Phil Folter - Lifetime Achiever

Few members would have been surprised, and all would have been pleased, when Phil Folter was presented with a Baking Society Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s conference. His close association with the Society dates back 28 years to when he was the Society’s Apprentice of the Year.

Phil worked his apprenticeship under John van Til, a founder-member of the Society, so he was aware from the beginning of its work and value.

Naturally Phil became a member himself soon after starting his own bakery in 1974.

Beginnings
Phil’s parents were Dutch-Indonesian. They arrived in New Zealand in 1952 and settled in Christchurch. Phil was born a year later. Apart from a year in Perth when he was about four, Phil has lived in Christchurch ever since. Though his parents are not bakers, Phil’s first contact with the trade was in Perth where his parents had bought a dairy. The dairy backed onto a bakery, and Phil’s mother was allowed to use the heat in the oven there, once bakery had finished for the day, to bake pies for their shop. Phil remembers little of Perth, however, and baking wasn’t his first choice of career. He was attracted to cheffing, but that was not an easy trade to get into — there was a four-year waiting list for apprenticeships.

Phil was about to sign up with the Navy and learn to cook there, but then his father found him a position at John and Hany van Til’s Rangiora Bakery. It began as work experience but obviously he liked the experience — “loved it,” he says — and John van Til liked him, and Phil took to baking with his typical gusto. “I haven’t looked back,” he says.

Striking out
Phil was just on 21, married to Jennifer and with a newborn child, when he first struck out on his own. The first bakery was a small corner shop in Ilam Road, near the University. Jennifer worked closely with him from the beginning. Phil did all the baking himself and employed three women in the shop. That business lasted for over 10 years.

The University proved a good customer. Phil supplies pies to the Student Union cafeteria there to this day.

Moving on
In 1985 the lease on the shop expired and the site was sold to an oil company for a petrol station. The Folters had to move on (though Phil notes that, because of local objections, the petrol station was never built).

They then bought an existing wholesale business, one with three staff, and grew it over a few years to employ 13. By then the premises were too small. Five years after the first move, and with more about 90 wholesale customers, it was time to move on again.

This time they moved to more adequate premises in Watts Road, Sockburn, where they are today.

The business remained totally wholesale for some years, but then they bought a couple of retail sites. Today, with about two dozen staff, they still have a busy wholesale business plus three retail outlets of their own, two in town and one an industrial takeaway.

The wholesale business includes some production under contract for a national bakery brand.

All in the dynasty?
Phil is proud to point out that his bakeries have always been close-knit family businesses. Not only has Jennifer been at his side throughout, but also today their son Daniel, a qualified baker himself, runs the all-important nightshift. Their oldest daughter, Christine, runs one of the shops, and their youngest, Philippa, does time in the shops as well.

Daniel didn’t train with his father, and once he qualified he did “the big OE” before returning to join and take shares in the family business.

Phil and Jennifer now have a grandson “coming through the ranks” as Phil puts it. He concedes that the new recruit is only one year old “so you can’t expect too much just yet”, but it’s clear that if Phil has his way Christchurch will one day see a Folter baking dynasty.

In the Society
As if he hasn’t done enough, Phil Folter has been on the executive of the Baking Society for 19 years without a break, five of them as president.

Naturally he had a close working relationship with Ray Walker, founder of the Baking Society, particularly as Ray lived just around the corner. Ray spent a lot of time at Phil’s bakehouse and Phil frequently visited Ray, talking baking and Society issues. It’s apparent that Ray was something of a mentor to Phil.

In those days, the Society revolved around Ray Walker. With Ray showing his age, it became apparent a few years ago that he would soon be retiring from the executive committee and that others would have to understand more of how the Society ticked. Consequently Phil devoted, along with Peter Gray, a great deal of time and effort to “getting inside Ray’s head.”

“We would have been floundering without that,” he says, especially following Ray’s untimely death. Ray kept an awful lot in his head.

Working closely over the years with Norman West has brought Phil rewards and a large measure of respect for Norman as well. “A very astute man,” says Phil, “and a very genuine person.”

Change and progress
Phil describes himself as conservative, “old-fashioned in some respects”, often unwilling to try new recipes and new ideas.

Though he describes himself also as competitive by nature, that conservatism has meant less participation in the Baking Competition lately as new lines replace the old. (The opportunity at Conferences to see them demonstrated has, says Phil, helped him greatly with tackling some of the new ideas and recipes.

Most bakers, he says, prefer to learn by looking and doing rather than reading, and that’s why the conferences today are so valuable.)

Phil may be conservative as a baker, but his self- and business-management is anything but stick-in-the-mud. These days he is concentrating on getting his staff trained correctly. “They’re only as good as you make them,” he says.

Training and more training
The training isn’t confined to the staff. Phil himself has been taking a first-line management course with Jane Davies, for whom Phil has a great deal of respect.

Following Jane’s advice, Phil is intent on making staff more responsible for their jobs: “I’m making the job theirs rather than mine. If it’s their job, they get a great deal more out of their lives,” he says.

In addition to that change, all his staff at present are doing the Crop & Food core skills course. No-one has refused to take the course and Phil intends to make the course compulsory. “The next person who comes to work for Montana Bakery will have to do it or they won’t get the job.”

In addition to his management training, Phil has participated in an intense RCC (Recognition of Current Competencies) course (see pages 6–7). Why? With developments such as food and workplace safety “I’m asking my staff to make significant changes, so I have show them I’m willing to change myself.”

The RCC is mainly a distance learning course. He undertook it also, he says, to understand what bakers training today have to go through. His apprenticeship was as a journeyman: just a matter of completing the hours. There were no block courses or assessments. Now, 30 years into his career, having done courses and been assessed, he has a better appreciation of the work and stresses involved.

He is proud to be an assessor, and he also feels obliged for that reason to undergo assessment himself. And he has a third reason. “I wanted to be a mole,” he says.

“As a member of the Bakery Sector Advisory Group, making decisions and offering advice about other people’s training, I wanted to see the work from their point of view. It gives the SAG committee another perspective.”

“It all helps my staff and helps my apprentices since I have a better understanding of what they’re trying to do.” For proof that it helps, Phil points to the success of two of his apprentices in the last competition.

Furthermore Phil now has two baking qualifications to hang on his wall along with the many competition medals and that well-earned Achievement Award.