Proof that employee ownership works is embedded in this LA bakery

my name is nyang ma i'm the selling owner of proof bakery i think i would say in 2010 we started with like about five or six people and now we're around 24 25 and we've been here 10 years i think when i was sort of burdened by running a small business by myself especially during kind of like hard years i think that's kind of when i started to revisit again the idea of working cooperatives and just you know having that shared sense of responsibility i think it's also important after employees have helped build the business and have kept it going that they now have a chance to kind of reap the benefits of it i work as a server in front of house and also as an assistant trainer so before we became a worker-owned cooperative my biggest fear was that our customers would start looking for our quality to change but that's not been the experience at all people continue every day oh wow you're a cooperative now that's so cool when did that happen what was it like tell me more there's a lot of so much excitement and what a relief it was you go to any given city and then there's another chain version of it in this city and you sort of lose the magic of like what is in that particular community and i think it's important that you know there's companies like proof that can kind of stick to their guns and um just say well no our planning our flag down here in atwater and that's that's it our consciousness has broadened of all the things that we're taking into account when we go about our daily business so it's not just a thing that you clock in and walk out of anymore it's um we're all coming together to create something that's bigger than any one of us that's what i love about this being in a worker-owned cooperative is that it's not just about what i want and i think it's far more unique to have the experience to co-create with other people and so i want to have that opportunity to explore ideas of opening additional locations of expanding production venues of being able to really see what we can do together project equity is just very professional in their approach to the whole transition process frankly all of us would have given up if we didn't have someone or some guidance through the whole thing and with the connections that we needed you know so i would love to see proof become a space where restaurant workers can build savings or have a retirement account personally i wouldn't stay at a job if i didn't like the people or if i didn't like the way the structure was so i've been here for about four years so i guess i kind of said something about proof it's it seems that we seem to attract the right kind of people the respectful hard-working and people who just want to strive to be better so i think that's something great at least in this moment we we get to partake in something that is really shifting our industry at a core level um and yeah i love the energy that that's that's creating amongst our team it's really exciting [Music]