Name: Magnolia Bakery’s CEO reveals her daily routine for whipping up the next viral banana pudding recipe
Uploaded: 2024-02-13
Duration: 5 min 1 s
Description: 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.

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.

Magnolia Bakery’s CEO reveals her daily routine for whipping up the next viral banana pudding recipe

Features

Magnolia Bakery’s 66-year-old CEO walks an hour to work every day in New York City 

Magnolia Bakery’s 66-year-old CEO walks an hour to work every day

So Magnolia Bakery didn't create banana pudding, but we did put it on the map. So the original store was one owner, one store and I call it a sleeper because they only made so much a day. And when it was gone, it was gone, the people who loved it, our employees loved it. We had fan favorites who loved the banana pudding. But my old partner and I bought the bakery in 2006. We're like, this product is really good. We need to make more of it and it just kind of built upon itself that the more we made, the more sold. So we've made more and then it's sold and we made more. I think we now have probably 35 to 40 different flavors of banana pudding that we try to rotate in periodically. Hi, I'm Bobby Lloyd. I am the CEO and CBO Chief Baking Officer of Magnolia Bakery. I'm 66 years old and this is my daily routine. So my daily routine starts with what time I get up in the morning. It all depends on what time I go to bed the night before. But I usually get up somewhere between six and 630. The very first thing I do when I wake up is drink a glass of water. I've been told my entire life that that helps to clear your brain and set your body for the day. So I'm not a coffee drinker. First thing in the morning, I actually wait until I get to the office to have coffee. So water gets me going. I like to do my little yoga routine. About 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the day. And I almost always walk to work, which is about a one hour walk. That's when I clear my head, set the tone for day, read the trades, read the newspaper during the pandemic. I really had to reset my amount of time. I actually did go to my office every day. I was the only one there and I needed that time, that one hour in the morning to just clear my head. And I started to really enjoy it. It let me see what was going on in the city. I would pick different paths every day, different avenues to walk on to see what businesses were open or what was closing or what was reopening. And then I get to work, start with my big cup of coffee and, and take it from there. So I usually get into my office around eight o'clock. Depends on how long it takes me to walk somewhere between eight and 830. Once everybody's in the office at nine o'clock, it's usually meetings start at that time. Team group meetings start the mornings tend to be very meeting heavy and then the afternoon tends to be more development structure, sitting around with individual people having one on one meetings. I'll have anywhere from 4 to 8 meetings a day depending on which I'm wearing for the day. If I'm a CEO and it's about meetings. I can do zoom calls from my office. I also have all my printers and computers and all the tools that I need. But if it's a day where I'm wearing my CBO hat, Chief Baking Officer, that's when I can utilize my test kitchen, which is a lot of fun. So I've been with Magnolia Bakery for almost 18 years and throughout that 18 year period, I've worn a number of different hats. I was president, I was co for a while and then became CEO. I've always worn this hat, which is I made up the title chief baking officer. I was always involved in the food development side of it, whether it was product creation, training, development, really anything that we're doing that's food related. So I kind of made up the title chief baking officers. So mostly so that my team would know which role am I covering right now. But as CEO, it's really more about running the company and the fundamentals of the company. So my day tends to end somewhere between six and eight pm. Rarely is it six pm because it's so meeting heavy during the day. I do like to take the end of the day to kind of sit down recapture what I was working on for the day. Look at emails again because I don't check emails while I'm in meetings and really kind of set the tone for the next day. Is there something I miss? Did I not answer somebody's email? Did I not get back to someone with the right information? Depending again on the day of the week, Fridays, I like to get out of there by five o'clock if I can. It's a long day, but I absolutely love what I do. And so the day goes by so fast that you don't realize it's suddenly 730. So the typical after work day for me is really depending on the time of day. Not only do I meet with friends, go out for dinner, workout, massages, those kinds of fun things, take care of my own self. But I also sit on a couple of different boards for charities. I'm going to actually say I don't relax that much. I kind of stay at a pretty high level other than my walk to work in the morning, I consider that my relaxation moment. I always talk about running is being my form of meditation. Other people may not say that about running, but for me, it's about resetting the brain But when I go to my house of State, I have 15 acres and I have a giant garden with eight raised beds. And I have had a lot of fun learning how to garden. I am not that good. I am still learning how to do it, but it relaxes me enormously. Plus I love to entertain. And so I love spending my day in a kitchen cooking all day. That is a form of relaxation for me.