Dave's Killer Bread: Dave Dahl

Dave Dahl's entrepreneurial journey began in prison. In 1987, he was addicted to drugs and incarcerated for home burglary. For 15 years he bounced from one sentence to the next. But in the mid-2000s, Dave returned to his family bakery where he was inspired to make bread – organic, nutty, and slightly sweet. He sold the loaves at farmers markets and shared his story of recovery on the package – a branding decision that attracted fans and media attention. In 2015, the Dahl family sold the business for $275 million dollars. Today, Dave's Killer Bread sells over a dozen types of bread in grocery stores nationwide. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," armpit entrepreneurs Jason and Erica Feucht tell us how they turned whiskey and vodka into the natural deodorant Pit Liquor. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  So I want to tell you that we're coming to the Twin Cities for a live event on Wednesday, July 17. I'll be talking with Dan and Angie Bastian, co-founders of Angie's Boom Chicka Pop. How a history teacher and a psychiatric nurse started making popcorn and eventually got it into stores from coast to coast. The show is supported by American Express, and to get tickets, go to nprpresents.org. I hope to see you there. And one more quick thing before we start the show. The How I Built This Summit, sponsored by American Express, is coming back this fall to San Francisco. It's happening on October 22 and 23, and this year, it's going to be amazing. You will have the opportunity to spend the day with some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs

• 0:44Guy Raz?

  in the world, and many of them will be hanging around to chat and give advice, literally. People like David Neileman of JetBlue, Stuart Butterfield of Slack, Sarah Blakely of Spanx, Kevin Systrom of Instagram, Marcia Kilgore of Bliss, Jen Rubio of Away, Tim and Joey from Allbirds. This conference is unlike any other you've ever attended. It's designed to build and nurture a community of builders. Come join us in San Francisco, October 22 and 23, and hopefully, I'll see you there. To find out more about the summit, go to summit.npr.org.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  It just hit me that, wow, I'm either something really good or I'm something really bad, and I'm really bad. I'm a big problem. And look what I've done. I've let down all these people, all these employees, all these investors, all these people who believed in me. And I just couldn't live with that.

• 1:52Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 2:03Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Dave Dahl, after years of prison and drug use, turned his life around by baking loaves of healthy, whole wheat bread, Dave's Killer Bread.

• 2:19Guy Raz?

  So if there's one clear lesson we've learned from making this show, it's this: the story matters. It's the why you do what you do. But more importantly, it's the thing that allows your customers to deepen their connection to your product or brand. But companies and businesses don't always put their stories on the label. Think about Roxanne Quimby selling beeswax candles and lip balm at farmers' markets in Maine while trying to scale up Burt's Bees. Or how Steve Ells wandered past a burrito shop in San Francisco's Mission District in the late 1980s and came up with Chipotle. Now, it's highly unlikely that you buy Burt's Bees products or a Chipotle burrito because of these stories.

• 3:02Guy Raz?

  If you're a fan of either company, you probably just like what they make. But in the case of Dave's Killer Bread, the story was crucial to its early success, and it was printed on the wrapper of every loaf. And his story has more struggle than probably any story we've featured on this show so far. In his 20s, Dave Dahl was a pretty messed up guy. "A misfit, a loser," those are actually his own words. And he spent a lot of time in prison. At times, Dave thought he might even die behind bars. But eventually, he transformed his thinking. And when he was released from prison, he went home to his family bakery, and he started making bread, really good bread.

• 3:47Guy Raz?

  And people loved it, and the family bakery grew pretty quickly. Seven years on, they were selling Dave's Killer Bread across the Northwest, doing over $50 million in sales. But we'll get there. Dave was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1963, where his family ran a small bakery. His mom and dad were Seventh-day Adventists. It's a denomination known to practice a really healthy diet: no alcohol, no caffeine, and lots of grains. And Dave's family, they were very conservative.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  My mom was very religious. My dad was a believer. They were very strict. And we were expected to be honest. We were taught to be truthful. We were taught not to fight. You know, everything was about getting ready for the afterlife, for heaven.

• 4:39Guy Raz?

  What did your parents do for a living? What was their business?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Well, they were bakers and my dad was a hardworking man. He did lots of different jobs, odd jobs, until he was able to muster up enough money to buy a bakery that was failing. And that's where he started, back in the 50s. And so they did a lot of birthday cakes and donuts even, and all that stuff. But at some point, my dad decided that he wanted to do more, more whole grains and no animal fats. That was, it was revolutionary at the time.

• 5:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  But that was definitely the Seventh-day Adventist influence.

• 5:20Guy Raz?

  So because of, of their religious sort of views, he, he's thinking, I'm gonna start making, you know, healthier, whole grain breads, which must have been kind of a hippie dippy thing in the, in the, you know, late 60s, early 70s, right?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a funny thing, because my dad was the opposite of a hippie. He did, he did try to go with more of a liberal, sort of a liberal mindset for a while, but he, he couldn't stand hippies. He, he would just get so upset that these hippies, when he would go.

• 5:49Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Well, he, he had to like them because they were keeping him, you know, in business.

• 5:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  But there was, he just didn't, you know, he was, he was basically for, he was kind of a Nixon Republican.

• 6:03Guy Raz?

  And, and do you, I mean, are some of your earliest memories just working in the bakery with your siblings?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of the earlier, more standout memories were maybe going and visiting my dad where he was working, because you had to be a certain age and certain size to be able to work in the bakery. You had to be able to get your hands up over the work table. And I was nine years old when I was, when I was able to start working. Of course, I couldn't wait to start working.

• 6:32Guy Raz?

  And what would you do at the bakery as a kid?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Mainly, we had one of these cookie machines that had two rollers that would dispense cookies and we were making natural cookies for these hippie places and we didn't work on Saturdays because we were Seventh-day Adventists.

• 6:50Guy Raz?

  Right, that's the day of rest, right, in church?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. But Sundays were wide open. That was often our biggest day of work and, you know, the Adventists, that was their day of recreation was Sunday. And so I was a little bit, I became more and more resentful at that young age that I wasn't able to go to these, to be a part of what my peers were doing. But, yeah, we worked, we worked our butts off on Sundays.

• 7:18Guy Raz?

  And his bakery was not, like, hugely profitable, right? Like, you did not grow up-

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 7:23Guy Raz?

  -with lots of money, right?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  No, we, we worked for our little bit of money. I remember starting at 25 cents an hour and part of that money, part of that 25 cents went to paying for my school and clothes.

• 7:37Guy Raz?

