My second year at Reality Kitchen started with one of my bosses, known as the Executive Director, Jim Evangelista, giving me a task that I never did during my first year of employment. Jim asked me to travel to various restaurants, cafés, and stores in the Eugene and Springfield area with sealed bags of three 2 oz. pretzel twists, sealed bags of one 8 oz. pretzel, brochures, and newspapers featuring Reality Kitchen. I had two full boxes of these samples and papers to hand out and be a salesman for the company.
The night before I went out, I researched businesses in the area and typed a list, printed it, and prepared myself for the next day by finding my favorite dress shirt and getting a haircut.
When I gave Jim the list of businesses the next morning, he looked it over and crossed out a few of them but highlighted the ones he really wanted to me prioritize. That day, I drove around and handed out samples—hoping to score more wholesale business for Reality Kitchen. And a few days later, we had a new customer: Capella Market.
Capella Market is located on Willamette Street in Eugene. They sell our 2 oz. pretzel twists, our 8 oz. traditional pretzels, and an assortment of our cookies.
The previous temporary supervisors who came into Reality Kitchen had quit their positions, leaving the first supervisor who worked there for over 4 years. I liked him. He was meticulous, serious, sometimes hard-headed, but genuinely a swell coworker. I learned much from him, especially when it came to his role at the bakery.
The highlight of my second year at Reality Kitchen, besides all the incredible people that I enjoy working with 5 days each week, was my promotion to the supervisor role because the supervisor who had worked there for 4 years decided to work somewhere else. Some call it the air traffic controller role, but I don't understand the title so much because there are no airplanes in the bakery (or any bakery, for that matter), and it seems to be synonymous to supervisor because I supervise the packaging, inventory, invoicing, and delivery of products to several dozen businesses in the Lane County area. Some of the products go as far as Bend, Redmond, Salem, even Portland. The previous supervisor wanted to find a new job because he worked at Reality Kitchen for so long and felt it was time to move on to a new place. I was happy to take the responsibility because I learned so much from that supervisor.
That Christmas, my wife and I gave gifts to our two bosses: Jim Evangelista and Catherine Pickup. Reality Kitchen had a work party at Lane 25 where my wife and I bowled, drank Coke-Cola, and participated in Secret Santa.
In January of the next year, my wife was in the fifth month of her pregnancy; she was growing bigger and rounder by the day, but she didn't want to stop working. We had multiple appointments each week in Portland, located over 200 miles away, to see an OBGYN and high-risk doctor. It was expensive, but well worth it because my wife received the care she needed, and our son received the care and attention he needed, too. I never missed an appointment with my wife, and our bosses were always understanding about our appointments and coordinated with others to help fill our spots while we were gone. It was a couple months before the due date that we had a gender reveal party and a baby shower. My wife wanted to continue to work until she couldn't work anymore—as far as she could until she gave birth to our son.
April 22 at 8:30 AM, 2023, my wife gave birth to Markus Samuel Figura. My wife was in labor for 23 hours. Markus was a miracle child who had a low chance of survival because of cystic hygroma, but as I told doctors, "God has a plan for this baby boy." And low-and-behold, the cystic hygroma resolved itself before he was born, and the doctors were stunned. He still has a vascular ring, and he will need heart surgery, but I'm confident it will go well. God didn't bring us this far for nothing.
After Markus was born, my wife took 8 weeks off from work to take care of him. It was a big change for us because Markus is our first—and so far only—baby. During the eight weeks that my wife didn't work, her role at the bakery was placed onto me along with all the supervisorial and distribution work. It was a challenge, but I was up for it. And it all went well.
Less than one week before he was born, however, a member of my wife's family who is a contractor of sorts came into our house to help us repair our floors. When he came into our home, he said that our house had mold, and we had to move away. At first, we were frantic about this news and trusted his word. I didn't want our baby to live in an environment where he'd breathe in toxins. I spoke with several individuals who provided an expert to come into our home and perform a thorough inspection. The expert concluded that there was no mold—just rotten wood. The night before my wife was induced into labor, I spent a thousand dollars on wood and materials and had help to replace the floors. It took all night, but after it was done, the transformation was significant. Markus had a fully remodeled bedroom.
As Markus grew older and older, our bosses at Reality Kitchen continued to give us great advice for raising our baby. They never overstepped boundaries or suggested anything that didn't make any sense. Everything they suggested helped, and they were courteous and patient with us, especially on days when we came into work tired and exhausted because the baby kept us awake all night.
Some days the work was tiresome, stressful, and difficult, especially when conflict or confusion occurred. But for the most part, it is a special job where I feel like an important part of the functions of the bakery. The best part of the job is that I work there with my wife. She is the delivery driver. Her mellow road rage and my comforting direction seem to make us the perfect team.
