Today we’d like to introduce you to Jillian Smith.
Hi Jillian, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Back 4 years ago I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Our daughters and my mother also all have digestive issues, along with my husband who has diabetes. He started doing some research on what would be a healthier alternative for us than regular baked goods. He found that sourdough was supposed to be a better option. That being said he decided to start a sourdough starter. His first attempt was a bust. He is a determined man and tried again and this time it took. He was so excited he started baking everything from bread, to cookies and even pasta. It was way too much for the two of us as our children are moved on their own. So I decided to put his baked goods on Facebook. I worked at our local hospital for 23 years, and many of my colleagues decided to try his goodies. They loved them! We had a little shed that we put by our porch and called it the “Bread Shed” where he would put his baked goods in and people would come purchase them and leave their money in a locked drop box. In Michigan we were able to bake out of our home under the Cottage Food Law. We heard about local farmers markets. So of course we decided to give it a go. Absolutely everything we made was with our homemade sourdough starter and people gravitated towards us and loved the idea of a healthier version of bread and the such. We never realized how many people suffer with digestive issues until we made our baked goods available to the general public. We decided to go the next step further and do vendor artisan markets. Like the farm markets people really welcomed us with open arms and our products intrigued them. We started selling faster than we could keep up with. We loved the shows so much we started doing farm markets on week days and shows on weekends. At this time I was still working full time outside the home. So I would work during the day and come home and help my hubby bake all night. As exhausted as we were we absolutely fell in love with the whole process. We would use what money we made to pay for our materials and fees for the next week. We decided to try big shows like Shipshewana on the road, which took us out of state on occasion. In speaking with many vendors who made their living at shows, they had not seen anyone bring the amount of sourdough products as we did. So we sat down and decided that either we were going to continue to stay in the market/show field or we would risk it all and look for a brick and mortar. There was one little building locally that was a pizzeria and diner in the past. It had been vacated for multiple years but the pizza ovens and large commercial items like mixers and such had been left. We tried to reach out to see if it was still for sale as there was no movement there at all. The owner got back in touch with us and was still interested in selling, but we knew we didn’t have the means to purchase the building outright. We sat and got absolutely everything in order and approached the owner to see if he would be interested in a lease for one year. All I wanted was one year to prove we were the real deal. We just needed someone to help us move to the next step. We didn’t hear back for a while, and we were going stir crazy waiting to hear back. We finally got the call we were waiting for. He was willing to do a 1 year lease. We were ecstatic! We realized that we now had a HUGE situation to get through. This building need a LOT of work to get the space back up to code. So what we decided to do is bake at home and bring it all into the front of the building to sell enough to fund the upgrades. It took several months and tons of labor hours, luckily my husband used to be a carpenter. Between my father, a very good friend of our family “Woody” Don Woodcock who has since passed away, and my husband they worked day and night to get the building where it needed to be to get our food license inspection. That day came and we NAILED IT!!! We passed with flying colors! That very next day we had to open as a fully licensed bakery. That would leave my husband to bake and run the front of the store. It was inevitable that, that was not going to be an option. So at that very moment I knew I had to take the plunge and leave my job of 23 years to follow our dreams. It was ALL or nothing at this point. There was a part of the store that we were going to turn into vendor spaces. I wanted our new artisan friends to have the opportunity to display and sell their talents. So we turned the whole front of the bakery into a artisan market. So not only were we chasing our dreams but we had the opportunity to create something new for our friends as well. This was a new and very different business style in our area. People had to come check out our new space! Our existing customers were super supportive and since a good amount of the public seen how much we were putting into it, they were determined to support us as well. All of a sudden we were really Something!!! The newspaper reached out and wrote an amazing article about us. The tv station in Lansing reached out and asked us to be on their live show. Of course we happily accepted. We started getting customers at this point from all over! One thing we never lost sight of was we knew we were going to give back. We donated to our local homeless shelter, schools, programs and much more. Even though we were barely making ends meet as a new business, we knew that we had to make a difference. About 6 months later we received a call from our local Chamber of Commerce and were one of the acknowledged “New businesses of 2025”. We were featured in many outlets. All along we maintained running the business with just the help of a select few family and friends. Our business moto was so important to us that we decided to make sure any face that was behind the counter gave the kind of service we would be proud of. Moving forward to the present. We have been voted “Small business of the year for 2026” for our county that was voted in by our community. Here we are now with a Sourdough and Tallow based Alchemy line, we ferment our own probiotic fruit Kefir water, our own handmade chocolates, salsa and much more! We are currently in the process of buying the building and in 5.5 years we will be officially owners of our own sourdough business. That is what created us, Sourdough Bakers LLC, and Wild Culture Alchemy by Sourdough Bakers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Lots of struggles, I mentioned the whole story in the previous question.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
That we offer a good quality and healthy product for all who are interested in gut health. Not to many do what we do to the mass that we do. We have a full sourdough take out pizzeria to top it off!
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
That our customers know how much we appreciate and value the love and support they have shown us along the way. We would not be here without them. And hard work pays off. Never give up on your dreams. If you don’t put in that 110% to get there someone else will. Never say, “I wish I would have”, rather say, “I gave it my all and I made it”!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sourdoughbakers.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1E4Y3tGb4p/?mibextid=wwXIfr