  So, when do you remember, like, at what age do you remember starting to kind of rebel against, against your parents?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  It must have been about 11 or 12, probably 12 by the time I started looking at things as like, well, I don't believe this stuff. And I, you know, I read the Bible. I started, I was very sincere about it. I made a decision when I started having doubts that I would just read the Bible and hopefully God would tell me, you know, what I needed to know. And it didn't work. I mean, it just gave me more doubts. And so I started being more and more, you know, fighting with my dad and mom by the time I was 13, 14. And my mom was just really bummed out about it.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  She couldn't, she tried everything she could to try to help me, you know, to get back to the faith. And my dad was just mad. He was just angry.

• 8:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds like at that point it was probably sort of typical teenage rebellion. Were you doing drugs at that point or not? Not yet?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  No, I drank a little. I think I was 14 when I first drank some beer and smoked some weed. Eventually, it got to be more and more of that. None of it really agreed with me. It didn't do me any favors. But at this point, I was trying to find my way outside of the Adventist world. And I was finding other misfits.

• 9:07Guy Raz?

  Did you finish high school?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  No, I took off on a trip on the second day of my senior year. Took off cross-country, got stuck in Nebraska, and turned around, came back.

• 9:21Guy Raz?

  What, you just took out, you just like decided to just go on like on a bus or just by yourself?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  No, hitchhiking. I always was like, I always wanted to throw myself into situations and see what happens. And so I was 17 and I took off on this trip and I was about as naive and green about life as you could get. It started a sort of a lifelong thing of running away from things and going somewhere and having to run away from there, you know? Everywhere I went, I was running away, but you know, there I was every time.

• 9:57Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 10:00Guy Raz?

  I guess pretty soon after you kind of dropped out of high school and were trying to figure things out, you decided to enlist in the Marines, right?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just one more, one more grass is greener on the other side kind of an idea. And a friend of mine went into the Marines. He was another misfit like me and other, you know, we would call ourselves losers, I guess. And he went in the Marines and it was just, he came back transformed. That's the first transformation I ever saw in my life. And I thought, wow, you know, they can make a man out of me too, right? But I went in the Marines and I wasn't ready for that. I just got help. I got help from those drill instructors. And I couldn't take it. I wasn't, I wasn't built for it in those days to, I didn't have a thick skin at all.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  And I eventually took off, ran from there.

• 10:56Guy Raz?

  So you head back to Portland after that. And what did you do? What do you remember about that time?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Wasn't too long after that that I ended up getting married. It was just another crazy idea. And I met my first daughter's mother. And we got married. And I was drinking. And at this point, I probably started doing the cocaine. I was just doing cocaine, but I wasn't at a level, a serious addiction level. It was just a recreational level.

• 11:29Guy Raz?

  So you were 22. You had a kid. And you didn't really have much of a future, you know, many like prospects for the future, I guess, at that point.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  No, that's exactly it. I mean, at that time, I had no perspective on you can go out and learn to become, to create a life for yourself. But I didn't know that. I didn't see that. And I just thought, well, I was born to lose. I don't know anything. Everybody else knows more than I do. Everybody else has, is more built for life. And myself, I had such ADD. And even though nobody would have called it ADD in those days, and I didn't have anyone that could diagnose me like that, I couldn't focus on a conversation like what we're having right now. There's no way I could have done that. And I couldn't listen to anything.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  And that's another problem I had in the Marine Corps. I couldn't listen. And I also was, I refused to wear glasses, and I was supposed to wear glasses. So I couldn't see the chalkboard. And I mean, I was just like, a lot of stuff was converging there. And a lot of bad stuff. And I was low self-esteem, depression. And my thought was always, well, who wouldn't be depressed with a life like mine, you know?

• 12:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah. That's a tough time in life for, for most people in general. I mean, your brain is changing. There's all kinds of things happening. You're sort of all of a sudden expected to be an adult. Here you are. You've got a child. What appears to be like a growing alcohol and drug addiction and undiagnosed depression on top of that.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, all those things. And then I would smoke weed and then I would do acid, I'd do LSD. And almost always it was a terrible result because your mind, you can't go into a trip like that and have a mind that's all torn up. It just gets worse and it makes you nuts.

• 13:38Guy Raz?

  Do you remember the first time you used meth?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. It was the best. It was my first transformation in life. It was the first time that I saw that my life could be a lot better, at least in my thinking at the time.

• 13:52Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  And of course, we called it crank in those days. And I'd always been warned that crank was only for the lowest of the low. But at that point, I was like, well, I am kind of the lowest of the low. Why don't I embrace it? And I did. And the very first time that I did the meth, put it in my arm. And I was instantly happy and ready to go and kick ass. And it made me just forget all the things that were messing me up. And I kind of just left the world that I was in, this bummer world that I was in, and went to a world where I was happy. The problem would be when I would run out. And that happened

• 14:38Speaker 01

  a lot.

• 14:39Guy Raz?

  Because you didn't have money to get more, I guess, right? You didn't have a job.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. At first, you know, I was working at the bakery.

• 14:47Guy Raz?

  This is your family bakery?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the last thing in the world I wanted to do was be a baker. I didn't want to be what my dad was. I didn't want to be what my family was. I didn't want to be this guy. I always thought being a baker was a sissy thing, you know? But I didn't know what else to do. Eventually, it was unsustainable. And so I lost that job and I started doing car burglaries, then eventually business and house burglaries.

• 15:16Guy Raz?

  To?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  To pay for the dope.

• 15:19Guy Raz?

  And you would steal things and like take them to pawn shops?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Well, we had fences. I would work with guys who had a little bit more experience at this and they would find ways to fence the things. And, you know, I would feel guilty at times when I was robbing someone and see the fear that they had. I would feel that guilt and I remember actually saying I'm sorry to one person. But it didn't matter. I still had to do what I had to do.

• 15:51Guy Raz?

  So this is around like 1986, 87, and this is gonna sort of be the beginning of like 14 years, maybe more, maybe like 16 years.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  It comes up to just about 15 years in prison and jail.

• 16:06Guy Raz?

  Do you remember the first time you were incarcerated for burglary? Like, do you remember what, how you felt? Were you scared? Were you?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  No, because by that time I had almost come to the conclusion that I was eventually going to go to prison. And that would be a good learning experience for me. And I didn't like prison, don't get me wrong. I hated it. But I also looked at it as sort of a badge of who I was now.

• 16:34Guy Raz?

  Were you, were you ever personally violent or angry? Did you have, was that inside of you?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Growing up, I was, there was a lot of anger in my family. That's one thing that was sort of, that came with the territory. The bakers, all the bakers in the family, we were all angry. That's.

