and he's working in that business now.

So yeah, they opened in 1907, Main Street, Roanoke, Illinois, and they're still open today.

You can go in right now.

- That's really impressive.

- Yeah, it's awesome.

It's awesome, I love it.

I'm so proud of my family and proud of that success of that store and they're just a staple on the Roanoke community and I'm extremely proud.

My grandfather, my uncles, that have worked in that business.

- So did you go off to school?

- I did, yeah.

- Where'd you go?

- Yeah, I did the ICC ISU, Illinois State University.

- That's the most efficient way to go.

- Yeah, cheapest route, cheapest route and I- - And the degree is just the same.

- Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Cs get degrees, right?

You ever hear that?

Cs get degrees.

- So do Ds.

- Yeah, so I wasn't much of a student.

I was more there to meet people, be social.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So it's like, nowadays you go, "Oh, I wish I would've listened in that class," or, "Wish I would've taken my studies a little bit more serious," but yeah, that's just stay close to home, you know?

- When you were in college, what did you think you were gonna be doing?

- Yeah, so working in the furniture store, I kinda cut my teeth on customer service and felt like that was kind of the route.

I had an interest in banking and so I worked at a bank all through college as a teller and then customer service rep. - [Rob] Did you embezzle anything?

- No, no, nope, I got a clean record.

Clean record.

- That means you embezzle it well.

- Yeah, yeah.

No paper trails, you know.

- What were you doing at the bank?

- Yeah, so I was just a teller and then I went into like opening accounts, new accounts.

- Gotcha.

- CDs.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- But yeah, it was a good experience.

It led in, I was in banking then for about 10 years.

It led into lending, which i enjoyed.

You know, home loans, car loans, did a little bit of ag loans, not a lot.

- That's good and bad.

I mean, I always thought as a lender, it's great because you're helping people achieve their dreams, but at times you gotta tell people and you can't not do that because you only be hurting people if you give them money they can't pay back.

- Right, I mean, there's that saying, "Numbers don't lie."

If it doesn't make sense on paper, then it just doesn't make sense, so yeah.

That is not easy though, when you're telling someone, "Hey, this isn't maybe the right time for you, you know, to do this."

- All right, so tell me, when did you get into Great Harvest?

- Yeah, so I've been been at this for about nine years.

So middle of 2013, we started pursuing purchasing Great Harvest Bread Company and so obviously we went through a process of opening, getting the stores and then running them.

So been at it about nine years.

- How do you do that?

How do you go from banking to, "Hey, I'm gonna make bread."

- Yeah, a banker to a baker.

The other pun joke is, "Oh, you're always in the dough."

Right?

So money dough, bread dough.

- I do the jokes here.

- Yeah, yeah sorry to take that from you.

Sorry to take that from you.

For me, it was a means to an end.

My wife had actually worked for Great Harvest for the original owners and we got exposed to it, exposed to the products, exposed to their environment and it just felt like a cool business, right?

- [Rob] Is your wife from Montana?

- No, no.

My wife is from Bartonville here.

So from central Illinois, - That's close to Montana.

- Yeah, it's basically the same thing.

- Was there Great Harvest around here before you?

- Yeah, so we actually were the second owners.

So there was a couple that started Great Harvest about 16 years ago and we purchased it from them.

- Gotcha.

- So yeah.

- That had to be a very scary thing to do.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was.

But it was like anything, it was a risk, right?

But there's also the reward.

It's a lot more risk on the front end.

The reward comes later, but.

- I mean, did your experience as a loan officer, did that help you understand the risk of it?

- It did, I kind of thought, maybe I had more skills than what I kind of gave myself maybe a little bit more credit.

It was awfully humbling.

When you change careers, you kinda think, "Oh man, I could do this.

I've been doing something like this."

Whether it was banking and credit analysis and you think, "Well, how hard can it be, right?

How hard could it be to run a bakery?"

It's like drinking out of a fire hydrant, right?

You're just getting smacked in the face.

- Did you have any experience?

- None, none.

None at all, none.

Never.

Yeah, none.

