Starting a manufacturing operation at home didn't require much remodeling of the basement rec room. The family turned its various games into work surfaces. Jeffrey Hopmayer unscrewed the foosball players' heads and put 3/4-inch plywood on both the game board and the pool table for rolling out the dough. He slapped another sheet of plywood on the pinball machine to make a desk. "At lunch break we'd lift off the plywood and play," he says. The Hopmayers bought a commercial freezer, which they had to take apart in order to squeeze it through the basement door. They washed the pans in the laundry-room sink.
The dough was mixed in a few household-size Kitchen Aid mixers. "We were measuring out the flour on diet scales upstairs in the kitchen," Jeffrey Hopmayer says. "The scales were so small we had to do one-third of a batch at a time and mix it all together at the end." The small industrial oven they'd set up in the basement could hold only four sheet pans at once, with 18 to 24 scones per pan, and it and the freezer required a little extra wiring. "The stuff we bought was wired for a 220 outlet," Hopmayer says. "The only 220 outlet was the one for the dryer." Forty feet of two-inch-thick black cord running across the floor to the fuse box solved the problem. "When we wheeled the ingredient carts around, we had to lift them over the cords."
Hopmayer hired half a dozen neighborhood kids, who rode their bikes to work each day, to help with the baking. "We were all down there making scones. They tracked their own time, and we paid them with personal checks." To break the monotony of pressing the round cutters into sheets of frozen dough, the bakers indulged in flour fights. The basement had no vents, so on hot days, with the oven cranking away, the kids would take a pool break.
Hopmayer picked up the raw ingredients in his Datsun 200SX. "One day the rear axle fell off when I was going over a railroad track," he says. "The guys at the flour place had told me the car wouldn't hold 1,500 pounds of flour, but I'd said, 'No, fill it up.' "
When semis carrying supplies started blocking the street in suburban Wilmette, the neighbors took notice. "Eighteen-wheelers didn't come down the street there unless somebody was moving," says Hopmayer. "And we were blocking the street for three to four hours, unloading pallets."
The neighbors complained about the trucks, and soon the health board paid a few visits. "The zoning laws said we could run a business out of the house," Hopmayer says. "But we couldn't employ more than the number of people who lived in the house." When the officials knocked on the front door, Hopmayer would shoo his workforce out the back to play basketball. "The guy would say, 'You can't have a business here,' and I'd say, 'It's OK, I'm the only one here." The board would write a few citations, reprimanding Hopmayer for having, say, wooden walls. Then Hopmayer would run out and buy some Formica to nail up, and be back in business. The board eventually wised up to the basketball ploy, however, and told him to start looking for a commercial spot.
By that time Hopmayer had pretty much decided that his location was a liability. Sure, his only big expenses were ingredients and gas for deliveries. But he was too far away from downtown clients such as Neiman Marcus, which had a standing order for three dozen scones a day. "Making 36 pieces and driving 45 minutes to deliver them downtown was silly, and we did it every day.
"To make the business less of a hobby, we needed larger equipment and a larger customer base," he continues. "And eventually we would've been kicked out by the health department." Hopmayer also wanted a separate location to make the company more professional. "Lots of people have home offices, but a manufacturing company is different. It's hard to have it in the basement and feel like it's a real business."
The company relocated to a failed brownie shop in downtown Chicago. Shortly afterward, a representative from a fledgling coffee chain called Starbucks tasted one of the scones and signed Original American Scones as one of its suppliers from Chicago. Similar strategic partnerships with Marriott, Sara Lee, and Quaker Oats shot the company from the hobby stage to the real-business stage. The venerable basement oven still holds court in the bakery, and is now used to test recipes. The same health inspector now helps Hopmayer scout out new bakery locations. And Hopmayer himself remains in the kitchen, where he's currently developing low-fat products. "I still like to be in the dough." -- Phaedra Hise
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3. How Much Planning Is Enough?
Sometimes business ideas arrive like a bolt from the blue. An entrepreneur-to-be may be walking down the street one day, bored with his gray-flannel life, humming, "Is That All There Is?" when he trips over a cat, and inspiration strikes. "Cats should be on leashes," he thinks, "and I am the man to make it happen!" Six years and 6 million leashes later, he hits the Inc. 500. Others pursue entrepreneurship more matter-of-factly. They research markets, analyze trends, and after much deliberation settle on the best bet.