• 16:51Guy Raz?

  Just angry with, with the world, with each other?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I think so. With everything, yeah. I think, looking back now, I think my dad had similar problems that I had, you know, to mine. He was probably bipolar, like me. I saw him angry and I saw him depressed. I saw him angry and I saw him depressed.

• 17:11Guy Raz?

  So it sounds like during this period in prison, I mean, you were kind of dealing with a combination of, of depression and anger and addiction and just incredibly low self-esteem.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Very low. I was suicidal many, many times in my life. I had been suicidal when I put that needle in my arm. And so, you know, you gotta understand that. I was back against the wall, nothing to lose when I did it.

• 17:46Guy Raz?

  While you were, and I guess we should contextualize this a bit. While you were in prison, I mean, the family bakery was still going on, right? And your brother was involved with it. But while you were in prison, your dad passed away.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 18:03Guy Raz?

  Were you able to go to the funeral?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Uh, no, because, you know, I was confined.

• 18:11Guy Raz?

  Were you talking with your dad at that point, you know, around that time?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I had started to want to talk to my dad, but I wasn't quite to the point that I got to later where I really wished that I could have had that, you know, that final, you know, some time with him.

• 18:29Guy Raz?

  So you're serving your final prison sentence. You were gonna be incarcerated for a long time. I guess around 2001, something happened to you that made you start to think about your life and what you want it to be. What was it? What happened? Did you find God? Was it a religious experience? Like, what was it?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  It was like that. My own form of God, I guess. And I experienced enough adversity and enough time where I couldn't run away. I was either gonna take myself out, I was gonna find a way, because I really had decided there's no reason why I should be alive. But being at the end of my rope like I was, I finally did something that they talk about in AA, and I surrendered. And I said, "Well, I'm gonna let these authorities who may be able to help me, I'm gonna give them a chance to help me." And it was a big deal, because it's like you're telling on yourself in there, you know?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  The last thing you wanna do is tell the authorities what's on your mind. But that was the wrong advice. The right advice was, yes, let down your guard and get some help. And it wasn't long after that I got called in, and, you know, I didn't tell him everything. I didn't say I was suicidal, because I didn't wanna get in more trouble. But he said, "Well, look, we got this stuff called Paxil. You wanna try it?" And I said, hell yeah, let's give it a shot. And it was, they say it takes quite a while to take effect, but it was fairly quick with me. And I, sometimes I don't know how much of it was just the humility and the whole deal that it took to make that happen that changed my-

• 20:20Guy Raz?

  The sort of placebo effect.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it might have, it might have been partially a placebo effect, but I think it, I think the drug did help.

• 20:28Guy Raz?

  It worked, yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  And I had been on a waiting list for a computer aided drafting program, which was a vocational training opportunity, very rare, a very rare and great opportunity, I found out. At first I was just scared to death of it. I was like, computers and, you know, drafting, I have no idea what they're talking about. But this time I, I didn't give up, and I think a lot of the reason why I didn't give up is because of those meds and because I, I had come to the point of acceptance of who I am. And I didn't care what other people thought of me, so, so I had a great time. I, I just started, within a couple of weeks I was having a blast in there, and that changed my life.

• 21:09Guy Raz?

  So you're, you're in prison, you're taking this drafting, computer aided drafting course, and design course. You are on antidepressants. You'd spent most of the previous 15 years of your life in and out of prison, but it sounds like you sort of woke up one day and you're like, I'm almost 40, my, my perspective is changing, I'm not-

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I can't be a criminal anymore. Obviously this is not working. I, I am not good at that. That's one thing we can definitely say.

• 21:39Guy Raz?

  So December 27th, two days after Christmas in 2004, you are released. The day you walked out of prison, your brother Glenn, he was there to pick you up, right?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:51Guy Raz?

  And do you remember any of the conversation was, I don't know, was he, he's your older brother, right? I think he's like nine years older than you. Was he-

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Eight years older, yeah.

• 22:00Guy Raz?

  Was he, I don't know, did he scold you? Was he judgmental, or was he just like, hey, you're out? No?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  No, I think that he'd seen a difference in me, but he was still wary. But he had to see what was going on when I was doing the drafting and things and just the whole deal where I stopped blaming people, I took accountability, didn't blame the system, the judge, I, it was all, look, I did this and I can, I'm the one who's got the power to change it. So I think my brother was a little bit put off by my energy. It was a little bit too much.

• 22:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I can understand that. I mean, I would be wary too, right? If, if, if that was me. I mean, he, he had been sort of dutifully-

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Holding down the fort.

• 22:47Guy Raz?

  Holding down the fort, running your parents bakery and business and-

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had managed to keep the business going various ways, but, you know, he, because he was a hard worker and smart and somehow they managed to become contract manufacturers of, for Trader Joe's, which was really the bread and butter for the business before I got out.

• 23:09Guy Raz?

  So when he picked you up after you were released, did he say, all right, listen, you know, we got some work for you with a bakery and why don't you come and start working for us in a couple of days? Is that, is that what he said?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  The way I remember it is that I asked him if I could come back, you know, because I'd been thinking about how I could make, think I could make a difference in the company. And so he gave me that opportunity. I mean, I had to prove myself at the very low, the very lowest point, 12 bucks an hour.

• 23:39Guy Raz?

  Just baking loaves of bread, basically?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  That was the, the priority was bread. His, uh, bigger thing was the marketing and how, how can, how can we appeal to younger folks, you know? We were getting eaten up by the big guys who had figured out ways to sell bread that was more popular.

• 23:57Guy Raz?

  Sure. I mean, Glenn, he had, he, he could see where, he could see the writing on the wall, like the big companies were coming in undercutting, I mean, they were probably, their costs were far lower and nature baked bread wasn't selling. You had to, there was, you had to do something, right? In order, in order for this business to grow. And PA sort of kind of tasked you to kind of look around.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:20Guy Raz?

  Figure this out.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  The one thing, I think the coolest thing that my brother did was to kind of just let me do my thing. He said, well, you know, learn, learn what's out there and stuff. And because of my experimenting with, as a drafter, that's what you do. You, you replicate and then you make it better, right?

• 24:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah, sure.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And that's what I did. I would replicate other varieties of, other kinds of bread that were, that were popular out in the market.

• 24:47Guy Raz?

