Fill your heart with bread

Duffy’s Dough & Kroger team up to fight food insecurity

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readtherporter.com

In 2024, The Reporter spoke with Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl about how they were selling a Duffy family sourdough starter as a business designed to make zero money. They give it all away to help feed the hungry. You can read that story at readthereporter.com/sourdough-starter-feeds-charity. Two years later, Duffy’s Dough is on the rise thanks to a partnership with the Kroger family of companies.

Duffy’s Dough is on the shelf in every Kroger-affiliated store in Indiana and beyond. This is a venture that nets Duffy and Purl not one thin dime of profit. Everything on their end goes directly to charity, and a large percentage of the money Kroger makes also goes to that company’s Zero Hunger, Zero Waste campaign.

“We tried our best to saturate as many avenues to sell our product, and there was a ceiling to it,” Duffy said. “It was only two people out of a garage. Once we were adopted by Kroger, we slipped into that system of supplying over two thousand stores with a product. I stand – to this day – in awe that bread that’s baked in Maryland, in a couple of days can end up on a shelf in Portland, Oregon, or Southern California. We could never duplicate that with our little business that we had in the garage.”

Purl told The Reporter the Kroger partnership has removed the ceiling on what they are able to donate to food scarcity charities.

“When we were selling out of a garage, we were only selling the dehydrated starter,” Purl said. “It was labor-intensive, for one thing, and also a terrible business model – as is witnessed by Patrick’s family having been gifted the starter 75 years ago and never having to get another one. Once you spend all that time and effort to earn a customer, then they never have to come back again. The ceiling was very low on our possible growth.”

Duffy and Purl wanted to find a baker and a distributor, but they needed one with a heart for charity.

“We learned about Kroger and the fact that they distribute other people’s food, but they also manufacture some of their own food,” Purl said. “We thought, ‘In a perfect world we could be with them because then we wouldn’t have to go through a second negotiation of getting on somebody else’s shelves.’”

Kroger’s charitable arm was key to this partnership.

“They have remarkable programs like Zero Hunger, Zero Waste,” Purl said. “They really live by ‘Feed the human spirit.’ They have deep, long-standing relationships with food banks and food scarcity support systems. When we were by luck introduced to somebody at Kroger who then invited us to make our pitch, it was a fairytale moment for us.”

Duffy said he and Purl are fortunate because they make something everyone needs.

“Everybody goes and shops for milk, bread, eggs, etc.,” Duffy said. “Every single person, almost without exception, that comes in the door is looking for bread. All we have to do is, at least once, change their mind to try our version of bread, then let them know that not only are they buying bread at the same price point, but they’re making a contribution to help us fight food scarcity.”

The Kroger partnership lets Duffy and Purl start giving back on the level they always wanted to.

“When we were in our garage, we still had the mandate for a hundred percent of our profits going to charity, but we hadn’t seen a bit of profit yet,” Duffy said. “We were still just hemorrhaging money. At the end of five years, we were only able to give away $250. But we gave it away, and we felt very good about it. We gave it to No Kid Hungry. In one sense, we were creating a vacuum that was going to be filled by doing more. Sure enough, Kroger adopted us. Now we’re on the road to being able to consistently write checks to institutions which Kroger already has vetted.”

A Kroger employee told Duffy and Purl that there are two things people go to the store for. They shop for a ‘what’ and a ‘why.’

“The ‘what’ is bread, milk, eggs, etc.,” Duffy said. “They’re going to look for the ‘Why choose one over the other.’ The ‘why’ for bread is blazoned across every unit of ours, which is a hundred percent of the profits go to charity. Blazoned across every Newman product which is ‘Give It All Away.’ If you’re going to have to satisfy the ‘what,’ how wonderful to be able to have a ‘why’ and make that be your habit.”

Duffy said he and Purl exclusively buy Newman’s Own salad dressing for the ‘why.’

“There are other really good salad dressings out there – maybe better ones – but it’s the ‘why’ that makes you just automatically reach for it,” Duffy said. “You see it there and you just reach for it. We’re hoping that the ‘why’ of Duffy’s dough will just make it a habitual thing where people will say, ‘Oh, we need some French bread, or sourdough, or whatever, and there it is on the shelf,’ and they just reach for it because the ‘why’ is satisfying.”

Purl said she and Duffy want to earn their place at your table both through charity and flavor.

“This is a long-standing Duffy family tradition,” Purl said. “We hope to earn our way into other families’ and communities’ tables, but to do that, you have to try it. And it’s really yummy!”

Duffy told The Reporter, “People always ask, ‘Well, what is the bread like?’ And her culinary expertise just comes out by saying it’s yummy.”

Since this newspaper only reports facts, and since our publisher has tried Duffy’s Dough, we will set it in ink as part of the historical record: it is, in fact, yummy.

Now get to Kroger to buy some bread and help feed the hungry.

Learn more about Duffy’s Dough online at DuffysDough.com.