Hello Interneters and Social Medialites! My name’s Casey and I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m one of the owners of Luckee Dutch Bakery, a family run shop located in Newberg, OR. We make all of our food from fresh produce, never from cans, jugs, or tubs, which is common at a lot of larger bakeries. With the exception of one or two items, everything we make started out as close to its natural, straight-from-the-harvest state as possible. This affords us the opportunity to make many different things; and to do them in ways other places simply can’t. I’m proud of that and hope to partner with more local providers in the future for fresher, better crafted products. That’s my job, to develop our recipes. When people are referred to us I feel a sense of accomplishment. Yay!

However, it’s also my job to develop our online presence. That’s something I’ve not been too good at, I’ll admit.  I bet you’ve never even heard of us, eh? Well, it’s time that changed. We’ve had many people tell us how good our products are. We offer deli items, as well as baked items, wheat-free items for people with gluten sensitivities, and we do cakes, breads, cookies, pies, and so much more. We just had someone come into our shop earlier this very day and tell us that she’s been ‘spreading the word’ about us. And that’s awesome! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! We’ve relied on word-of-mouth advertising for a long time now, and it’s been good. Or, at least, we’re constantly told people are saying good things about us. Fingers crossed that continues.

Either way, it’s time to get the word out about us. This is the new year, and for better or worse 2016 will be a year where we put ourselves out there and see what comes from it. I have to laugh a little because when we started I desperately wanted to showcase the company, not any one personality behind the company. I wanted us to stand on the merit of our food and the quality of the service we provided, rather than being a place defined by a single person – succeeding or failing based off of whether or not they’re considered ‘likable’ or ‘charismatic’. We are reaching the end of our fifth year of business, all of it in the same location. We aren’t seeing the customers that we want and need for our continued survival, let alone overall success. So that old method obviously wasn’t working and it’s time to change; to update according to the needs of our location, our budget, the times in which we live.

I am making a promise for this year. I don’t want this to be an easily breakable resolution, but rather a promise that carries with it the weight of guilt should it ever be broken. That promise is I will be more engaged on our social media accounts. I will post on this blog more often for as long as we have this blog to post on to. The difficulties of posting a blog about an industry where success is measured in not changing but producing consistently day in and day out should present quite a challenge. Am I ready for it? I haven’t been in the past, but I’ll have to be now. Plain and simple. I will have fun with my online posts, meaning you will get a sense of my humor. Good luck to you, I say. Good luck indeed!

I have turned to a group of very skilled and talented people to help me achieve these goals. I have always been against companies tweeting insensitive topics or using trending hashtags that don’t have anything to do with what they do. So I will tread away from that. But I will venture into territory, occasionally, that will not always be about us. Mistakes are bound to be found (like a dog in a pound, lapping water from his round dish, stuck on his leash, scratching at his fleas, yo dirty dog please!)… Woops, where am I? I just got lost when my mind rambled through a talentless rap. Here we go…, I will make mistakes along the way. That’s where I was going with that. I will learn and improve and forget and take steps backwards and forwards along the way. I will lose you with my randomness – that always seems to happen. I will make you question how serious I am at my job sometimes. Some days it’ll be clear I didn’t have my best, and other days you’ll wish I wrote less (today being an excellent example.) This is like a relationship and we’re just past meeting, we’ve been on a few dates, and now it’s time to see the goofy, dorky, imperfect rest. Hopefully you’ll like what you discover. And what you discover should be a quirky little family run company that makes damn good top tier gourmet food!