  Like you were just experimenting in, in the bakery and just trying different flours out and grains?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Well, I had always wanted to make a bread with great texture. And one of the things I love is natural whole grain cereal. It's not beat up too much. It's got to have some good chewiness to it. And it doesn't matter, it could be wheat, oats, whatever. So I made a soaker where you take the cracked grains and you make them soft enough to make bread out of them, but not too soft. So it was texture that I was aiming for. Plus I was going for sort of a brown sugary flavor without brown sugar. So I, I used organic cane juice and molasses for that flavor. And I wanted it to be like a masterpiece of art too. And I didn't call it Killer Bread right away.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Called it Blues Bread, the first one. And it was, it had a beautiful blue color to it, like I was aiming for.

• 25:44Guy Raz?

  How did you, how did you get that blue color?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  It was just blue cornmeal.

• 25:49Guy Raz?

  Oh, you, you sort of had blue cornmeal around the, like you rolled the bread, the dough into the?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Inside and out. And every bread that I made, pretty much I named first and then I created it. So I remember thinking, I want to make a loaf of Blues Bread. One of my, one of my varieties is going to be called Blues, because I love the blues. And I thought, well, I love blue bread.

• 26:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And then I, I liked, then I was like, well, the other one was always Killer Bread. I always wanted to make a variety called Killer Bread. And the biggest difference in it was that it was made with nuts and seeds rather than just seeds and grains.

• 26:25Guy Raz?

  When you were experimenting with the different kinds of breads and the, what would become Dave's Killer Bread, like? I don't know, do you remember taking that first loaf out? Do you remember, do you remember knowing that?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:36Guy Raz?

  What do you remember about that?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man, it was great. I'll never forget it. It's, it had a great fullness to it, a great, you know, beauty to the shape. And the blue cornmeal was, you know, just made it like no other bread before. It was, it was beautiful. And I took it out of the oven, it was five loaves. And tasted it pretty quickly and I was like, oh, God, this is good. I mean, it fits my flavor profile, you know, what I want. And then I gave a loaf to our maintenance guy. And I think we had like 25, 30 employees at the time, but the maintenance guy, he took one home

• 27:19Speaker 01

  and he came back the next day and he just couldn't stop raving about it. And eventually he got, you know, more people to, more people were starting to say, hey, Dave, that was, that's a good bread. Really good bread.

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  Can I ask you a technical question? Because obviously, right, like as I've made bread and I, you know, baked things before and, and pretty much like anything you take out of the oven and eat right away, like whether it's a chocolate chip cookie or a piece of bread, is amazing.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  It's gonna be good.

• 27:51Guy Raz?

  The test, the test is whether it's still good four hours later, right? So like, I can imagine your bread was amazing, but like this had to be bread that could sit on a shelf of a supermarket or grocery store. So had it like, was it still great? Like, I don't know, five hours later or the next day?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Definitely. In fact, I hardly ever would eat it hot because that's really not, not a good test of how good it is. And, you know, the process of, of how it's done and rotated and everything, you know, it's gotta be, it's gotta be good for five days on the shelf there and it's gotta be good for a few days once they get it.

• 28:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  They don't, people really didn't expect it to be, to last forever because it's natural and doesn't have chemicals in it.

• 28:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  So, in fact, that was my slogan, just say no to bread on drugs. And in those days, in those days, that was a pretty popular slogan.

• 28:51Guy Raz?

  All right, so you make that loaf. Your maintenance guy comes back the next day. You know that you're on to something. And then, did you go to Glenn, your brother, and say, "Hey, try this out. Tell me what you think."

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted him to love it, you know, but it wasn't his idea of a killer bra- of a great bread. What I give him so much credit for is that even though he didn't really like my bread, he understood that it wasn't his taste buds that mattered.

• 29:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Like I said, I totally give him props for that. He wasn't controlling. Like, most companies would say, you know, "Hey, we've got to keep this in this price. You can't go beyond this." And fortunately, he did not say that. I remember when we got to the point of realizing, we did a cost analysis on it, and we started realizing how much we were going to have to sell this for. And it was a more difficult bread to make than the average loaf of bread.

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  How much did you have to sell it for?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Well, we went to the farmer's market, and we sold it at $4. And the nuts and grains was $4.50 because the nuts were more expensive.

• 30:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah, $4.50 in 2001, that's pretty expensive.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think everybody was worried about the price. And they also, they didn't like the bread. I mean, in the upper...

• 30:19Guy Raz?

  The upper management of the company?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is a pretty small company. But the people who'd been around for a while, there was sort of a, "This is the way bread is, and this is not bread." So...

• 30:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  So what we did is, it was actually an opportunity. This was actually a project that my nephew and I, this was our opportunity to build equity in the company.

• 30:40Guy Raz?

  Ah.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  And that was really what my brother said. He was, he would always own 51%. But he was gonna give us an opportunity to buy into the company. And in order to buy in, we had to produce sales. We had to increase revenues.

• 30:56Guy Raz?

  So you essentially spun off. You sort of created a separate company to sell Dave's Killer Bread. Separate brand, okay.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  It was actually a separate brand, but it was a whole different operation. And my nephew and myself, we ran the, we ran the operation.

• 31:10Guy Raz?

  This is Glenn's son, Shoby.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yes. And Shoby was like a prodigy kid, you know? Really smart kid. He graduated in three years, magna cum laude. How do you even say that? From Willamette University, which is a prestigious, good university in economics of all things. So he gets out, he's 21, he's 21 years old. He gets, the same year I got out of prison, he gets out of college.

• 31:36Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  And he had a whole different way of looking at things. And he really didn't like me being around, but we were partners. And we managed to, to find ways to work together. And we had our own duties that we would do for the most part. And that kind of kept us out of each other's way.

• 31:56Guy Raz?

  I mean, you were the guy who came up with the actual product. You came up with Dave's Killer Bread. But let's, let's just sort of reflect on this for a moment. I mean, it's probably unlikely that, you know, Dave's Killer Bread would, would have become a brand at this point without your brother and his son's business acumen, probably.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  I would say, I would say it's impossible for it to happen without, without, first of all, my dad starting what he did. Even though my dad was basically a knucklehead like me. He worked his butt off, but he didn't really, you know, he wasn't really a businessman per se. He wasn't like, that was his focus. He was a creator and he was a hard worker. And that's what I see myself as. My brother and my nephew had more, definitely had more of the, they were looking at the finances and all that stuff more. And I was always passion driven. And so there, there was a lot of disagreements on how things should be done. But honestly, there were many times that because it felt so bad, the way we, the way we got on.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  That it almost derailed and.

• 33:05Guy Raz?

  What was so, what was so hard about, I mean, I mean, obviously, we're only hearing, you know, your side of the story, but.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:11Guy Raz?