The first thing I do when I arrive to work in the morning is check the tickets with the text thread to ensure accuracy of orders from the executive director. If a ticket is incorrect, I correct it. If a ticket isn't written, I'd write it based on the thread on my phone. Once that is double checked, I figure out what places to put together first for orders. I usually put together pickup orders first (unless it's a later in the day pickup). Then I'd put together early morning deliveries before the afternoon deliveries (unless it is so easy of a day all the deliveries could be done together). Once I figure out a game plan, I'd look at the racks of bread made fresh and need to be bagged and later, boxed up, labeled, and checked off the ticket. As the supervisor, I decide on the bread that workers would pack. If there is a good number of loaves to slice, I'd focus on those because it's more dangerous than—obviously—packing burger buns into bags. I'd figure out the packing for each person and prepare their workspaces. When they come into work, I welcome them into the environment and show them their workspaces and tasks. Once they pack the bread, I collect the bags and place them into boxes, put the boxes on racks, label the boxes, then check them off the ticket. Once everything is ready to go, I enter the office and create the invoices, print them off, double check all the work is accurate, then load the bread into the delivery van. Before I go out on deliveries, most times with my wife (who also packs bread), I make sure the packers left at the bakery would have enough tasks to do to stay busy. And of course, there are others there to make sure they stay productive and on task. A typical day would include 10-15 deliveries, sometimes more, sometimes less. When we make a delivery (each place has their quirks), we give them a copy of an invoice, and they sign the other—the one we return back to the office for the bookkeeper. Once all the deliveries are done for the day, we prepare for the next day by packing bread, labeling boxes for the next day, checking finished orders off the tickets, then organizing them on the rack. The bakers arrive to the bakery early, often much earlier than sunrise, so much of the bread is available for us first thing in the morning. There are so many things that my wife and I do throughout the day (and often we have challenging and peculiar tasks) that it would be too much to describe here. We do everything from dishes, taking out the trash, buying food from the US Chef's Store, picking up boxes, refilling gas in the van, taking the van to mechanics, mopping and sweeping the floors, wiping down counters, doors, refrigerators, ovens, and of course, organizing the fridges and freezers.
Reality Kitchen offers a wide variety of food that includes (but not limited to): 4 oz. burger buns, 4 oz. pressed burger buns, 4 oz. brioche buns, 2 oz. sliders, 2 oz. vegan sliders, 4 oz. and 3 oz. vegan burger buns, 7 oz. burger hoagies, 4 oz. burger hoagies, 6 oz. demi baguettes, 4 oz. demi baguettes, 4 oz. brioche hoagies, challah braids, chamas challah braids, seeded challah braids, seeded camas challah braids, sourdough loaves, whole wheat loaves, challah loaves, buttermilk white loaves, sour rye loaves, chamas challah loaves, GORS loaves (garlic, onion, rosemary, sourdough loaf), cinnamon walnut raisin loaf, sourdough baguette, vegan baguette, sweet sliders, sweet dinner rolls, burger dinner rolls, brioche dinner rolls, sweet 8 in vegan hoagies, 3 oz. pita round flatbread, 6 oz. pita rectangle flatbread, 2 oz. burger dinner rolls, 2 oz. GORS dinner rolls, 4 oz. telera, 5 oz. vegan kaisers, and much more. Reality Kitchen also offers several kinds of cakes, pies, and cookies. Cookies include chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin, ginger molasses, peanut butter, peanut butter chocolate chip, butterscotch pecan, lemon shortbread, and chocolate chip shortbread.
I've wrapped cookies, labeled cookies, and properly stored cookies. We've sold thousands of cookies.
Reality Kitchen has a café that's open on Thursdays and Fridays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (may change in the future). They offer wholesale items to restaurants and stores at dozens of locations throughout Eugene, Springfield, Bend, Salem, and Dexter. Businesses include (but not limited to): Agate Alley, Santo, Chicken Crossing, Capella, Green's Bridge Farm, Scribles, Flying Squirrel, Max's Tavern, Dank Beef, Once Famous, Laurelwood Golf Course Pub, Houndstooth, Pint Pot, Luava, Brew Station, Full Farm, Lane 25, Bangers Bend, The Davis, et cetera.
Reality Kitchen is a special place where everyone feels like family. I can see myself working here for a long time—as long as the stress doesn't tear me down. I've hit empty several times, completely burned out, but after some rest at home, especially over the weekend, I seem to bounce back.
I may or may not write about my third year at Reality Kitchen, depending on if there's enough to write about. I think my first year and second year posts about Reality Kitchen gives you, the reader, an idea about my day job, and the kind of work Reality Kitchen does for our community.