Governor gets a slice of life at bread company

LYNN – One night during last year?s gubernatorial campaign, Charlie Baker met Fitzroy Alexander at a function.?Usually,” said Baker, “things tend to blur together. But Fitzroy left an impression, because he talked about his business, Traditional Breads, and that was on the Lynnway, which I took every day on my way into Boston.?So the next day, I?m driving by, trying to keep my eyes on the road while looking for his building, and, son of a gun, there it was,” said Baker Thursday after he and other business and community leaders from Lynn toured the plant.The actual address is 161 Pleasant St., on the other side of Alley Street from Pudgy?s Garage, and you could say it?s a classic small business success story.?I remember,” said Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy to Alexander and the employees, “when you were in the Lydia Pinkham building 10 years ago, and I thought that what you did was amazing back then. And you had about one-fiftieth the space you have now.”Alexander came to his profession in a curious way. He was born in Grenada, but came to the United States when he was 9 years old, in 1980. He worked in a commune baking bread, and people told him he was good at it.?There,” he said, “I found my passion.”He stayed with it, working in a family-owned bakery, starting as a dishwasher and working his way up. Along the way, he learned much about baking and the culinary arts in general.When he was 22, Alexander, following the leader of the mentor (Norman Bodek) who sent him to school at age 6, started his own bakery, with the help of 15 partners: Signature Breads of Chelsea. After finding success with the company, he and his group sold it in 1998 to Hazelwood Farms, which is currently owned by Pillsbury. As part of the agreement, he was under a no-compete clause, so he chose to start anew in Lynn, helped along by a $200,000 start-up grant by the Lynn EDIC.?When I talked about Lynn,” he said, “a lot of people said, ?don?t go to Lynn. It?s bad there.? I think I went out of defiance as much as anything else. I think you can make something out of yourself anywhere if you work hard enough.”That was 16 years ago, in 1999. After five years, he moved the firm out of the Pinkham Building and relocated to his present location.He remembers the first items he ever sold were “dinner rolls for Legal Seafoods.”Today, Traditional produces upwards of 750,000 slices of bread per day, much of it selling at wholesale prices to different chains and grocery stores, including Stop & Shop and Market Basket. It?s made to be frozen and then thawed out again.?If you get a loaf of bread that just says ?Market Basket? on it, it?s ours,” he said.Alexander still retains the passion he had for baking when he first came to the United States.?If you cook,” he asks, “and you?re angry, how does the food taste? Not good, right? But if you?re happy, and you?re cooking, it?s going to taste better.”