Dam Good™ English Muffins - About Us
Why English muffins?
While both studying Culinary Arts at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, RI, I met Ross, my husband, and co-founder of Dam Good™ English Muffins. Post graduation, and pre giving birth to our two children, we started our careers in the food service industry--working as corporate cafeteria managers.
After having children, and realizing that this type of work was not conducive to raising our kids, we both took a turn in our careers. Ross went back to school, and I began exploring other opportunities and interests, such as working as an administrative assistant at the Food Bank for Westchester, followed by becoming a production assistant at Sherwood Forest Design, and then, the studio manager for A Maze In Pottery, a paint-your-own pottery shop. After being at A Maze In Pottery for six years, I was looking to get back into the food industry, and do something entrepreneurial.
After a friend, Eric V. shared some homemade English muffins with us, Ross (who has always had a passion for bread baking), declared that we were never going back to store bought English muffins. So, we started baking them ourselves, and for the holidays, we gave them as gifts to our friends and family. After receiving positive feedback, we then thought, “How about an English muffin company?” It was one day in 2016, when we were taking a walk around our neighborhood, discussing returning to our culinary roots, when we came upon a single piece of trash on the sidewalk which turned out to be a Thomas’ English Muffins box. We took this as a sign to begin our journey, and have this same box hanging in our bakery today.
Our initial break came in 2017, when with Susan O’Keefe’s encouragement, mentorship and support, she began selling our sourdough English Muffins at her renowned local bakery, Baked by Susan, located in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. O’Keefe doesn’t sell anyone else's products, but made an exception for our English muffins, because they were ‘that good.’ From the start, Baked by Susan customers were buying them out, and we were baking more for her each week.
Because of our success at Baked by Susan, we were encouraged to seek out additional retail partners and participated in several Westchester County-area farmers’ markets. Since expanding to our new production facility in 2019, Dam Good™ English Muffins are available at various retail locations in the NY-Metro area, including the Whole Foods located at One Wall St. in NYC and in Chappaqua, NY, and via home delivery services such as, Boxed Market, Farm to People, FreshDirect, Hudson Milk + Market, Starlight Dairy, and Walden Local Meat, as well as on our website where we ship nationwide, www.damgoodenglishmuffins.com.
Dam Good™ English Muffins is a woman-owned, family-operated, mission-driven wholesale bakery that has been in business since 2017 - we make 4 varieties of all natural, preservative-free, vegan sourdough English muffins: “Original White,” “Multigrain,” “Cinnamon Swirl,” and “Whole Wheat.” We started with a New York State home processing license, and were baking out of our home in Croton. We have since moved our business to Peekskill, NY where we had a stint in a restaurant basement, followed by moving into our new 2,250 sq. ft. production facility at 2 John Walsh Blvd.
Our brand name:
Our brand name references our proximity to The New Croton Dam, where we got our start, our goal to make Dam Good™ tasting English muffins, and to do Dam Good™ in our community, and the world at large.
Why Dam Good™ English Muffins is unique:
We started this business in the hope that we would be able to make a difference in our community by creating a good product, providing jobs for people, and teaching them a marketable skill that they can take with them. As an organization, we are inspired by, and look up to Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, NY. We’ve adopted their Open Hiring model to provide an opportunity to people who have barriers to employment. This type of hiring has been used at Greyston Bakery since its inception and has been very successful. By filling jobs without judging applicants or doing background checks, Open Hiring creates opportunities for individuals who have been excluded from the mainstream workforce--while at the same time providing people with the opportunity to experience the dignity of work, and improve their lives in their communities. Our social focus is key to our compassionate Human Resources approach, and ‘griddled’ into our company’s DNA.
Further, we are continuously working to enhance our company culture as our workforce is the core of what we do, and how we do it. To show our appreciation for our employees, we celebrate birthdays, non denominational holidays, host team bonding events such as dumpling making, bowling night, and have after work activities such as yoga instruction, and reflexology sessions.
Additionally, we feel a strong responsibility to do what we can to do Dam Good™ for our Peekskill community, and the world at large. We therefore donate our English muffins on a weekly basis to our neighbors at Fred's Pantry via Caring for the Hungry and Homeless of Peekskill (CHHOP). Further, since December, 2021, when we began our partnership with the Ronald McDonald House of the Hudson Valley, we’ve been stocking their pantry with English muffins for their guests to toast up and enjoy.
We are also proud to be a part of the Bakers Against Racism movement and have (and will continue to) participated in all eight activations. We’ve donated a portion of our online sales to eleven different organizations that are taking a stand against racism, and the unjust treatment of Black and BIPOC people in America. To learn more, please click here.