The Coolest Small Company in America

Why are high-powered M.B.A.'s getting off the fast track to work for a $13-million food company in Ann Arbor?

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It's 4:20 on a Wednesday afternoon, and Ari Weinzweig is talking to a group of new employees about the 4 Steps to Selling Great Food. "Anybody know what the first one is?" he asks, holding up a plump, brown, and fragrant loaf of bread from Zingerman's Bakehouse.

" 'Know it,' " says a young woman with curly blond hair.

"That's right," says Weinzweig. "Great." And he proceeds to lead the group on a sensory excursion into the properties of slow-rising artisanal bread.

The CEO of Zingerman's Community of Businesses (ZCoB), Weinzweig looks like a Jewish hippie version of Ichabod Crane -- tall and gangly, with olive skin, curly black hair, and a fringe of a beard. He wears a ring in one ear and a stud in the other and dresses in black jeans, sandals, white socks, and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The Chicago native studied Russian history at the University of Michigan and describes himself as a lapsed anarchist.

In 1982, Weinzweig founded Zingerman's Delicatessen with Paul Saginaw, who is still his partner. Over the next 10 years, the deli became world famous -- and then hit a wall. Faced with the choice of changing the company or letting it stagnate, the partners came up with an ingenious strategy that has allowed them to retain the best aspects of small-business life while enjoying the benefits and challenges of growth. The result is ZCoB, consisting of seven small businesses in and around Ann Arbor, Mich., with two more in the active-planning stage. Together the businesses do a profitable $13 million a year in sales.

One of the businesses is Zingerman's Training Inc., or ZingTrain. Right now it's playing host to the orientation of the new employees, but ZingTrain also offers training and consulting for non-ZCoB companies, which send their people to learn the Zingerman's way of doing business. Earlier in the week bank managers, bakery owners, and restaurateurs from around the Midwest were in Ann Arbor for the "Managing with Zing" seminar. Other sessions have attracted a wide range of organizations -- grocery-store chains, hospitals, garden shops, not-for-profit groups, chocolatiers, custom manufacturers, even a mortuary -- from across the country.

It was at one such seminar that Todd Wickstrom first experienced Zingerman's. At the time, Wickstrom owned two franchised bakeries in Chicago that he wanted to improve, and he thought the session might give him new ideas. It did. On his return to Chicago, he sent Weinzweig an E-mail message: "The seminar made me realize you can live your ideals in the food business. The bad news is, I can't do it here." Weinzweig invited him to become a managing partner of the deli, and Wickstrom jumped at the opportunity. He sold his bakeries and moved his family to Ann Arbor. "I would have come in as a dishwasher to be in this environment," he says.

The environment is, indeed, ZCoB's most striking feature, combining a strong sense of community, a deep belief in people, a fascination with management and business, and a passion for great food and great service. It's an entrepreneurial environment in which good ideas become real businesses, and employees with good ideas have an opportunity to become owners. More to the point, it's an environment that many can't resist. "Working here has never felt like a job to me," says Wickstrom. "I'm constantly learning about managing, about food, and about myself."

Wickstrom isn't the only former entrepreneur to be seduced by ZCoB. "It was just a great opportunity. Everything was right about it," says Dave Carson, who built and sold two successful technology companies before becoming cofounder and managing partner of Zingerman's Creamery.

Other, equally accomplished recruits fled successful careers in corporate America for jobs at Zingerman's that pay, at most, in the high five figures. Maggie Bayless, a ZingTrain managing partner, holds an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan and did stints at General Motors and Soho Natural Soda. Stas' Kazmierski, ZingTrain's other managing partner, was a high-powered consultant with clients such as Boeing, Marriott, and Prudential Insurance. Amy Emberling majored in social theory at Harvard, studied cooking at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University, and now makes bread and pastries at Zingerman's Bakehouse. And Ron Maurer held high-level positions at such companies as Lexis-Nexis and Living.com before signing on as ZCoB's vice-president of administration and chief financial officer at half the salary he could get elsewhere. "I figured if Zingerman's was even close to its billing, I'd be happy here," he says. "In fact, it's better than its billing."

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