photograph by chris mccoy
When most people are heading to bed or already sound asleep, Jimmy Hoxie, owner and baker at The Ginger’s Bread Co., is hard at work. “I usually get to the kitchen around midnight and get started with mixing for the day,” he says. “I begin with the items that are going to take the longest and work towards the things that are going to take the least amount of time.”
That means preheating the ovens, sanitizing the tables and work surfaces, and getting all the ingredients scaled out. “We always have a few things that we’ve started the day before, so we’ll have cookie dough that’s measured out but not mixed yet. We’ll just go ahead and get that mixed and portioned out.”
Hoxie has been a baker as long as he can remember. “I started baking with my mom and my grandmother when I was a kid,” he says. “Just making cookies and pancakes and all that good stuff.”
Between acting in shows at Theater Memphis, he worked as an instructor at places like L’Ecole Culinaire. That changed in 2020. “Covid kind of stopped two of my jobs,” he says. “I was working for City & State and Crosstown Arts, and they both closed down during lockdown. I was looking for something to do, and my husband decided he was tired of me looking at TikTok on my phone.”
“What’s not to love? You get this really beautiful product when you’re finished, and you get to make a lot of people happy while you’re doing it.” — Jimmy Hoxie
Working from the kitchen in the vacant half of a rental duplex the couple owned, Hoxie expanded his bread club until his online sales seemed high enough to justify opening a store.
“We looked into investing in a property, but the cost at that time was too high because the supply chain was so slow,” he says. “So we wound up building out our storefront, and then renting kitchen space from Other Foods. That’s how we’ve been operating up to this point.”
Between the grueling schedule and the uncertainties of the food industry, it’s not been easy, but Hoxie is making it work at The Ginger’s (so named for the baker’s red hair). “Any time you have a business, your time is more precious than you think,” he says. “Some things go really well, and some things don’t.”
He offers this advice: “Don’t go too far, but don’t be scared to take a couple of risks to see what sticks to the wall.”
Through it all, he hasn’t lost his love for baking. “What’s not to love?” he says. “You get this really beautiful product when you’re finished, and you get to make a lot of people happy while you’re doing it.”
