Use the pulldown menus to visit other Food Central sections:
Recipes ---------- Today Recipe Swap	Resources ---------- Additives Alcohol Beer Beverages Coffee Dairy Fat Fruit Grains Herbs Italian Meat Organic Seafood Snacks Southern Sweets Tea Veggies Vitamins	Restaurants ---------- Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Dallas Denver Detroit Fort Worth Houston Las Vegas Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New Orleans NYC Orlando Philly Phoenix Pittsburgh Salt Lake San Antonio San Diego San Fran Seattle St. Louis Wash, D.C. ---------- Amsterdam Athens Bangkok Beijing Berlin Brussels Cairo Copenhagen Dublin Florence Frankfurt Hong Kong London Madrid Mex City Montreal Moscow Munich Nairobi Paris Prague Rio Rome Singapore St. Pburg. Sydney Tokyo Toronto Vienna Zurich

Amy Scherber left the corporate world to start her own business as a baker.

September 17, 1999
Web posted at: 5:01 p.m. EDT (2101 GMT)

In this story: Baking a business Bookstores to television RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Financial Correspondent Susan Liscovicz

NEW YORK (CNN) -- It's not always about the money, but for breadmaker Amy Scherber, leaving corporate America was certainly about the dough.

Scherber's passion for baking began when she was a child.

"I would come home from school and my mom would have really gooey, moist, warm baked goodies coming out of the oven," Scherber said. "My grandmothers were great bakers and they lived on farms and they would have these amazing aromas coming out of the oven. So all those things influenced me to make the step towards baking."

At first, traditional career expectations set Scherber on a different path. She got a Bachelors degree in economics and psychology. She spent three years working for a marketing research firm -- all the while sensing she was missing her calling.

"I realized that all we were doing is trying to sell these consumer products that really didn't have that much meaning," she said. "I really missed the idea of being around food, which is very meaningful and satisfying."

So she left corporate America for cooking school. After working in several different restaurants, Scherber headed to France and studied at three bakeries.

Ready to roll her own dough, Scherber returned to New York, but she still needed one more ingredient: capital.

"I asked some of the business associates that I had if they would give me loans or invest in my business, and they all said it was a little too risky for them," she said. "I went to the SBA and they said there is no way they would touch a business like a food business. Banks? No way.

"I had no assets. I had a little one room apartment and a bicycle and my clothes, so that really didn't stand for much. So finally, I got loans from friends and relatives that I knew and I got one small investor."

In 1992 Scherber successfully turned a dilapidated fish company into a cozy bakery and opened the first Amy's Bread in New York City.

The company expanded from there -- from five employees to 85 -- just six years later.

The bakery runs 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. It rolls out between three thousand and four thousand pounds of dough daily.

"People could look through the glass and watch us working. For me that is one of the most important things," Scherber said.

Amy's Bread is available in bookstores too. Scherber has even hosted a baking show on the Food Network. All of the attention has not gone to her head. To her staff, she's just one of the gang.

"She is a great role model for everybody," said Todd Nunez, Customer Service Manager of Amy's Bread. "When she has to roll up her sleeves and get on the table because we are missing people, she is out there. It's not like she can't be bothered with that kind of thing."

Scherber claims her focus is not on money, but instead on creating a fun and healthy work environment.

As for those who thought she was crazy for leaving corporate America ...

"People got kinda envious once I made the break from business," said Scherber. They saw that I was really happy and that I was enjoying what I did and they said, 'I wish I had the nerve to do that, too'."