Bobbie Lloyd is the mastermind behind many of Magnolia Bakery’s signature desserts, including its monthly banana pudding creations. Here’s her daily routine for whipping up new recipes.
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00:00 So Magnolia Bakery didn't create banana pudding, but we did put it on the map.
00:04 So the original store was one owner, one store, and I call it a sleeper because they only made
00:10 so much a day, and when it was gone, it was gone. The people who loved it, our employees loved it,
00:15 we had fan favorites who loved the banana pudding. But my old partner and I bought the bakery in 2006,
00:22 we're like, "This product is really good, we need to make more of it." And it just kind of
00:27 built upon itself that the more we made, the more sold. So we just made more and then it sold and
00:32 we made more. I think we now have probably 35 to 40 different flavors of banana pudding that we try
00:39 to rotate in periodically. Hi, I'm Bobbi Lloyd, I am the CEO and CBO, Chief Baking Officer of Magnolia
00:46 Bakery. I'm 66 years old and this is my daily routine. So my daily routine starts with what
00:53 time I get up in the morning, it all depends on what time I go to bed the night before. But I
00:57 usually get up somewhere between 6 and 6.30. The very first thing I do when I wake up is drink a
01:03 glass of water. I've been told my entire life that that helps to clear your brain and set your body
01:08 for the day. So I'm not a coffee drinker first thing in the morning, I actually wait until I get
01:12 to the office to have coffee, so water gets me going. I like to do my little yoga routine about
01:18 15 to 30 minutes depending on the day. And I almost always walk to work, which is about a one
01:24 hour walk. That's when I clear my head, set the tone for the day, read the trades, read the
01:29 newspaper. During the pandemic, I really had to reset my amount of time. I actually did go to my
01:35 office every day, I was the only one there and I needed that time, that one hour in the morning to
01:40 just clear my head. And I started to really enjoy it, it let me see what was going on in the city.
01:45 I would pick different paths every day, different avenues to walk on to see what businesses were
01:50 open or what was closing or what was reopening. And then I get to work, start with my big cup of
01:55 coffee and take it from there. So I usually get into my office around eight o'clock, depends on
02:02 how long it takes me to walk, somewhere between 8 and 8.30. Once everybody's in the office at
02:06 nine o'clock, it's usually meeting start at that time, team group meetings start. The mornings
02:12 tend to be very meeting heavy. And then the afternoon tends to be more development structure,
02:18 sitting around with individual people having one on one meetings. I'll have anywhere from
02:23 four to eight meetings a day, depending on which hat I'm wearing for the day. If I'm a CEO,
02:29 then it's about meetings, I can do zoom calls from my office. I also have all my printers and
02:34 computers and all the tools that I need. But if it's a day where I'm wearing my CBO hat,
02:38 Chief Baking Officer, that's when I can utilize my test kitchen, which is a lot of fun. So I've
02:43 been with Magnolia Bakery for almost 18 years. And throughout that that 18 year period, I've worn a
02:49 number of different hats. I was president, I was COO for a while, and then became CEO. I've always
02:56 worn this other hat, which is I made up the title, Chief Baking Officer. I was always involved in the
03:02 food development side of it, whether it was product creation, training, development, really
03:08 anything that we're doing that's food related. So I kind of made up the title, Chief Baking Officer,
03:12 mostly so that my team would know which role am I covering right now. But as CEO, it's really more
03:18 about running the company and the fundamentals of the company. So my day tends to end somewhere
03:24 between six and 8pm. Rarely is it 6pm. Because it's so meeting heavy during the day, I do like
03:31 to take the end of the day to kind of sit down, recapture what I was working on for the day,
03:36 look at emails again, because I don't check emails while I'm in meetings, and really kind of set the
03:40 tone for the next day. Is there something I missed? Did I not answer somebody's email? Did I not get
03:44 back to someone with the right information? Depending again on the day of the week, Fridays,
03:49 I like to get out of there by five o'clock if I can. It's a long day, but I absolutely love what
03:55 I do. And so the day goes by so fast that you don't realize it's suddenly 730. So typical after
04:02 work day for me is really depending on the time of day. Not only do I meet with friends, go out for
04:08 dinner, workout, massages, those kinds of fun things, take care of my own self, but I also sit
04:13 on a couple of different boards for charities. I'm going to actually say I don't relax that much. I
04:19 kind of stay at a pretty high level other than my walk to work in the morning. I consider that my
04:24 relaxation moment. I always talk about running as being my form of meditation. Other people may not
04:29 say that about running, but for me it's about resetting the brain. But when I go to my house
04:34 upstate, I have 15 acres and I have a giant garden with eight raised beds, and I have had a lot of
04:40 fun learning how to garden. I am not that good. I am still learning how to do it, but it relaxes me
04:47 enormously. Plus I love to entertain, and so I love spending my day in a kitchen cooking all day.
04:53 That is a form of relaxation for me.
04:56 [Music]