I am all in again Luke's Diner with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio podcast. Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all in Podcast one eleven productions. iHeartMedia Radio, I heart Podcasts. Luke's Diner episode with the one and only Beatrice Porto. She is the owner proud owner of Porto's Bakery and Cafe in Burbank. Welcome Beatrice, Nice to have you on,
Just really happy to have you. And we've just recapped season two, episode two of Gilmore Girls, Hammers and Veils, and we'll be discussing food served, the wedding and showers and the wedding cakes and that kind of thing. But listen, you know as well as as I do. And you've catered some of our Gilmore events at the studio, so I know your work and I I've gained a little bit of weight from an it's so good. You know, the shows of family and community and it's just like Porthos.
How important it's that same feeling of warmth and belonging in your bakery, I.
Would think is everything. I think that's what as a business sets and support. So the owners are my brother Rold, my sister Margrita and myself. You know, my parents passed away. We took up the torch. But talking about wedding cakes, talking about family, right, I have people that come in with a picture of their mother's cake and they say, you know, many many years ago, you made my mother's wedding cake, and then you make my baptism, my communion,
all my birthdays, and that it's my turn. So we're in a business of creating memories. That's what we do. We create memories, especially through cakes. It's it's something that it never stops, it just keeps going, and it's a great business to be in.
It's one of the great things about Los Angeles. There are many many businesses like yours from people that came from other places. Yes, and through family love and support built up these generational businesses of high quality food items or materials, what have you. It's one of the great features of our city. And you're you're a shining star in that city. Thank you, Gilmore. Girls love pop tarts, red vines, donuts, cover your ears, donuts, coffee.
We did donuts before?
Oh sure, No and Rory walked into Portos. Okay, what pastry cake would you recommend to them?
Oh? My God, they would definitely have to have the cheese rolls, right. I mean I have people that come not just from la we have sheds from all over the world and they just love it because it's about this simplicity and you know how clean the ingredients are. There's only three ingredients in that patry, so they have to try that. And then our number one sellar cake is the milk and berries, which is a translated with
you know, with fruit, with fresh fruit berries. So those things, if we sell those two things, we can really stop selling anything everything else that would keep us in business.
So those those are your superstar skews, those two potatables.
Of course everybody can relate to avable. Who doesn't know potatoes and beef.
You know, it's amazing. But you have so many other menu items. Yes, yeah, I have a little coffee company and we have our superstars too. I think every business does. It's amazing. So coffee. Speaking of coffee, that's it's everything at my diner, Lukes Diner, Which porthos pastry do you think would pair perfectly with a cup of coffee?
We have so many things. It could be the cheese roll number one, it could be the guava cheese, or it can be a scone. Never had our scones. I invite you to come in and try it. It's out of this world. We use all the rime from the oranges that we squeeze to make first orange es. We caramelize it and that's one of my favorite pastries. Scone, a crawberry scone. But it is that orange says that that little piece of caramelized skin of the orange makes this cone out of this world.
All right? So this week I recapped Hammers and Veils, where Suki plans an engagement party for Max and Laureli and the entire town of Stars Hollows is invited. If you were catering a community wide engagement party like that, what kind of baked goods would you serve for that?
I mean again, you know, we have so many beautiful pastries, but after almost fifty years in the business, there's never a cartering event that I do that doesn't include the cheese rolls, the juaba cheese, the meat pies, the chicken and bananas, the potato bols and everything else. It's an added feature.
Do you have a every option? Can people walk? Can you can you call us how what's the range, what's your range where you'll deliver to.
For like wedding cakes for example, that's a big thing. I mean before COVID, we were making on a weekend sixty two wedding cakes. I have thirteen delivery guys and that's all. They deliver wedding and send other cakes.
Sixty two day, sixty two cakes.
On the weekend Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Check it out. There's no place I can do that can of My daughter, my sister are like twenty five degreaters, seven thousand square feet of refrigeration and special things to make all those cakes. And now you know, the delivery withold range anywhere from thirty five dollars to what we took them to Tabacula. We delivered kick to Kega, so it was based on miles.
But the closest ones would be fifteen dollars, you know in the Glendale you know Burba Carrea, and then after that it would jump to thirty five dollars. But that's a big responsibility delivery a wedding cake. We're not talking about the regular delivery service that come in and pick up stuff that we have, you know, like everybody else. Wedding cakes is another that's something else.
