Meet Ashley Thomas Morgan Perkins | Co-owners, bakers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ashley Thomas Morgan Perkins and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashley Thomas, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
We founded Galette in 2017 and it has changed quite a bit since its inception. To understand how Galette has evolved, it’s important to know a little backstory. We first met while working at Sur La Table in Atlanta. Ashley was the resident chef of the culinary program and initially hired Morgan as an assistant, only to quickly promote her to a teaching chef. Over the course of our time teaching cooking classes, we noticed a gap in the market. We fielded a lot of inquiries asking if we ever taught cooking classes in homes, but that wasn’t an option at Sur La Table. When we were both thinking of moving on, we met for dinner and over the course of that meal, the idea for Galette was born. We wanted to provide in-home culinary experiences- personalized cooking classes in the comfort of your home or catered dinner parties based around our class menus. Our goal was to help our students build confidence and find joy in the comfort of their home kitchens.

Initially we had a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach. We taught cooking classes at corporate retreats and a local cooking school, taught one-on-one macaron intensives, and catered family dinners. We had great testimonials and really enjoyed the flexibility of writing our own recipes and classes, but consistent booking was difficult. We often found that there was a lot of interest, but it wasn’t as affordable as booking a cooking class in a hosted space. Our baking classes were always our most popular, so when we were looking for additional ways to grow Galette, we settled on a small batch bakery.

We rented space in a shared kitchen and started producing our French-inspired baked goods for farmers markets and a local coffee shop. We started looking for a brick and mortar space where we could have a bakery and teach classes, but just as we were ready to sign a lease March 2020 hit. The pandemic forced us to stop and reevaluate. Galette went dark for most of 2020 since we didn’t feel comfortable in a shared space and Ashley essentially became a SAHM. We wanted to find a way we felt comfortable returning to Galette. Due to the pandemic, we decided to keep the cooking classes on the back burner and apply for a cottage license so we could move forward with our retail pastry business. Baking out of a home allowed us control over our pandemic safety, a solution to being home with a toddler, and the ability to expand our offerings. When we worked in a shared kitchen, we were unable to explore breads and yeasted pastries due to the time constraints. Working out of the home has allowed us to expand our offerings to include a variety of croissants and other yeasted items and, since we returned to farmers markets in January 2021, and have been steadily growing our small batch pastry.

In starting our business we’ve always wanted to provide a quality product that makes people happy. That has been our guiding principle whether we were teaching a student how to roast a chicken or baking caramelized onion and mushroom galettes for markets. We’re both people who enjoy structure and are not naturally the most risk oriented, so it’s been an adventure trying to build a business during the last few years. Not to sound trite, but we try to approach our business like we approach writing a recipe. There is always the basic structure or a base idea founded in research or years of experience, but there’s always room for creative interpretation.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
When trying to name our business, a lot of words and phrases were thrown around. There was the brief joke of calling our company “Mise En Your Place” but that came out of a bout of slap-happy recipe testing. We kept coming back to Galette. Not only is it a pastry we produce and love, it also pays homage to our love of French pastry. The word itself has a French feminine ending, and as a women-owned business it felt right.

Galette has transformed since inception, but we currently focus on baking high-quality, French inspired pastries. We invest in the best ingredients we can and buy local whenever possible. We take the time to develop our recipes and tweak them until they’re just right. Being a two-person business can have its challenges. We are limited to what we can feasibly produce and it can be a struggle to manage the production and baking if one of us has a prior commitment or family emergency. Even so, we think having two owners makes our business stronger. We both have slightly different palates and different strengths. Morgan is the master of our doughs and a proponent of rustic pastry beauty. Ashley likes to focus on the cream components and brings her experience with classic French patisserie and restaurant-style plated desserts. Whenever we are developing a new recipe, we always make sure that both of us like the item before adding it to the menu. We push each other to be better. When our skill sets combine, we make tasty pastries that appeal to a wide variety of palates.

One thing that we are currently working through is the scaling of our business. How do we move from a 2 person cottage bakery into a dedicated bakery space with employees? How do we maintain the same consistency in our product that our customers have come to know and love when it’s not just us doing the production? Some of these questions come down to research and general business experience. We are thankful to have access to classes with UGA’s Small Business Development Center at GSU, and relationships with other small businesses that are willing to discuss the intricacies of hiring and build-outs. Other answers come down to building a sustainable business that prioritizes its employees. Having backgrounds in law and high-end restaurants, we both have been exposed to environments rife with burnout, so how to be an ethical employer is something we think about a lot. Being a two person business already primes us to make collective decisions and to think beyond ourselves.

When it comes down to it, community is a driving force for Galette, Yes, we want to make delicious pastries; that’s a given. But we also want to be responsible employers and good market citizens who cheerlead other small bakeries/businesses in our community. We are the bakery that has a personal connection to our customers. While we operate out of Atlanta and not a small town, we remember names and orders and hope to turn everyone who stops by our booth into a regular customer. We always want to engage with our customers and educate when we can. Ultimately we hope that we get to share a little of what brings us joy with others.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
As food professionals, so many of our recommendations revolve around food. We would definitely visit the following:

Academy Coffee/Kinship Butcher & Sundry for the best coffee in Atlanta (in our opinion) and a delicious breakfast sandwich https://www.kinship-atl.com/
3 Parks Wine has the best selection of interesting small producer wines. We’d pick up a bottle after stopping for an afternoon tasting. https://3parkswine.com/
Banshee EAV- Dinner here is always consistently great and fun.

Home

We’d also recommend visiting one of the Community Farmers Markets or Avondale Estates Farmers Market (depending on the day), picking up provisions for dinner and cooking a wonderful meal back at our homes. If someone didn’t have access to a home kitchen, plenty of prepared foods can be procured for a lovely picnic.

Kindred Studio is home of the best facial ever! It is also so welcoming and woman owned and operated. https://www.kindredstudioatl.com/

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The Cooks Warehouse

When we first started out teaching our own classes, Cooks Warehouse embraced us and gave us a wonderful platform for growing our business.

Academy Coffee

Our friends at Academy were the first to carry our pastries and have been so helpful in navigating the small business route and assisting with design related matters.

Website: www.galetteatl.com

Instagram: @galetteatl