Linda Purl turned 71 this week, and the "Happy Days" actress is running the busiest schedule she has described in years: a new album out this summer, an off-Broadway one-woman play in Manhattan this month, and a sourdough bread business she co-runs with partner Patrick Duffy that has expanded into more than 2,300 Kroger locations. The case for calling this a success is in the numbers. The risk is that the business was built on a product designed to eliminate repeat purchase.
Purl and Duffy started the bread company six years ago, committing all profits to food scarcity causes. Purl described the founding ambition as aiming to be "Newman's Own wannabes." The structural problem she named: they were selling sourdough starters, and a sourdough starter, once purchased, keeps going indefinitely. "Once you buy a sourdough starter, which is what we were selling, you never have to buy it again," she said. Her summary of the model: terrible.
The read-through to the Kroger numbers is striking because the model should not have survived at scale. During the garage phase, total charitable donations reached $250 over the entire run. Since partnering with Kroger and expanding distribution across the country over the past year, that figure has crossed $200,000. The 2,300-store milestone is what changed the donation math, and Purl acknowledged the gap between where they started and where the numbers now sit.
The counterargument to the unit-economics problem is that the Kroger partnership almost certainly reoriented the product. A sourdough starter is a one-time purchase; a finished loaf is not. Purl did not specify what Kroger is currently stocking, and whether the retail expansion moved to finished bread rather than starters is not stated in her remarks. If it did, the structural flaw she described may already be solved, and the $200,000 figure is the evidence.
On balance, the charitable output is what the venture was built around, and the donation trajectory from garage to Kroger tells that story plainly enough. Purl said she and Duffy plan to continue as long as Kroger will have them.
Her one-woman play "Crazy Mama" runs this month at a venue on 59th Street in Manhattan, directed by Anson Williams, her former "Happy Days" costar who played Potsie, and written by Williams' wife, Sharon Scott Williams. Her new album "From My Heart," a collection of Great American Songbook standards and jazz, came out this summer. Recent screen credits include "General Hospital," "The Bold and the Beautiful," "After Forever," and the film "Hollywood Grit," which costars Duffy and Tyrese Gibson.