  I mean. But, but what was, was it just a personality clash like?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Definitely. There was definitely the attitude that, wow, this guy comes out here and he's kind of a wrecking ball, you know, he comes out here just like, he's like a cowboy shooting from the hip and, you know, half the stuff he does fails and, you know, he's just, you know, he's crazy.

• 33:35Guy Raz?

  Was it like that though? But Dave, was it like that from the, because you guys founded this brand in 2005, right? And no one knew what Dave's Killer Bread was in 2005. No one was really going to know what it was for several more years.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Well, it didn't take very long for attention, to get attention.

• 33:50Guy Raz?

  But was there tension between you and your brother and your nephew from the beginning? Like even like right from the beginning? Really?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Very, very right from the beginning. Oh, my God. And the way I always saw it was people loved my story. They loved what I had gone through and how I'd overcome it. But my family was too close to it or something and didn't see it that way. And they saw it as more like, wow, he doesn't deserve this. But I, I went out and I had a lot of love from the, from the people in the community.

• 34:23Guy Raz?

  You would talk about, you would talk about your story and you would say, and look what I'm doing now?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was in the, I actually wrote my story, put it on the back of the bag. It was like a few paragraphs.

• 34:33Guy Raz?

  I've got it in front of me. It starts, I was a four time loser before I realized I was in the wrong game. 15 years in prison is a pretty tough way to find oneself, but I have no regrets. And then it went on to describe this bread.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Diversity.

• 34:45Guy Raz?

  And you're trying to make the world a better place, one loaf of bread at a time. That must have been incredibly powerful for people to see that on the packaging. And this is when you're still just selling at farmer's markets, right?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would sit there, I would stand there at the farmer's market, pass a loaf of bread to this doctor, this attorney, this, you know, professional person, and people I'd never would have met, you know, and I started meeting these great people, and they loved the idea, and they loved the bread.

• 35:14Guy Raz?

  Pretty, pretty soon after you launched, did you, did you put that sort of cartoon, like the caricature of you on the, on the, on the wrapper?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know how that came about was my, we, my brother, my nephew, and myself, sitting with the copyright attorney, Mike, uh, Mike Halbrunner. Um, he said, you know, this bread's great, you know, he got a good, I think the name's great. You know, what you're missing is a logo. And my brother had been suggesting that we have a picture of me on the back with my guitar, with my story. And I, I thought that was a good idea. But when I heard this guy talking about this, I said, I started sketching. And I ended up sketching, the idea I had was this guy who represents me with his guitar and Dave's bread in big block letters.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  All this is painted on the wall, on a brick wall in an alley. Now, somebody comes along with their, uh, red spray paint can and tags killer over that. And that doesn't ever show up, that, nobody ever gets that from looking at the, um, that what we ended up with. But that was the original idea.

• 36:28Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah, I see that the killer, now I see that, that's the graffiti on the, I got you, okay.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  But making that in a logo is really hard.

• 36:36Guy Raz?

  By the way, I read, and, and, and please, be honest with me, just, let's level with me. I read that you asked the-

• 36:41Speaker 01

  That's the only way I know how to be.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  I asked, I read that you asked the cartoonists to make your biceps bigger in that cartoon.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yep. I said, look, I'm paying you a hundred and fifty bucks, dude.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And he did. He did make them bigger. And then I said, bigger.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they're definitely a little exaggerated, yes.

• 37:02Guy Raz?

  And they like the idea of calling it Dave's Killer Bread?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  They, you know, it's an interesting thing. We went to a marketing firm to tell this story, this ex-con, this Killer Bread. And they're like, no, no, it's too risky and all this stuff. I can't remember the dynamics of all the situation, but I did get kicked out of the marketing meetings. And I was very, you know, not very happy about that. But eventually, I know that my brother and my nephew came around to the idea that the Killer Bread idea and the ex-con thing was going to be acceptable. You know, this marketing firm was full of crap.

• 37:40Guy Raz?

  When we come back, how Dave and his family take their Killer Bread from the farmer's market to the supermarket. And then later, why Dave was banned, physically banned, from walking into the very company he helped start. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 38:10Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So in 2005, Dave's Killer Bread is getting more popular. The loaves are selling, there's media attention, and people love the story of Dave Dahl, the ex-con who turned his life around with bread. But up to this point, he's just been selling the loaves at the farmer's market. And that's just a seasonal thing.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  As the market was coming to a close around November-ish, people were like, well, how are you gonna, how are we gonna have this bread afterwards? And he was like, no, you never ask. Tell your local stores. Tell the stores you buy it. Tell them you want the bread there. And they did. And they started. And we got into one small co-op, and we got into one vegan grocery. And then in a couple more months, we got into New Seasons, which was like the first big Big break, but it was, boy, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work doing all those demos. Oh, my God.

• 39:10Guy Raz?

  I think, so you launched this with your brother and your nephew. You've just got about 30 employees. Obviously, you're sort of a side project of Nature Bake, right?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  At that time, yes.

• 39:20Guy Raz?

  At that time. It may not have felt fast, but like when you look back on it, like within, I think, five years, you have 190 employees working for you. What was the turning point? Do you remember when it just started to just blow up?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  We were at a small, we had a 15,000 square foot facility that was making Nature Bake when I got out of prison. And within a very short time, we outgrew that. And we had to find time on the floor to, we had to share our time with Nature Bake production, and we had entirely different crews. And they were actually kind of at each other's throats, kind of like my brother and my nephew.

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And we moved out of there. I don't know how many employees. We probably had 100 employees or so. I don't think we even had 100 at the time, probably 50 when we moved out of there to Bob's Red Mill's old facility. We've known Bob forever, and we go back a long ways.

• 40:20Guy Raz?

  We know Bob, he's been on the show.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I heard the whole episode, and I enjoyed it. And Bob is great. He's a wonderful guy. In fact, my dad was Bob's first whole wheat flour wholesale customer.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you guys move into, you move into an old Bob's Red Mill facility to expand production of Dave's Killer Bread?

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the biggest challenge we had at this point, and this was like 2007, '08, I can't remember for sure. My brother needed to get, I didn't have any credit. I didn't have anything.

• 40:54Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  So, and Shoby was young and didn't really have anything established. So Glenn had to go to the bank, put up his house, and couldn't get our regular bank. One of the biggest banks in the country wouldn't take a chance on us.

• 41:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  So we had to get a local bank who was willing to, you know, take that chance at a fairly high interest rate. It cost us a million and a half to move to this new facility. And a million and a half to us then was a lot of money.