So what's different about a wedding cake versus a regular cake? What are the ingredients?
The regular gig is just the flat cake we're talking about. A wedding cake would be three tiers. I mean we're taking cakes of Mulholland Drive and while you driving up your praying because the cake is movie and you're like, you think it's never going to make it, but it does within four tiers. Cake through that and really it's it's scary. But these guys, that's what they were doing. And they were doing, you know, like I said on
the weekend sixty two delivery. So it's a big responsibility that you hit traffic a few times and then you're late, no matter earlier you leave. II there's a if there's a big accident in the freeway and you're stuck, there's nothing you can do. Some people were very understanding. Most people were understanding, but some of the you know, the fries get some of them were like so angry, and you know, so we were at the end. It all worked tough, but it was a big I mean, I
think I grew white hairs during the process. Because I was in charge of deliveries for many, many years.
So let's talk about baking a little bit. Those extra steps that you take like browning your butter or sifting the flour, or or following other specific techniques. Talk about that how important that is.
I mean, it's something like my bread for bread for example, my brother is that's this big passion in life is bread and bread is science. It's completely science. We you know, you have to rise some bread the yeast the night before, right, but when it gets hot, when it's really hot, you have to throw ice to that mother you know that's brewing because if you don't, she'll grow too fast and
her break is done before it's time. So it's so you know, it's so just science that if you mess it up, that said all your bread is all your bread for the day is going to be gone. So there's steps that they follow depending on the weather. Water is very important. We do sour dough't that we bought. We bought, but they call them Mother. We bought it from San Francisco and it dates back to the eighteen hundreds, and you know that lady is kept alive every day,
so you know you have it in the refrigerator. You take away from her every night, but you have to feed her whatever it needs, whether it's water, where there's ease, which is flour, and I think it's fascinating. Then no matter, you know, if you if let's say there's a holiday and we close, the people still have to come in to feed mama. Otherwise you know she's not going to
give you what you need the next day. But I think baking is it's harder, and making pastes harder than cooking because when you're cooking and you oversold something, there's ways that you can fix it. But in bacon, if you messed up a recipe, that is it. You have to throw everything. Whether you're making a cake and you miss something, the whole batch goes into the trush. There's no way of recuperating. So there's measurement, there's precision, and
everything is not in steps. For example, a wedding cake. People think that a wedding cake is made in one day, but it's not really. I mean, it gets baked. Let's say the wedding cakes for a Saturday, it gets baked on Wednesday. Because when you bake a hot cake, you know it has to cool off. Before you can fill it or you get ice it. So you make it
on Wednesday night, it rests. Then you know maybe by by Friday, you're like stacking it, you're putting the filling, you're putting the zerup right, and then on Friday, when you do all that, it goes back to the refrigerator. Like a fourtier cake for example, when you bring it back on Saturday, where you're gonna that cake has shifted. It's like a building. It moves and you have to start by you know, making it, even by slicing it, by measuring. So it's it's a long step. Nothing is
in the bakery business. You don't make something today. I'm baking right away. Everything. It takes time.
Are there certain ingredients that you source locally that are fresh or game?
Yes, So all the fruits, all our fruits, berries, all the berries that are going those cakes we source locally. We have bendor the family owned farms that we work with, and we're not a storage facility for anybody. So every every day around four or five on four in the morning, we get the fruit. Every day, we get fruit every day,
we get milk, every day, we get butter. We don't want to keep milk to store because then if the employees make a mistake when you're you know, rotating them and that used to happen, you have milk that gets left over. So what a solution with that store anything? We're not a storage facility.
How many employees do you have over there?
Each baker has around three hundred employees.
Wow.
Plus. Then we have our you know, marketing department. We also have an HR department, We have an accounting department. Doors are in a separate facility and you know those each one of those places is like twenty people around twenty people's.
Among Have you ever been approached by a you know, a food corporation to take you national.
All the time?
Right?
My brother, if my brother would be he would leave the business today. And when he has people coming from China, from Thailand, from Hong Kong wanted us, wanted us to go there and to replicate what we've done here. But he doesn't have the time. We don't have the time. We're always trying to catch up.
Let me ask you this, how do you so your suppliers' costs go up? Especially now? How do you handle that? Do you raise how careful are you to raise prevents.
