Tabitha Langel and Ryan Stoesz

Tabitha Langel was raised in a farm-based Hutterite community in western Manitoba and her roots in communal farming, living and food production put her in touch with the farm-to-table experience from a very early age. She grew up surrounded by time-honoured agricultural practices that worked with the earth in a respectful way at a time and place where food was not something bought but grown. Hutterite communities are organized as collectives of 12-14 families, farming together and sharing resources, and it was in this inter-generational food milieu where she would learn large batch cooking, processing and baking, where producing for the common good was the Golden Rule.

After moving to Winnipeg, she worked with food professionally in restaurants, nursing homes, group homes and as a head cook at a government research station in Northern Ontario. At the same time, she was pursuing a degree in Social Work and community development, and she started to see the ways in which food and cooking could also be a tool for social change.

In the late 1980s, this led her and a group of like-minded others to start a small bread co-op in a church basement in the progressive and vibrant Wolseley neighbourhood where they lived. This co-op would in 1990 become Tall Grass Prairie Bread Co., a small bakery committed to the love and support of local food and food equity through baking. They committed to respecting everyone in the circle of production, from farmers and producers, to millers, cooks, and bakers, to customers and the wider community. They committed to practicing fair trade wherever possible, and to supporting local regenerative agriculture through their procurement and business practices. They wanted to support and foster a sustainable food system and a sustainable workplace.

Clearly they were on to something as 34 years later, “Tall Grass” is now known across Manitoba, with two locations (soon to be three!) committed to traditional baking with a wide fan-base, in-house milling of organic local grains, a vibrant kitchen producing soup and take-home meals sourced from local producers, and a committed community of long-term employees and multiple ownership partners.

Ryan Stoesz is one of these long-term employees and soon-to-be ownership partners. Raised with a love of food, people, and ideas, Ryan grew up in Winnipeg just blocks from Tall Grass Prairie Bakery and often went there for treats and baking as a kid, so it was a natural place to get a job while finishing a philosophy degree in 2005. Ryan started at the bakery by first making sandwiches, then learning how to bake, and has since gone on to spend time in almost every part of the company, from night shifts to driving, serving customers at the front counter to milling flour, and helping manage the social media to hosting bakery tours for students.

Over the years, he has also spent time training at other bakeries – in Hamilton/Burlington from 2008-10, and recently in 2019 in Hannover, Germany, for six months – but has always returned home to Tall Grass, adding what he learned into the mix. In the next year, Ryan joins the ownership team to make his home official. He has always had strong interests in teaching, within the company as a baking instructor and educator but also as one of its ambassadors in the wider baking community, holding classes and talks at local schools about baking and sustainable food practices, and helping build bridges between local producers, consumers and members of the food industry in Manitoba by championing everyone on the food chain, from the local farmer to the local baker. He is happy to become the next generational link in the Tall Grass intergenerational ownership group, helping steward the bakery into its next 34 years of building community through bread.

Session: Taking a Successful Community-Based Bakery into the Future: Q-and-A with Tall Grass Prairie Bakery