Yeah, no experience.

It was just more a challenge.

- Yeah.

Well walk me through this.

You buy into a franchise, right?

I mean, are there people there that know what they're doing?

- Yeah, that is the benefit when you do get involved with a franchise, there is help along the way.

So we were working with people in Montana, helping us through this process and then once you take over ownership, they are still there.

So they send people out to make sure you're kind of on the right track.

They have standards visits so to make sure your quality is there.

And like every year we have to send a loaf of bread in.

We ship it overnight it to Montana and they try our bread to make sure that the quality is there.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So, yeah, but going back to your original question, yeah, there were people that kinda help us along the way, which is super nice.

- The bread is not the type of bread that you're gonna get at the old Walmart?

This is specialty bread.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Do you come up with a recipes?

- So you can.

That's a benefit of Great Harvest, they give you that flexibility and that freedom.

If you are a creative person, they let you.

You can kind of go outside the parameters and you can come up with their own recipes.

- You could do Peoria bread.

- You could.

- Get some river water.

- Yeah, you could do that.

I don't know how well that would sell, but.

- Oh, you never know.

- Yeah.

- You'd sell a lot once.

- They recommend using filtered water so I'm not sure that would be.

But yeah, as a franchise, they do offer recipes for you to start off with and to go from.

- What's your best seller?

- You know what?

Our best sellers are pumpkin chocolate chip bread.

That is what we're known for.

We're known for here in central Illinois, we are pumpkin chocolate chip capital, you know?

- It's very good.

The other one you do that, I don't know, it's got like garlic, you got like cheese in the bread.

- Yeah, cheddar garlic.

- That's not fair.

- Yeah, right?

Yeah, that is a wonderful bread.

Our cheddar garlic bread.

It's one of our more popular ones.

So yeah, we cube cheddar, cheddar cheese and it goes right in.

Whole cubes, chunks of cheddar.

- Yeah, it's fantastic.

So you've got, what two?

You said two stores?

- Yeah.

- You think you're opening another one?

- So the assumption is that it must be going well.

- Yeah.

You know, it's like in our industry you learn it's just helpful to kinda keep moving forward.

For me I've kinda liked the challenge.

You know, I got some really great people that have been with me for years now and sometimes it's like, "Hey, what else are we doing?

We're kinda getting stagnant."

So the opportunity to kinda grow and bring a location downtown Peoria, in an area where there's not a lot of to offer, seemed like a great challenge, but also a really good fit for us.

So the last few years through COVID have been an incredible challenge.

Like- - Yeah man.

- many restaurant or just business owners that have been affected we are, we have been heavily affected.

- Cause you are mainly like takeout, right?

- Yeah, yeah, I mean if you come into our little space in north Peoria, there's not a whole lot of seeding there.

You know, we're a lot of just walk in, walk out, come and get your loaf of bread, come and get your muffins or your cinnamon roll or your cookies and then walk out.

But one area of our business that has really grown significantly in the last five years is our lunch business.

We've more than doubled our menu, our sandwich menu, we've added hot paninis and that's just really kind of the area we've kind of spent a lot of time on is trying to grow that area, which again, that's gonna help us as we come downtown, meeting the needs for people for lunch.

- Is that what it takes?

Is the diversity, you know, just thinking back to old McDonald's, right?

Where you got a cheeseburger and fries, that's all they ever did, now you go in there they've got a novel.

Is that what a restaurant or a place like you've got, have to do?

- Yeah, that's the challenge.

It's finding your niche.

You kinda wanna stay true to who you are, but also you can't stay in that little bubble for too long otherwise people kinda say, "Well, he only does this.

Let's go somewhere else."

So that has been an area where you want to, you wanna kinda have your core competencies.

What do we do really well?

And stay true to that, but then also you try to break off.

So we bake bread, we bake phenomenal bread, but what's great with really good bread?

Sandwiches, right?

So let's get into the sandwich business a little bit.

But that is, right?

When people's palates change, health trends, it's kinda trying to stay, where can we fit?

You're kind of navigating where can we find our niche and still stay true to kinda who we are.