• 41:24Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And there was no cash flow to support that. It was all based on the future.

• 41:30Guy Raz?

  So he put up, he basically had to take out a second mortgage or a line of credit against his house to fuel the bit, right, to get some capital to fund the business.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and his house wasn't enough to completely collateralize that. They had to take a chance on everything. But they would have owned everything if we hadn't made it.

• 41:51Guy Raz?

  So how are you able to get any equity in the company if you had no cash? Like, how are you able to get any ownership over this?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Eventually, my brother sold it to us for our percentage of the valuation of the business at the time that we started our project.

• 42:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  And instead of owning a certain, a larger percentage of Dave's Killer Bread, I settled on a smaller percentage of the entire company.

• 42:15Guy Raz?

  Of Nature Bake.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yes, and I'm very glad I did.

• 42:21Guy Raz?

  So, and so how did you guys continue to expand, like, into, like, bigger chains, like Costco? Like, how did you do that?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Well, Costco, I would get these letters, I got this email from somebody at Costco, a buyer, saying, "Our customers are asking for your bread, and we would like you, you know, to come up and present to us." Well, we were still at the old facility with 15,000 square feet, and absolutely no way we were going to be able to handle Costco then. But the fact that we had Costco coming was a big factor in how we got that loan.

• 42:57Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Still, actually executing the idea was a whole nother matter. It took us a long time to finally reach a deal and finally have the ability to produce enough bread to meet Costco demand. And we just kept working and working and working and promoting, and we're able to secure partners in co-man, co-manufacturing.

• 43:20Guy Raz?

  Essentially, other, other facilities that would bake your recipe to your specifications? Because you couldn't possibly have done that all on your own for Costco, right? Just the scale was going to be impossible.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  No, and I'll tell you what, man, uh, when you have a culture of a product, trying to get another culture to adopt it is a whole, is a whole nother challenge.

• 43:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  To create that product and to have consistent quality was a real, was a real bear. Um, I would go and see the operation, surprise them. And, uh, I was very unpleasantly surprised myself sometimes until we were able to get it right. But people, people will cut corners when they get a chance. And so we did, worked our asses off to make sure that that didn't happen.

• 44:12Guy Raz?

  So the Costco, I mean, the Costco deal, clearly transformational because you had to scale up fast. You had to increase the number of employees and it was gonna create a huge revenue stream, a huge windfall. Um, at a certain point, about a third of your workforce, so now you're getting close to 300 people, were ex-cons. Like, was that, was that a, was it deliberate thing? Like, did you think, let's start hiring other ex-convicts to work, to work it? Because it's really hard to get a job when you've got a record, when you, when you're an ex-con.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  It was especially then. It's gotten a little better now. You know, I had a certain mentality about that that came from my own experience of having transformed my life. I was like, you know, this is something, this is a real thing. People do change and when they're ready, how great would it be to give them that opportunity? And then we get an amazing employee. So it just made sense to hire some of them. But that wasn't something we were aiming for. But, you know, once they, once, once the, the temporary services, and that's how we, we recruited our people generally.

• 45:20Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Once they found out that we were felon friendly, it was funny, that's all they sent us.

• 45:25Guy Raz?

  That's all they sent you?

• 45:27Speaker 01

  We were hiring so fast that, you know, we ended up hiring a lot more felons. And it just worked out.

• 45:35Guy Raz?

  I think around, like, what's incredible is that, I think it was like 2011, 2012, you guys are doing like 40, 50 million dollars in sales, which, which is phenomenal. And I guess, and I guess around that time, you, you get an offer from, from like a private equity company to, to buy in. And then they, I think they bought out like half the company in, in 2012.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Exactly half, yes.

• 45:59Guy Raz?

  But I think around this time, like, the, the relationship between you and your brother and your nephew was so bad that at times you guys were literally emailing each other in the same office, which from, just from an outside perspective, it just seems so sad. Like, I'm, you know, I think people would say, but guys, you're, you're so successful, like, this bread is doing so great, you're, you're hiring ex-convicts, like, are you seriously not getting along? Like, it just seems so weird. But then, of course, family dynamics are complicated.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  They are. Um, yeah, I don't even know how to explain it. I, but what we did have, and, you know, this, this wisest thing we ever did, and I think this was credit to my brother, that we got someone that could advise us. This guy was actually a family business advisor, but mainly, mainly for succession plans and things like that.

• 46:52Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Uh, but he said, you guys need a vision and a mission. You guys have it, but you don't all agree on what it is. And he was right. And once we got those established, and they were pretty simple, like, one of them, like, the vision was to make the world a better place, one loaf of bread at a time. So I was gratified that they agreed to that. And so we were able to solve some of our problems and get along and, and be in the same room that way.

• 47:25Guy Raz?

  So you, I mean, pretty quickly, and I guess by this point, 2012, you, you became famous. Like, you are this caricature on the bread. People want to know your story. You're doing media, you're speaking. How did you feel about that? Did you, did you love that attention?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I did, because it was for a good reason. I felt, I always felt like I was doing good work, you know? Like, there was a purpose. And for the first time in my life, I had this purpose. It was just unbelievable, what was happening and the love I was getting. And I really couldn't keep up with the demand for speaking. But I never had a prepared speech, you know? I was just speaking like this.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  You just go out there and tell your story, yeah? So, as you, as your profile was growing, um, do you think that it had an, I mean, it must have had an impact on your own ego, right? This is natural, like, it's normal. Like, the more attention you get, the more people hanging out, the more people telling you're amazing, the more people saying, "You're awesome, you're great, oh, Dave, this." Like, it probably did inflate your ego, right?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  And I tried, you know, the thing that helped me so much with my transformation in life, the two things were acceptance and humility.

• 48:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  And so, when this was happening, I was always telling myself, "Look, you know, I'm very fortunate, I'm blessed, I'm grateful for this." I was always trying to tell myself that. And unfortunately, you know, I took my first vacation a few years into this. Went to Mexico, and I discovered tequila. And it took me years for it to happen, to graduate to a level where I was really an alcohol, full-blown alcoholic.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  But you were drinking all, all along, like, even after you got out of prison?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, a beer or two here and there. Yeah, other people would get wasted.

• 49:13Guy Raz?

  But drugs, but not drugs? You were done with drugs?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  No. It wasn't until things got a little easier, got easier, and I had more employees doing my work, and eventually, it was easier to drink and just be a drinker, and, "Well, look, I'm successful, I'm kind of a rock star." See, there you go, there's that bad, creeping mentality right there. And so I can afford to do this and I even would call myself the Aussie of bread, you know, I'd go speak to a group of kids like a high school or whatever. And then right afterwards, I'd celebrate by drinking a half, you know, half a fifth of of tequila. And then I'd drink another half later, you know, and then eventually it was a half gallon.

