Talormade – up from the ashes

It’s a beautiful autumn day in the seaside neighbourhood of Oslobukta. Every building here is new and almost sparkle as much as the fjord today. People of all ages are out enjoying the warmth of the sun, and Talormade's front door is wide open. The first thing that greets us when we come inside is a beautiful display of delicious donuts. So many choices, how can we pick just one?

Wavy neon lights in pink and green run above the counter, shelves stacked with Talor's own coffee stand next to it. Large green plants grow everywhere and enhance the happy and playful design. It feels like we're on holiday visiting Willy Wonka's cousin.

We sit down at a round table by the window closest to the fjord.

Talor arrives a bit late, and apologises in a beautiful Australian accent. Her colourful blouse and curly hair leave no doubt that she's the mother of this fun place.

She smiles.

– Do I have mad hair? I just arrived here on a scooter.

We assure her it's fine, and she gets herself a coffee and a donut. There. Resting heart rate.

She apologises again, being the boss means dropping everything to go fix things. She had a little fire to put out, but it's all good now.

She looks out the window. We have a VIP view from here. The beautiful apartments in Bispevika are right next door, the fjord is bathing in sun and brand-new Munch Museum sits by the waterline, so effortlessly.

She takes a sip of her coffee.

The sun fills the space with wonderful light, and the beautiful green plants cast shadows on the dotted floor.

– I think this part of Oslo is so beautiful. We signed this place when it was just a drawing on a piece of paper and the land mass had not even been made yet.

We stare at her. Seriously?

She nods.

– It was two years ago, I think. Before we even knew Maeemo was going to be here. We took a huge risk. And the area turned out so special.

Lines of people are forming outside her door. It's Friday afternoon and, everyone wants a treat.

Her voice is soft, but determined.

– I really want Oslo to be on the culinary map. You know when people travel to Copenhagen for food, I want Oslo to be that place too.

She's been busy the last years doing her magic all over the city to make it blossom. She compares her job to spinning plates.

– If I neglect one of the places for too long, I need to go back and give it some attention and love.

She laughs.

With her café in Bispevika as well as a collaboration with 7-Eleven in Storgata, makes her schedule quite busy.

It is wild. So how does an Australian decide to come to Oslo to make coffee and donuts anyway? She tells us it all started in 2012, when she got a job offer from Oslo's well-known coffee god Tim Wendelboe.

– I was living in Paris when he offered me a job. Working for Tim was a huge dream of mine, he is very well known internationally as well.

She laughs.

– I had never been in Oslo before, and I think I landed on the 1st of December, it was minus 20 degrees outside and I was like "what have I done?".

She worked for Tim for three years, and during that time, met her husband here.

– Yes, she smiles, I married a guy from Bergen.

She describes herself as an ambitious person, still, she didn't really know where to go after Tim's.

– Working for Tim was my dream, and as good as it's going to get, I thought. But then I realised, OK, I'm married to a Norwegian now, I'm not going anywhere. I love Norway, but I think the culinary situation here is a little bit disappointing.

She looks at us as if she's asking for forgiveness. It's no secret – a lot has happened with Oslo's food scene over the last few years.

She started to think about what makes her excited and happy.

– On my days off work, I loved going around to cafes. In Melbourne we have such a great brunch culture, and that's something I really missed from home.

– I thought to myself: I'm really good at coffee, I'm a trained pastry chef, how about I put those two together!

She decided to bring something to Norway that wasn't already there. Something with high-quality ingredients, something unique, something to have fun with. It had to be donuts.

– Donuts are really fun and silly and a little bit stupid, and they're colourful. There is so many opportunities with donuts, they're limitless.

She went back to Melbourne for a month to train at a friend's donut cafe. She came back to Oslo for Restaurant Day at the end of 2015, and did a pop-up in her own apartment.

– I had a line out the door, and I made the donuts with a little fryer from the discount electronics store. It was crazy, we made like 200 donuts by hand!

She laughs and shakes her head.

– I was so unprepared for how busy it was. It was absolutely mental.

From that point on, she got invited to different restaurants and cafes to do pop-ups with them. She would do a pop-up once or twice a month, all the while building an online coffee roastery business with one of her friends, and on top of that, working a part time job.

– The pop-ups got bigger and bigger. Every single time we were selling out more and earlier than the last time, and people were getting angry when we sold out.

It became a cultural phenomenon in the city. Oslo hadn't really had a pop-up culture like this before.

She pauses.

– I have been quite sick mentally actually, and this thing built me back up. I felt like I was building my community and something meaningful.

Talor was 28 at this point, doing something she truly cared about and believed in. Her journey ultimately led her to opening a coffee roastery at Youngstorget with her business partner at the end of 2017. They decided to bring in the donuts too, because they complemented the coffee so well.

– Just straight away there were lines out the door every single day, we sold out at mid-day and could never make enough, and the kitchen was way too small and we didn't have enough staff.

She started working extreme hours, up to 300 a month. Shifts from 5:30 in the morning till 8 o'clock at night became the new normal, every day for three months.

– It was nuts. I went quite mad to be honest, I ended up getting really sick, again, because I burned out.

And it all fell apart the day she received a letter of resignation, signed the chairman of the board of the company she had founded and was a co-owner of.

– I'm sure you saw it in the news, it was a massive break up with my business partner, and it was all really sad. Everybody got involved and took sides.

Hearing people slander about her was hard.

– Unfortunately, when you're in the public eye, people say whatever they want to say, they take the narrative and change it to whatever suits their purpose.

She pauses.

