Resurrection From The Flames

What seems like the worst misfortune on earth turns out to be a true blessing from a heavenly perspective: this is a comforting Hasidic Jewish proverb that, in hindsight, certainly applies to the fire disaster at Steffl Bäck in October 2019. At the time, Sebastian Knapp and his partner Ramona Schrempf had only just taken over the successful medium-sized business in Ennstal from their parents. “And then, while on holiday in Amsterdam, I was able to watch live as our headquarters burned down,” the young boss recalls of the most pivotal moment in his entrepreneurial career to date.
Knapp had plenty of time to think before the fire investigations were completed and the insurance company announced in May 2020 that it would pay for the damage after a thorough inspection. Not only about the future, but also about the priorities in his entrepreneurial life. And came to the conclusion that he would like to continue the business – albeit under completely different circumstances.
His parents had invested a lot of energy and resources in transforming the long-established local bakery into a small industrial business and only invested heavily in expanding production in 2009: “We were a really stupid size,” summarises Knapp, “and produced three million baked goods a year. We supplied one million bread rolls for baking to one of the country’s major supermarket chains alone.”

Goodbye, hamster wheel

Conditions under which everything had to run so mechanically, quickly and cost-effectively in order to compete in the price war and fulfil the dictates of the growth dictate: “Around 2000, the motto in the industry was ‘higher, faster, further’,” says Knapp, who saw no way of getting off the hamster wheel until the fire, as the large bakery was far from being refinanced. However, the fire insurance sum paid out in 2020 offered Knapp the opportunity to get rid of the old liabilities and start afresh. “At the cost of new debt”, Knapp counters the common misconception that the insurance provided the capital for the new building.
At a staff meeting, he presents his vision to the Steffl bakery workforce: a radical focus on quality and a return to manual labour. “The approval was so overwhelming that we decided to make a new start,” says Knapp, who is still proud of the collective courage in the company’s ranks today.
In June 2020, Knapp and Schrempf sat down with the Gröbming planner and master builder, joiner and carpenter Johannes Prettenthaler to brief him on the major contract: the construction of the new central bakery. There wasn’t much to say, as Prettenthaler had been involved in the design, woodwork and furniture construction of the Steffl bakery branches for so long that a personal friendship had developed. “I had always dreamed of a glass bakery where people could watch us work from outside,” says Sebastian Knapp, “and I sketched out this bakery for him very roughly on an A4 sheet of paper.”

Carte Blanche for the designer

In addition to the transparent production facility with generous glass fronts, the use of as much wood as possible was the only other requirement: “We wanted a wooden bar building and a façade made of wood from the outset, because it has a lot to do with our work: Bread is also a natural product and the sourdoughs we work with are just as alive as wood.”
Apart from these two specifications, Prettenthaler was given architectural carte blanche. The layout of the rooms was largely predetermined by the production processes and logistics of a large bakery, meaning that the universalist’s freedom of design mainly extended to the building envelope. He used this to create a veritable landmark in the Enns Valley.
Prettenthaler procured the wood for this from Mareiner and ordered hundreds of square metres of spruce and larch in a wide range of variants: Spruce and larch, natural and steamed, brushed, chopped, bandsaw-cut as well as completely untreated. Prettenthaler and Knapp also ordered a batch of Piz Nair brand larch panels, which are a warm brown colour thanks to thermal treatment.
What happened after the plan submission and construction negotiations is worthy of an entry in the Guinness Book: Knapp and Schrempf held a ground-breaking ceremony in September 2020 and, thanks to the efficiency and dedication of the professionals from Prettenthaler’s company Joiner Bau, were able to move into the new production building with a total area of 1,200 m2 in December, just a quarter of a year later. “All of our suppliers agreed that they had never experienced a construction project like this before,” says Knapp, showering his construction partner with roses.

New land and trade mark

Although the new building speaks an unmistakable contemporary design language, the feedback from the Enns Valley was also unanimously positive. “All we hear is how well it blends into the landscape,” says Knapp, pleased with the effect of the new building: “This has also created a new image of Steffl Bäck in people’s minds, and we are finding it much easier to recruit staff again because it is simply attractive to work here.”
The joy of working at Steffl Bäck has never been greater since the return to long dough processing, manual labour and premium quality – thanks to Knapp’s passion for coffee, including the caffeinated drinks in the branches. Customers also appreciate the change of course, which was linked to a deliberate downsizing and the abandonment of a franchise concept that was once considered: “We closed a few branches, for example the one in Trofaiach, because as a person who thinks sustainably, I could no longer see why we had to put up with such crazy delivery routes and chauffeur baked goods 150 kilometres across the country.“
This has also had an impact on the number of employees, which has fallen from 120 to 45. However, Steffl Bäck does not see this as a reduction, but rather an increase in quality. In the spirit of “small is beautiful”.