• 49:56Guy Raz?

  Two thousand thirteen, I think, safe to say was a pretty rough year for you. And I want to talk about two things that happened that year. There was a moment that year where you were outside of the of a store of Dave's Killer Bread of a facility in Portland and maybe you were you were drunk or you were having a kind of a manic episode.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I hadn't drank for several weeks at that point. I'd been, I showed up that day, I had decided that day that I was going to go against the new CEO's mandate that I was not supposed to be on the property. Now, I was very resentful about this.

• 50:37Guy Raz?

  They didn't want you on the property because they felt you were disruptive at that point?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, they they just, well, one of the things that happened was before this, I had gone up to my cabin. I had this cabin on Mount Hood and I had taken some guys with me and one of the people, one of the guys I took with me I shouldn't have, was an old buddy that was that we were dope buddies way back in the day. And we're up at the cabin. Long story short, he leaves, he's he.

• 51:08Guy Raz?

  He left in your car, right?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  In my car. And I let him, you know, it wasn't like he stole it. I was I was too drunk to even use my use my head. And this guy ends up, they find him in a ditch forty some odd days later, decomposing. It's a really ugly thing. And the company, first of all, said, well, you need to get an attorney. And things started spinning out of control.

• 51:37Guy Raz?

  Well, they must have been worried because for for a number of reasons. First of all,

• 51:42Guy Raz?

  You're implicated, whether, you know, not directly but indirectly in this guy's death and you are the brand, you are Dave, you're Dave's and there

• 51:53Speaker 01

  It was horrible.

• 51:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And honestly, you know, when that guy died, I was heartbroken too, you know? And finally, on November 14, I believe it was, I had been not drinking for six to eight weeks. I can't, I don't know for sure. I was getting more and more resentful and there was, there was becoming a clash between me and the company. And here this company that I worked so hard to build a brand. So I'm feeling this loss. I'm losing my company, losing my bread, my, my baby. And one thing's leading to another. And finally, that day, I showed up at Bread Quarters, we call it.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  And I'm not quite, you know, level, you know, in my mind. I see this cardboard cut out of myself. And without actually forming the thought in my mind, what I was thinking, what I was feeling was like, this guy, this cardboard cut out of me can be here in this, in this storefront and I can't? And so I punched it. I never liked it anyway. So I punched it. And it didn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense. But at the time, I realized that's, you know, it was just resentment and anger. And the day just got worse from there.

• 53:13Guy Raz?

  Wow. Yeah. I mean, it, it got a lot worse. Like, like you ended up, I think later that night, you ended up ramming your, your SUV into two cop cars.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Guy Raz?

  And you were arrested.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I went to jail for like 36 hours. And I was seeing all this stuff about me on TV. And I wasn't, you know, I was freaky. But my attorney tells me, look dude, you have to check in to Cedar Hills Hospital, mental hospital. Because you're not quite right. So eventually, I did follow his advice. Went there and checked in and stayed there for like, two and a half weeks. And it was a good move.

• 53:59Guy Raz?

  So this is now the beginning of the next episode of your rebirth because you'd already had that rebirth in 2001 in prison that and you kind of had this amazing run of success and then you crashed really hard.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, after that two and a half weeks in the hospital where in which I was very hypomanic and just like laughing, joking, knucklehead.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I was back in my home. I hit the bottom. I hit the biggest, the most painful bottom I had ever hit. And it was after I read this story about myself in the Willamette Week called Breaking Bread, which was Breaking Bad.

• 54:42Guy Raz?

  Sure, I read it.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And I read that, I thought, well, that's funny, Breaking Bread. And it's with the Breaking Bad logo. And I go, that's, that's cool. And I was still in a good frame of mind and then, or I wouldn't say good frame of mind, but happy until I read that article and it was the worst thing I'd ever seen about myself. And it just hit me that, wow, I have, I'm, I'm a big problem. I, I'm either something really good or I'm something really bad and I'm really bad. And look what I've done. I've let down all these people, all these employees, all these investors, all these, you know, people who believed in me. And I just couldn't live with that. It just hit me so hard.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  And it took me a while to come out of that depression.

• 55:34Guy Raz?

  I mean, it really speaks to this idea that, because at this point, you had a lot, you already had some money, like you were clearly gonna become a wealthy man.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I was already a wealthy man at this point. I mean, we'd sold the first half of the business.

• 55:49Guy Raz?

  I mean, it speaks to this idea that money doesn't solve everything and oftentimes can, can exacerbate things, right? It's like, because from the outside, somebody might say, Dave, your life is set.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  How could you do that? How could you screw that up?

• 56:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right. And you're saying, but you can't understand because I can't even understand. Like you couldn't, probably couldn't even explain to yourself what was going on.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's, it's a, it's a unique and over the moon set of circumstances.

• 56:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  But money has nothing to do with happiness.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  You know, it never has. I knew that from the beginning because I was so happy without ever making any money. I am used to having money now, so I would hate to be without it. But really, things are good because I'm good, you know, in my space.

• 56:42Guy Raz?

  At that point, after you sort of hit that low, did you decide to do Alcoholics Anonymous? That you had to, that you really had to do something?

• 56:50Speaker 01

  I didn't really have a choice. I've liked Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, the 12 steps are just great, very meaningful to me. I'm kind of, I would probably go anyway at this point, but it's something I have to do.

• 57:06Guy Raz?

  Is it a struggle for you every day to avoid alcohol?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  It has been at times, but not for quite a while. One of the things that I have is an insurance policy, and I believe it helps, is Vivitrol. That's the brand name of this thing that's kind of a modern anti-abuse. You take a shot, I take a shot every month.

• 57:28Guy Raz?

  What, is it, is it a medication that, that sort of blocks, inhibits your desire to drink?

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you wouldn't, you're not supposed to enjoy, you wouldn't really enjoy yourself on it if you did it, so, you know, why, why screw around with it when it's not even going to be a good experience? And so, that's a very good deterrent.

• 57:47Guy Raz?

  So you are, right now, you know, at this point in your life, in recovery still and really working at it. The company sold, entirely sold, Dave's Killer Bread, no longer owned by the family. I think it sold for almost $300 million. And you-

• 58:06Speaker 01

  $275, yeah.

• 58:07Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 58:09Guy Raz?