- I always thought it would be hard to own a restaurant or like you have, because I know in my mind, it's like when we're going out it's like, "Oh, let's try somewhere new."

Even though the place we went to had amazing bread or did very well, it's just kind of in that nature.

So it has to be hard to draw back people.

- Yeah, thankfully we do have a pretty loyal clientele, a pretty loyal base where they're set on, "Hey, I'm only gonna buy my bread from Great Harvest because we know it has no preservatives, no additives.

It's freshly milled flour, it's healthy.

It's good for my body."

So we have that loyal customer base.

However, you do fight those trends of, "Man, let's try somewhere new, let's go somewhere different."

So again, you're constantly trying to compete to get new business in while trying to create loyalty where you do say, "You know what?

Let's go back to Great Harvest, that sandwich I had last time was so good.

I'm craving that sandwich and I'm going back there."

- You talk about being taught how to be a generous servant.

- Yeah.

- What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so that's one thing that I was really drawn to Great Harvest in general, is kinda their motto and their mission statement is giving generous and being generous to other people.

So we do that in a number of different ways, but one of the ways, when you walk into our store, we have what's called a breadboard.

We put our products out there every day, multiple products.

We just give away for free, give you a big slice of bread or muffin, cookies, cinnamon roll, whatever we have.

We want you to walk away with something for free.

That way you have this great warm experience of like, "Wow, I'm really glad I went in there.

They gave me a half big thick slice of cheddar garlic.

It's my favorite bread.

Didn't expect anything from."

- Your competition just gives away free smells.

- Yeah.

- You see that?

- Right, no I haven't.

- Sheep sons of guns.

So that's one way, is just giving away our product for free.

Obviously we donate a lot of our, you know, if we have day old bread we don't sell, we're constantly giving that to different missions and non-for-profit organizations throughout Peoria here.

And then obviously participating, I mean I can't tell you how many donation requests we get.

- Oh, I bet.

- Gift baskets and gift cards and stuff like that.

And we are happy, happy to be a part of the community and doing that.

- It's gotta be a double-edged sword because milling this yourself makes it so good, but milling this yourself you're not putting the additives in so you do have a more perishable product.

- Right, so your shelf life is maybe a little bit shorter than something that has chemicals that have been put in.

So our bread dough is good for 7 to 10 days.

We use honey as our is our sweetener in our breads and it just naturally it actually kind of keeps things fresher for longer, even though that you're not putting chemicals in.

But you do have a shorter shelf life.

- Yeah, this stuff is you bring it to the church.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's some good eating there, I'll tell you what.

You can always tell when it's there cause the whole crowd is- - Everybody's in the cafe space, yeah.

Yeah and again, that's just a neat thing that we could do if we have a slow week, we don't sell a lot, at least we can bring it and give it away and we know it's going to get in good use.

- Yeah, I'm in favor of that.

- Yeah, you like that, uh?

- You should do more.

- You're hoping more we have a weaker sales week so maybe there's a little bit more.

- I think next Saturday, you should just make as much pumpkin bread as you possibly can.

- Yeah, we can do that for you, Rob.

- What do you want people to know about owning a business like that?

- Well, it's a lot of work.

I think that's the thing that I underestimated the most, was how much time and energy goes into owning and running a business like mine or like this.

- Yeah, cause you hire a manager and then you just sit and collect the money.

- So we start baking at 2:00 AM every morning.

- I ain't even know there was a 2:00 AM.

- Yeah, right.

Everyone laughs, again more jokes, everyone rips me me.

Time to make the donuts, right?

You know this old Dunkin- - Oh yeah, great commercial.

- Yeah, commercials, right?

- Kids don't get that.

- No they don't - They're on the TikTok anyway.

- They're like, "What you're talking about?"

So we're starting in the middle of the night and we go all day long.

So it is a lot of work, but it can be rewarding when you build strong relationships with your customers where you see 'em week in and week out.

Again, we're very thankful to be in central Illinois where there's just really great, you know, people here are really wonderful, and supporting us and staying loyal to our brand and we appreciate that.

