General Information: Overview: Press Clips: Bringing Spirituality Into The Workplace Violates The Old Idea That Faith And Fortune Don't Mix. But A Groundswell Of Believers Is Breaching The Last Taboo In Corporate America .

Marc Gunther
Fortune
July 9, 2001

"Sinful Desserts, Saintly Causes"

When Julius Walls Jr. gave up his dream of becoming a Catholic priest at age 19 because he wanted a family, he felt certain he was leaving the ministry behind forever. Now he's not so sure.

As chief executive of Greyston Bakery, a maker of gourmet brownies, cakes, and tarts in Yonkers , N.Y. , Walls runs a business that is explicitly guided by spiritual principles. He hires people off the street, first come, first served, because he thinks everyone deserves a shot at a job. The company helps its workers with problems whether or not they're job related. Meetings begin with a moment of silence. And all the bakery's profits, roughly $200,000 last year, go to the Greyston Foundation, which helps the needy. Says Walls: "I think of a lot of what I do here at Greyston as my ministry."

Greyston serves the poor by feeding the rich. Much of its $4 million in annual sales are generated by selling bits of brownies to Ben & Jerry's for its chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and frozen yogurt. Greyston also bakes cakes and tarts for Manhattan restaurants and cafes, creates elaborate cakes to order, and sells desserts like Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake and Lemon Tart over the Internet ( www.greystonbakery.com). In a Zagat survey of 160 New York City area bakeries, Greyston ranks just behind top-rated Payard, a French patisserie on the Upper East Side . Greyston, says Zagat's, offers "sinful desserts that support saintly causes."

Walls, now 39, happened upon Greyston almost by accident, although he sees divine forces at work. ("I was supposed to be here, honestly," he says.) The son of a prison guard, he grew up in a Brooklyn housing project and attended a Catholic high school and seminary on scholarship. Later he studied business at Baruch College , where he was elected student body president. An outgoing man of strong opinions, Walls rose through the ranks of a New York chocolate manufacturer, where he made good money but chafed at the way that traditional companies treated people. "It was a matter of us vs. them," he said. "You paid the least amount possible to your employees and suppliers, and you charged the most you could to your customers." He wondered whether he'd ever be able to marry his faith with his business skills.

In 1993 he made a sales call at Greyston. There, Walls, who is African American, was impressed that the bakery was staffed by poor blacks and Hispanics from Yonkers , a blighted city just north of the Bronx . Walls wangled a job as a marketing consultant and was named CEO in 1997--by which time he'd come to appreciate the venture's spiritual underpinnings.

Founded in 1982, Greyston was the brainchild of a Zen Buddhist and entrepreneur known as Roshi Bernard Glassman. Born a Jew in Brooklyn , Glassman had worked as an aeronautical engineer for McDonnell Douglas before turning to Zen. He created the bakery to support a Zen group called the Peacemaker Community--and to bridge the worlds of the spirit, the street, and the startup.

What Walls brought to Greyston was business savvy, Christian faith, and a strong ethic of personal responsibility. Greyston remains "spiritual," he says, but its aim isn't to produce Buddhists or Christians; rather it's to support people as they pursue their own path. The company maintains a three-person department, overseen by a social worker, to help employees with problems ranging from landlord- tenant disputes to marital discord. Workers also get lots of on-the- job training, grants for education, and even help writing a resume if they decide to seek a job elsewhere.

Of the 55 Greyston employees, many are working for the first time or are former substance abusers or convicted criminals. Walls explains his "open hiring" policy by saying, "Everyone deserves an opportunity for a job. Period." Workers then must prove themselves during a 12- to 16-week tryout.

That reflects a bedrock principle at Greyston: People are responsible for their actions. That may seem self-evident, but Walls says the welfare system has created a class of people who have been taught to depend on others. Still, he preaches self-sufficiency in the context of a caring workplace where people are willing to listen to one another and lend a helping hand. That, he argues, is enlightened capitalism. "As we've taken care of our employees," he says, "our employees have taken care of this business."