We're very because you know, we think one of the secret sary success is qualities versus pricing. Right, we're a family own an operator, so the people that come to us, our families, we don't ever have to not have them come in and spend thirty five to forty dollars caring for their whole family. You know, you're talking about Chinese Filipinos, a bunch of you know, like the Latinos, they care for the whole family. So we will want to be
able to do that. So the secretary success for the pricing is the bulk is the amount of stuff that we sell. Like for cheese rolls we sell three million a month, or.
The cheese rolls three million a month, potato.
Bowls two million of bucks. So that's how we can keep the prices. If the people keep coming and they keep buying, the more they buy, the cheaper we can bring the product. Because the more you buy from a supplier, the better priceing you get. So suppliers, you know, they look at you're going to pay on time, you get benefits, you know, you buy a lot. We can just take for example, all our paper goods, all our paper goods from toilet paper to boxes, whatever. Give it to one
company and then you can get better prices. So work. We have a buyer on that all the time. Again, now with all the things we're recycling and all that we're on more, we have buyers looking for stuff from all over the world, so we can need a new challenge. So you always have to stay ahead of the game.
So the volume of your sales protects your margins all the time, every single time.
And then it's being smart about labor. You know, we have beautiful decorators, but we have some people when when they come up with a new cake, they need to make sure that the cake is easy to execute. So you want to a cake that's elegant, but it has to be easy to execute. If you spend too much time decorating, there goes your profit. So you want something elegant but it's easy to execute. So all that goes
into the making of the case. When the people, the people, the chefs are coming up with a new creation, all that has to be kept in mind. How is it is it to execute? How fast can they do it? The same way a salad, you know, we make it. We make incredible salads. People don't know that but we have salads that somewhere else you would pay, you know, twenty five dollars whatever you know, hours is like twelve dollars and a half the best ingredients, like any fancy restaurant.
But what do we do. We need to make sure that most of the ingredients are in the kitchen already. You can't make a salad where all the ingredients are just for that one salad that will kill your profit. That will kill That would not be something that you can, you know, do because the pricing will not be there. So we're very careful about what we bring in. So it's not just okay, let's do this salad. It's a lot of thinking involved. Can we source the ingredients, Can
they be locally sourced, you know? Can they be coming every day? Will these people be able to deliver to us on a daily basis. There's a lot that goes on, you know, with vegetables and especially letters and stuff like that you see on the market that there's a warning about something that's going on. Our companies tell us before you guys find out before the consumer. Most of the
time we already know pull this lettuce. They'll bring another type of letters because something's going to So there's a lot of stuff that goes in the background, and you, as a customer, you come in and you have you have no clue what's going on. It's not just as easy as it looks how beautiful they look.
There's so much right it's about it's about putting out little fires every day.
There's something going on.
Everything beautiful thing that is a beautiful thing. I love small business owners. It's just and you don't have a small business anymore. It's a big we don't, but we treated like a small business exactly.
You know. It doesn't matter how big we grow. We still think that the bosses are the customers. They tell us what they need, what they want, and some they don't like something. They they walk in and sell you straight to your face. And I like the spot.
Let me let me ask you this. Uh. We have a little bit of time left so and I could talk to you all day. Trust me, I'm kind of in your business. And boy, do I want to pick your brain. If you were to come into Luke Steiner, what would you order?
I would number one. I would have a cup of coffee and anything with customer Okay, make Custer fun all right. You know again, a lot of people don't make crimbo lens or flun but I love custer over chocolate, my sister's chocolate. And I'm customer, so I mean I My favorite kick in the world is a kick with custom
not first property, nothing, just playing custom. Cust If you buy a customer kick and you give it a refrigerator a couple of days later, it tastes better because the custer just soaks into the cake.
Delicious, just beautiful Beatrice Porto ladies and gentlemen, the other of Portos and uh, if you've never been, go it is an amazing experience. Take your whole family. It has been a pleasure getting to know you a little bit and talk to you a little bit about your wonderful business and your wonderful employees and every person out there that is a regular at Porthos. You're lucky and they're appreciated. We're lucky and it works both ways. Beautiful Porto Porthos,
go check it out. There are many locations in Los Angeles. You know what I'm talking about. Porto's Bakery, the famous Porthos Bakery, and this is the woman responsible for it right here. Your entire family is rep and thank you for your time. Please do come back. We'd love to have we we'd love to have you back. And remember everybody. Thanks for the downloads and where you lead, we will follow, stay,
save everyone. Hey everybody, and don't forget Follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com