re: Bellegarde Bakery is Closing edit: NVM

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Dear Friends, I used to be comfortable saying that I’ve seen it all. But Covid has usurped this notion, killed it really. The past six months (it’s incredible to know that it’s been more than six months since Covid began) have been unbearably revealing, brutal, and generous. Revealing because our fragility—cultural, social, economic—has been exposed. Brutal because the method of delivering this information was deadly. And generous because Covid has given many of us the blessing to reassess how and why we live. I never thought I’d be in the position of having to fight for what I’ve earned: I, along with some great people, have been building Bellegarde for eleven years. The grout to build the bakery literally came from a mixture of blood, sweat, and tears. And flour. But all it took to evaporate it was a virus. Nearly. I don’t need to tell you about New Orleans and resilience. I do need to tell you, as a taxpayer and businessperson, that I am disgusted with the lack of leadership and accountability on a local, state, and federal level. I feel like we business owners are scapegoated into being responsible for everything, including roles the government exists to perform. And I don't know of a harder place to do business than in New Orleans: I know I speak for a lot of business owners who believe, through experience, that the City often acts like they don't want us to operate. I hope, with Covid as the evidence, this changes in the future. I’m also upset with how some people are treating other people in our community. What we need now is integration; what we need now is empathy; what we need now is the compassion that is only earned with the wisdom of mercy and pain. We don’t need cancel culture, we don’t need violence, and we don’t need our Instagram feeds to be a testament to the health of our souls--none of these are the currency of New Orleans. Putting energy into growth and construction is ten times harder than demolition and censoring. Anyone who has ever built something, anyone who has ever earned their pride, would never choose destruction of themselves or anyone else. They know too well the value of self-respect, the value of time, the value of building. These are ingredients of resilience, along with respect for your circumstances, wherever they find you. That doesn’t mean agreement with them. It just means acknowledging that you're stronger than them. And it means, to me, that anger and destruction can be an ingredient. But they can never, never be a recipe. Again, I hope that with Covid as our evidence, we can live in a city accountable to mutuality, respect, and consensual ethics. Not to the pressure and extortion of digital shaming and selective righteousness. Remember! Hurt people hurt. I say all this because I know how easy it is to give up. I thought about it everyday since this began. I have lost so much and for so long all I thought about was how easy it would be to walk away, to fold the hand, to concede to power and money, to surrender to the pressure of opaque circumstances which changed everyday. (Part of me is very lucky to even have this privilege.) frick it I thought--it took me eleven years to do this but what's the point of keeping it standing? But the lessons of resilience, taught to me by those I love and care about, taught to me by the real culture bearers of New Orleans, were always heavier than the walking away. It’s so much harder to stay put than it is to leave, I don’t know anyone who can admit otherwise. Need proof? Imagine if New Orleanians, even those who could not return due to structural failures and discrimation, did not resurrect this City after Katrina. Covid is almost a sandbox compared to the playground of devestation that was Katrina. But bear witness to the resilience there...the weight of that lesson kept me awake this Summer. And helped me push on. In my case the greatest teacher of my life, bread, also taught me the lesson of resilience. Bread baking is defined by discipline and ritual. You can’t fake either and you can’t be born with both. Great bread is not about alchemy. It’s not about equipment. It’s not about social media or magical yeast. It’s not about your grandmother’s pancake recipe. It’s about work. And it’s about committing yourself to that work—to the truth of it—without qualifiers or adjectives: it’s not good, bad, hard, fun, dirty, dusty, poetic. It’s work, which is simply allowing your deeds to speak louder than everything else you do. Thankfully, if you’re a good baker, those deeds are delicious and healthy. And if you're a great baker, you spend more time next to an oven than next to an iPhone. It would be easy, but I would be a fool, to hope for things to go back to what they used to be. I’d be deluding myself with a false reality, with something not meant to be. Instead, though it’s harder and heavier and scarier, I now choose to move on, to open back up, to go forward. Not always straight, not always sober, not always upright; but always forward. And I appreciate to the marrow of my bones all of the stops you, our customers, have made with us along the way. You have been our lighthouses while we did what we could to navigate the shoals and sharp reefs of Covid. None of this would have any meaning, none of us would be so grateful, if it weren't for knowing that our bread brings joy to people. It's an unbelievable task and privilige, to do something so big with things so little: flour, water, salt. The humility of this gift is immensly powerful, and know that we feel it each day. And we are so thankful for the opportunity to be in this kind of service industry: serving joy, flavor, and health. So with this all said comes a new retail-facing Bellegarde. With this reopening we want to focus less on our massive wholesale accounts and more on you, the customer walking into our shop. A few bits of our new menu are below and we will continue to figure out what works and what tastes delicious. We want to do a better job seeing more of you everyday and providing you with more and various breads and pastries at our very own retail shop. The success of this depends on you, kinda, on us, a lot. So please, please do everything you can to let your friends and neighbors know who, what, and where we are. We want to see flour footprints tattooed on the sidewalk in front of 8300 Apple Street for many days ahead. Laslty, when you see our wonderful staff--Stefphan Gambill, Alex Valore, Matthew Seltzer, Morgan Angelle, and Mollie Sciacca--make sure you thank them for giving Bellegarde some much needed CPR. They have been paramedics, going above and beyond. Thank you all so much -Graison Gill 2 October 2020

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