– I was in a really bad place and my mum flew in from Australia with less than 24 hours' notice, and she sat with me on the couch for one week.

Talor decided to sue for unreasonable termination, but to avoid a long and painful trial, the parties reached a settlement.

– This is the thing, you see it in everything that I have done, it's my work, the blueprint belongs to me. And I think that a lot of people took that really personally because they saw how hard I worked to build it, and then they saw it being taken away from me.

The publicity might have felt like a curse, but it turned out to be a gift as well.

– I had a lot of people reach out to me wanting to finance my next project. Which is amazing. It was the worst moment of my life, but then all of these quite big businesses came in and said they wanted a meeting.

She had always felt a bit like an outsider in the city before. But now something had changed. Suddenly, in the darkest moment of her life, she felt wonderfully accepted by the community.

– People really care. When I had the support from the people to build this thing up again, from the ashes, I really felt like this is my home, and this is my community. This is where I belong because people really believe in me and want to help.

We get a bit distracted by the line outside the door, which is getting longer by the minute. Talor smiles. She finally chose to cooperate with the Oslo-based bakery Åpent Bakeri.

– To be here in this moment, and have people being attracted to this company and the people who work here, and to be surrounded by love and light and happiness and stuff, OK, it’s like I needed to go through all of that to get here.

Her stores are known to be playful, unique and happy places to be. It's not just the treats, it's the whole experience of stepping into her colourful and unbiased world.

She gets an inspired look on her face.

The ever-growing line starts to worry us even more. How many donuts does she need to make each day? She says it's a constant struggle to figure it out, as donuts are best enjoyed fresh and food waste makes her sick.

– We want to do everything we can do to avoid food waste because it's awful. We want to sell out. Typically, on a Saturday, which is our busiest day, we'll make 2700 donuts.

And sell out?

She nods and laughs.

– Yeah, it's mental. It's absolutely nuts.

In order to do this, the earliest shift in her bakery starts at 5 AM.

– People often ask me, why don't you open earlier? It's because I don't want anyone to be at work earlier than five-o'clock in the morning. I think that's completely not ok.

Her staff in the bakery and the stores consists of both Norwegians and foreigners, boys and girls.

– Creating job opportunities for people is something that's important for me. I think a lot of people feel that it's hard to find work here when you only speak English. Especially if you have a foreign name on your resume.

She shows of what she calls her kaffenorsk (‘coffee Norwegian’) like it's the easiest thing in the world.

– I can talk you through a full coffee service in Norwegian. I'm not very good at it, but I'm OK. But I feel like a professional when I speak my native language. And I think that most Norwegians are pretty OK with that.

By the look of the line outside, that seems like a safe assumption.

She lights up.

– I think I have hired 50 people in my life at this point, and that feels so amazing!

She says there's always things that can improve. But she just can't stop praising her workers.

– Honestly, it's really a beautiful bunch of people that are attracted to this place, and what that means is the people who work here are lovely, so the customers are lovely. It's just a big love fest honestly. And you can kind of see it.

– Sure, my name is on the door, but I want my people to feel a sense of ownership. Not just in the sense of words, because none of this would exist without them. I try to make them know that's how I feel about it. I try to post on Instagram and talk about my employees' success, if anything, more than my own.

There's little spare time for a busy boss. She hasn't really taken a break since everything fell apart, she says. Except for one day last week when they moved.

She looks guilty.

– It's so brutal. I know I'm important to the company, but I also want it to operate without me here.

She has just hired a new kitchen manager and someone to do HR in order to get some more time for her private life as well.

– Right now I'm trying to set things up so that I don't have to be present all the time. I think that’s a sign of a good boss, someone who can delegate and walk away.

Her cup of coffee is almost empty.

She ponders.

– The goals also change though. As soon as you get where you want to be it's like, OK, what's next?

Yes, what is next? We ask her to dream a little for us.

– If we grow the company, it's going to give more people an opportunity to be a part of this. My idea is that maybe we'll open a shop in Bergen, if we can, and if not Bergen, then maybe we'll go to the Scandinavian capitols.

She plays with the idea of having shops all over Europe.

– What if we had a shop in each European capital. What a cool thing that would be! Maybe people will see us as the Scandinavian donut shop!

A lot has happened in Oslo lately. It's a city, reborn.

– You got a lot of young people who has been working with and training with well establishes businesses, you got the people who used to work at Maeemo are now opening their own restaurants.

Her eyes glitter with excitement.

– This is when you see a city blossom, when people finance young people who are doing interesting things and who have unique visions and ideas.

– This should tell those who want to invest in businesses in this country to invest in people, invest in ideas, invest in passion, I guess, even though that sounds like a cliché.

Still, business can be very competitive.

– I want to show people that it's not about competing against each other. There's room enough for everyone to be great. There's so much room in Oslo for everyone to succeed. We don't have to fight against each other, we don't have to compete against each other.

Her voice is firm, this is a no brainer.

Her original dream was to build a wholesome business for the people who work there. A friendly and inviting space for the customers and employees.

– This vision has been expressed now, it took me my second try to really figure out the right recipe. In the first one, I sacrificed myself in order to do it, and I learned some really hard lessons the first time around.

– Like, I have to make sure that I'm OK too, in order to make things work.

She looks at her beautiful store and her people in it.

– I want to be here in Oslobukta so much more than I can. But I have just come to terms that I am only human.

She laughs.

We thank her for her time, as we know it is precious.

We line up with the rest of the city and treat ourself with a chocolate covered donut.

It's Friday, after all.

And it's true what they say: They taste as delicious as they look.