  Your nephew, Shoby, went on to do other ventures, and he's involved in investing. You've got an art gallery in Portland. What's your relationship like with, with your brother Glenn and, and your nephew, Shoby, these days?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's-

• 58:27Speaker 01

  It's in limbo, I guess. I haven't, I would like to think that someday we will be more family than just like former business partners, but it's not, we just don't talk. Sometimes we have family gatherings that have nothing to do with, that are not put on by any of us and we might meet up there. But what I want to do, this is weird, I'm telling you this instead of them, but I just want something real, real to happen, you know? I don't want, I don't want to force anything and I just hope, I just hope to have at the end of this, before we all die, you know, especially my brother and myself, you know,

• 59:11Speaker 01

  that we're gonna find something, some peace, you know?

• 59:16Guy Raz?

  I mean, when you think about, when you think about your story, it's an amazing story, the ups and the downs and the, and all that you've been through, which I think a lot of people can identify with because this is not a seamless, this is not a simple story of going from one success to another success. Like you've had, you've had a lot of ups and downs and you, and you're open about it and you're honest about it. So first of all, thank you for that.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  I've realized the power of that. It's, I realized it really early on that, look, people cared about the story and if it wouldn't have been for the bread, the story probably wouldn't have mattered that much. But anyway, it feels good to talk about it.

• 59:56Guy Raz?

  How much of what happened to you, I mean, the success of the company, the good sides of what happened, do you think are because of your hard work and your intelligence and your skill? And how much of it do you think is because of luck and the luck that, you know, Shobi and Glenn were there to, you know, to sort of see in that product, a potential, something that potentially be big?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. A lot of bad luck before it was good luck. And when it comes to being a millionaire and becoming a very successful businessman, that is not something that would have happened probably without, you know, having those associations. But who knows where it would have gone to see? Because the miracle of all this was the transformation I had in prison. That was what mattered because my mind was free. I felt free. And having the contrast between the adversity that I'd had in my life and what I was going through, and I mean, just being able to create and just keep working towards something, you know? That was the miracle to me.

• 1:01:09Guy Raz?

  That's Dave Dahl, co-founder of Dave's Killer Bread. By the way, the cartoon version of Dave is still on every package of the bread. Biceps as big as ever. Dave no longer has the mustache that's on the package, but he still does play his guitar. His band's name, Dave Dahl and the Killer Granddaddies. And here they are.

• 1:01:50Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today's story starts with a recipe.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Black pepper, essential oil, umcalobo tea, sea buckthorn tea, Greek mountain tea.

• 1:02:03Guy Raz?

  This is Erica Foote. She lives in Livermore, Colorado with her husband Jason.

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  Sea salt, cloves, peppercorn, arrowroot, elderflower.

• 1:02:12Guy Raz?

  And all of these ingredients, they all go into a natural deodorant that Jason and Erica make and sell. It's called pit liquor. Emphasis on the liquor.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Vodka, whiskey.

• 1:02:23Guy Raz?

  Vodka and whiskey are in fact the key ingredients in pit liquor deodorant because like most spirits, they can actually kill the bacteria that make us smell bad.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  Beyond that, whiskey has tannins in it, which are antibacterial in and of themselves. And then it's something that's fun.

• 1:02:42Guy Raz?

  Anyway, all of this came about a few years ago when Erica was pregnant, and she was looking for a natural deodorant that would work without making her break out. And so Jason decided to see if he could make some, even though he had absolutely no experience in deodorant. Like, his day job was in IT.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  I actually spend a lot of time reading textbooks on deodorant and on armpits.

• 1:03:08Guy Raz?

  Old textbooks?

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  Yes, there are actually textbooks on armpits.

• 1:03:14Guy Raz?

  So all throughout 2016, Jason was trying to find the perfect blend to fight BO, mixing vodka and whiskey and essential oils and black tea, and then storing these concoctions in mason jars around the house. And he tested all of them out on Erica.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  He stopped showering his armpits. He stopped washing them. And he would come to me and say, "I sprayed St. John's Wort and vodka on this armpit, and I have juniper berries and this weird tea from China on this other armpit. And I want you to smell them and tell me which smells better."

• 1:03:48Guy Raz?

  And can I just say here that on this show, we've talked to a lot of founders who are also married couples. But this, this is like a whole new level of collaboration.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  If you've ever stuck your nose in an armpit, you don't have good expectations. And I finally got sick of smelling and said, "Look, I think you have a winner. Please stop. I'm done. I'm tired."

• 1:04:09Guy Raz?

  And it turns out Jason really did have a winner, a mix of tea and vodka and whiskey and essential oils that worked really well for him and Erica. But what about everybody else?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  So we reached out to our friends on Facebook and said, "Hey, anyone want to try a natural deodorant that we formulated?"

• 1:04:27Guy Raz?

  And their friends signed up. They tried it. They liked it. Words started to spread, and Erica and Jason kicked it into high gear. They raised a little bit of money, and they started to ramp up production of the deodorant. But then, customers began to complain about something the couple had never Not anticipated.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  They were really angry with these white spray caps that we had. Like, people were telling us that when they sprayed the cap, the alcohol was just spewing up around their finger in like a fountain. It looked like Old Faithful.

• 1:04:59Guy Raz?

  So Erica and Jason tried different caps, but they kept clogging or breaking.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  It basically leads us to a place where we're sending out free caps and free bottles of deodorant, new bottles. And we just, we basically just hemorrhaged money.

• 1:05:12Guy Raz?

  After a frantic search, Erica and Jason eventually found a cap that was sturdy enough to deliver the deodorant. But the bottle cap crisis almost sank the company.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  It seems like it's almost like falling down Alice's rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland because it's just so incredibly deep. And there's so much to do.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  It's scary. It's terrifying. But the bottom line is it's a blast.

• 1:05:35Guy Raz?

  Pit Liquor is now averaging about $20,000 a month in sales. And the company hopes to be profitable by this summer. And by the way, some of the folks on our team have actually sampled the deodorant. And they say it works and smells pretty great, kind of like a very clean neighborhood bar. But to be clear, it is not drinkable.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  So don't drink it. For the same reason, nobody drinks their hand sanitizer. Nobody should drink, nobody should drink their deodorant.

• 1:06:03Guy Raz?

  That's Jason Foote and his wife Erica. They're the co-founders of Pit Liquor Deodorant. If you want to find out more about the company or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. Our show was produced this week by James Delahoussaye with original music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our editor is Neva Grant. Thanks also to Julia Carney, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is David Jopp.

• 1:06:48Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.