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I Want Your Job: Eden Hertzog, Baker Babe
I Want Your Job finds Torontonians who make a living doing exactly what they love to do, in any field, and for any salary, and asks them how they did it.
Name: Eden Hertzog
Job: Owner and operator, New Moon Kitchen
Eden Hertzog is not a hippie. Yes, she wears Birkenstocks and flowing tops with patterns on them. Yes, she runs an all-organic vegan bakery. Yes, she plays acoustic guitar and sings about leaves and the wind. And yes, her name is Eden. But beneath the golden-haired, drowsy-eyed exterior lies a entrepreneur of a distinctly rare order: she’s generous with her staff—benefits include four-day workweeks and in-house yoga classes and shiatsu treatments—; she’s conscious of her customers’ well-being—her cookies are made with organic ingredients and free of cholesterol, trans-fats, and preservatives (“but still good,” she laughs)—; and she’s been happy to grow her business slowly—aside from a ten-thousand-dollar start-up loan from one of Hertzog’s high-school teachers, New Moon Kitchen, now in its twelfth year, has never borrowed money.
In 1997, Hertzog, then just out of high school, was hired by the owner of a downtown café to bake treats and desserts. A young vegan given free reign by the owner, Hertzog began experimenting with alternative recipes, attempting to achieve that holy grail of modern gastronomy: healthy sweets that still taste good. It only took her a few months to begin drawing raves from a hungry clientele, and she soon began selling her creations on the side, baking for the café everyday from 6 p.m. through midnight, and then for her own clients until 5 a.m. the next day. Back then, her dad was her delivery boy, hauling boxes of cookies and cakes around Toronto in the back of his car.
Within a year, Hertzog had partnered with her childhood best friend and relocated to a small, residential apartment, installing a gas-powered convection oven in the living room, unbeknownst to her landlord. “Everything was so crazy then,” she says, clearly relishing the memory.
By 2000, she and her partner had raised enough money to rent a room in an old industrial complex in the East Junction. Her partner left for school in 2003, and Hertzog has been slowly growing the business on her own ever since. Today, at thirty-three, she employs a full-time staff of six and is making time to start a family; she and her husband, musician Brian MacMillan, are expecting their first child in October. The days of hand mixing, dough scooping, and package stuffing are over for her now—unless one of her employees is sick, in which case Hertzog fills in for them, even if it means washing the equipment. (“I’m an entrepreneur, but I’m not sailing yachts with, like, Beyonce.”)
Living proof that building a business empire and maintaining personal integrity are not mutually exclusive, Hertzog believes that treating her staff well and operating with a social conscience keep her business growing and her soul unburdened. And, after all, she didn’t name herself—blame that one on her parents, the hippies.
Torontoist: How did you learn to bake?
Eden Hertzog: When I was a kid I had the Easy Bake going and my Mom [a.k.a. Annex-based coffee roaster, community activist, and professional conversationalist Java Mama] ran a bed and breakfast. So I remember many times sitting on the counter and stirring muffin batters, and she was always baking. So, not anything formal, but just for the love of baking. So I used some of that knowledge when I started creating recipes that were alternative, but based on traditional stuff.
Did you always think you’d be a baker?
I never thought I’d be a baker. I wanted be a writer, and I remember wanting to be a lawyer, and an interior designer, but mostly I wanted to be a star. (Laughs.) I wanted to be Olivia Newton John. I just wanted to be famous and to sing.
And now you have a cookie empire; your cookies available all over Canada.
Well, all over Toronto, and we ship to BC, Alberta, and Quebec. And we just started doing some stuff with in Colorado with Whole Foods. But long term, I’d like to be all over North America. I’d like to be the number-one cookie for people with alternative lifestyles, like the number-one heath cookie.
Are your cookies actually healthy?
I would say they’re—I mean, it’s not like eating a salad. (Laughs.) But, I’d say they’re healthier, definitely, than other cookies that are made with butter and white sugar. I think they are a healthy alternative if you’re looking for something sweet.
So is the Whole Foods in Colorado a test?
It’s our first region for them. It’s like our experiment region.
How has it been going?
There were some glitches. From the get go. Like our cookie machine broke down, we hand-scooped our order, which was, like, fifty thousand cookies. There was a learning curve. And we had never produced that amount of volume, and there was a glitch in their system and the cookies got put in the freezer by accident. The whole thing was like training for how not to do it next time.
But you’re still there?
We’re still there, yeah. And working hard at staying.
Do you still love doing this?
Which part?
Baking, the business—
I love all of it. Today I was just sitting here, and I’m doing operations manuals right now, and I love it. I love it because I love improving things. Business is awesome because everyday you can improve on something. And I have a great team. And I love hearing from fans and people who love the cookies. It’s been a great thing to build, and it’s fun.
Are you still vegan?
No. Not at all. I’m very healthy, but what happened was I was vegetarian for seven years, and that’s when I started the business and getting all of the recipes, and then I started doing Tae Kwan Do, and my body just started screaming for meat. I was always tired being vegetarian. But I don’t promote the company anymore as a vegan company. It happens to be one of the features of the product, but I don’t want vegans banging down my door and freaking out.
Those crazy vegans.
(Laughs.) No crazy vegans.
Photos by Miles Storey/Torontoist.