News & Announcements

Our 3rd Community Dinner at/the Marble Works, Middlebury

March 17, 2010, 6-8pm

Four fabulous courses featuring Blue Ledge Farm cheeses!

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Prix fixe, family-style, vegetarians and children welcome and encouraged!
$25 adults/$10 children

Reservations required by 3/10: (802) 388-3300

Traveling Oven Events:

Isis Sample Sale!
March 16 and 17, 2010
Champlain Valley Expo, Essex Jct, Vt.

RE-LOCALIZING & REFOCUSING FLATBREAD

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Sometimes you know just what to say or write—perfect words at a perfect point in time. And as I have thought about this letter to you—you who I have so often turned to for your strength and good counsel; you who have been kind and generous beyond any measure I could have hoped for; you who I have loved and been loved by—I had imagined a well-crafted note, perfect as a tree or pristine book.

But that is not this letter.

This is raw writing, unedited, unabridged, flawed, even unfinished. It is emotion barely tethered to reason, like carried water or chicken eaten 100 miles from where it was raised and processed. It is hope and faith without entitlement or expectation.

American Flatbread is changing.

Change can be scary and hard, and sometimes it asks you to let go of things you thought you would hold onto forever.

Change can be exciting and wonderful, and just the thing to renew your spirit.

For several years, the frozen flatbread division of the company has struggled. The reasons now are academic and common in small businesses, but they are no fault of the remarkable people who every day have done the hard work of making this bread. If there is fault here, it is mine and mine alone.

This past summer the company undertook an internal review and reflected on who we are and what we wanted to become. We saw our strength is hospitality and our passion for a more sustainable food system.

In the fall we began to explore a strategic alliance with Rustic Crust Co. of Pittsfield, NH. Out of this came a licensing agreement with Rustic Crust to produce, market, and sell American Flatbread Frozen Pizza.

Rustic Crust is comprised of good people committed to not just making flatbread as well as we have been, but even better. Flatbread is going to a good home, and is safer for it.

And in Vermont…

We will have the time and the resources to look deeply at what we do and how we might do it better: sell closer to home—Vermont schools, hospitals, maybe even prisons—and to look closer to home for even more of our ingredients.

American Flatbread is re-localizing, and in that there is much good news.

All my best to you and yours,

Love, George

Frequently Asked Questions About our Partnership with Rustic Crust

WHY ARE YOU MOVING YOUR FROZEN PIZZA PRODUCTION?

Our core values, the foundation of our work, are: Sustainability and Food Integrity. The goal of our decision to entrust the baking of our frozen pizza to the stewardship of Rustic Crust is to better support these core values. In choosing this path, we are consciously focusing our business on what we do best: hospitality.

After many years of trying to make the frozen production model work, we concluded that we could not sustainably bake American Flatbread frozen pizzas at Lareau Farm. Rustic Crust has demonstrated they can produce our frozen pizza as well, if not better, than we can.

We have licensed the use of our trademarks, recipes, baking techniques to Rustic Crust for the production of frozen pizza. American Flatbread still owns our trademarks and intellectual property.

We have every confidence Rustic Crust will uphold our existing values and standards of quality.

WILL THE FROZEN PIZZA I BUY IN GROCERY STORES CHANGE?

Rustic Crust will be baking American Flatbread pizza in a wood-fired oven, offering the same varieties and using the same recipes and quality ingredients. Rustic Crust’s improvements in production efficiency will allow us to produce more pizza, better serving grocery stores and their customers.

Rustic Crust designed a wood-fired oven, demonstrating a significant commitment on the part of Rustic Crust to bake American Flatbread frozen pizza to the same standards that we achieve in our earthen ovens.

Rustic Crust will still shape the dough and add ingredients by hand. The parts that make American Flatbread special–the work of hands, the quality ingredients, and wood-fired baking–will continue. Some parts of the way we baked at Lareau Farm will evolve, but they will be changes that will also improve the pizza.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO THE BAKERY AT LAREAU FARM–IS IT CLOSING?

No. Not by a long shot.

We will continue to bake pizzas for the Vermont School Bread and the Medicine Wheel Bread programs from our bakery at Lareau Farm. This work is near to our hearts, in line with our mission and a part of the company we intend to grow, with renewed focus.

We will continue to bake pizzas for catering and special events. Similar to the VT School Bread Program, this is an area that we are very excited about. We will be able to make seasonal foods more readily available on our menus and better support our local agricultural economy.

We will expand the days our restaurants will be open. With added nights for dinner, we will be able to better serve customers who often shy away from the long waits common on Friday and Saturday nights.

WILL AMERICAN FLATBREAD BAKERY EMPLOYEES LOSE THEIR JOBS?

It is possible that some jobs may be lost. This is, without question, the most painful part of this transition. We believe far less will be lost than would have been if we continued to operate an unsustainable business model. We may not have opportunities for everyone, but our goal is to provide the opportunity for employment for all employees in good standing. Rustic Crust has also offered to hire interested American Flatbread bakers. We shared the agreement with our employees providing three months notice of the upcoming change in structure to provide as much time for ourselves and our employees to find opportunities for continued or new employment.

We are committed to finding employment for as many employees as we can.

RUSTIC CRUST ACQUIRES AMERICAN FLATBREAD BRAND LICENSE

Check out the Made in Vermont segment featuring our frozen pizza on all RSN resort stations throughout Vermont:

Sugarbush: Tues, Thurs, Sat @ 5:30pm, Sun @ 3:30pm

Killington: Sun-Sat @ 11:30am and 3:30pm

Mount Snow: Sun-Sat, floating between 6am, 9am, 5:30pm, 8pm, and 8:30pm

Smuggs TV: Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun @ 5:30pm

Stowe: Thu @ 9am, Fri 2 5:30pm, Sat 2 8am, Sun @6pm

Bromley/Stratton/Okemo: TBA

Happy Viewing!

farmer

Middlebury Winter Farmer’s Market
( 20 local vendors, mostly agricultural)

American Flatbread at the Marble Works

2nd & 4th Saturday each month
(Jan 9 thru April 10, 2010)

Early Summer 2010: American Flatbread opens in Portland, Orgeon!