- Plus you're a busy guy, you got three kids.

- Three kids, yeah.

- How old are they?

- Yeah, so I got seven, nine and three.

So they're young.

- How are you even here?

- Yeah.

No, it's good.

I got a great wife.

My wife is phenomenal.

- How long have you been married?

- Been married, going on 11 years.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Where'd you meet her?

- We were set up by mutual friends.

- I was gonna say like by the mob.

- So she felt really sorry for me and gave me a shot.

You and I know how it goes.

- I can see that.

- I've seen your wife, you know, come on.

You're just like me.

You lucked out, right?

- So you married up.

- Married up, yeah.

Like a couple levels, not like one level, - Well for guys like us it's it's not hard to do.

- Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Smooth talker, right?

- Do the kids get involved at all?

- My daughter loves coming in.

Now she's nine and she absolutely loves when I bring her in.

She loves decorating sugar cookies.

She thinks that's kind of her thing.

She's helping now decorate.

So when we hit, you know, we just had Valentine's day having her come in later on Saturdays and help decorate, you know, be coming up on St. Patty's day so we'll be doing Shamrock cookies.

So we really hit like all the holidays, major holidays, we're able to do sugar cookies.

So she loves to come in and decorate cookies.

- What's the go-to cookie.

What's the best seller?

- Oh.

Oh my.

I mean we make chocolate chip every day, but I love our sugar cookies.

We make the best sugar cookies from scratch in central Illinois hands down.

- I gotta admit, I've never had one.

I had the chocolate chip.

- The reason why you don't is I don't donate those cause, you know, those are so good they sell out.

So, you know, there you go.

- Now we're getting to it.

Boy, we're almost done Craig.

Now we're getting to the good stuff.

- All right.

Let's do it.

- Yeah, well it's amazing because it seems like with the Great Harvest, it's almost synonymous with helping with giving away.

- Yeah.

- To me, I was like asking, is it tied to like a Christian philosophy?

Or is that just the way it is?

- Yeah, I think it's just the mentality.

It's life is short, you know, we're only on earth for a short amount of time and it's like let's make the most of it and just treating people with kindness and being generous.

You know?

There's no reason not to.

- [Rob] It's easier to be mean though.

- Yeah.

I guess, I think for me it's easier just to be kind.

- You seem like a nice guy.

- Yeah, you know.

I try.

I credit my mom and dad for that.

They worked pretty hard to raise me so they worked a lot.

My poor, my poor mom.

- Does your mom get free bread?

- Yeah, whatever they want, whatever, actually so my dad was just in right before I came here.

He comes in, he drives all the way from Roanoke.

He's like, "Man, I just wanted a sandwich."

He comes like 45 minutes one way just to get a turkey bacon and Swiss sandwich, you know?

- That's what I plan on doing.

- I tell myself, "He just wanted to see me," but truthfully he just wanted the sandwich.

- Literally gonna drive around all day in an old pickup truck just getting a sandwich.

- That's what he did.

He brought his old pickup truck down.

- Where can people find your stores?

- So currently we're off North Allen Road in Peoria and then we're off Jackson Street in Morton.

- Okay, and then the new ones?

- Yeah, the new ones gonna be right here.

Right downtown Southwest Adams.

We're gonna be right connected to the OSF administration building.

The old Cat merchandise store.

Remember that?

- No.

- You don't remember the Cat store?

- I'm from Bradford man.

- Okay, I thought, well that's what I thought, a farmer would come get the Cat boots and maybe a Cat shirt or something.

But yeah, we're gonna be 124 Southwest Adams on downtown Peoria.

- Gonna start it all over again.

- Gonna do it all over.

- Excited?

- Lets go, I'm pumped.

We're moving in tomorrow.

- Are you really?

- Starting tomorrow, yeah.

- So by the time this airs.

- Hopefully - Better go check it out, maybe get some bread.

Craig Janssen, thank you very much.

Congratulations on all your success and thank you for being a benefit to Peoria and the surrounding area.

We truly, truly mean it.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next week