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Business & Tech

Business Profile: Weinrich's Bakery

Three Weinrich generations have owned bakeries in Manhattan, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Willow Grove. The bakery recently created a colorful cake for the closing of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station.

At the end of March, Stephen Weinrich rode to work on his bicycle, prepared to watch over the creation of a masterpiece.

It would be an exciting day for Weinrich’s Bakery and Kaffeehaus in Willow Grove.

Stephen's brother Ted, the bakery’s design artist, would create a cake for the of the area’s most famous landmark: the Willow Grove Naval Air Base in Horsham.

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“I thought about the cake all weekend,” said Ted, who is married to Stella, who helps with the bakery's popular many-tiered wedding cakes.

He produced a computer-generated design for the thick buttercream icing that shows key facets of the Navy Air Base.

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The vanilla and chocolate layer cake was the size of a medium-sized adult: 5 feet, 5 inches long and 3 feet wide.

“It’s a physical representation of Ted’s talents and of what we do,” said Stephen, 37, the youngest of the five Weinrich boys. (Ted is the oldest.)

Ted and Stephen run the bakery at 55 Easton Road, though everyone in the large family, including grandchildren, assists on holidays.

Twenty-five employees, most of them part-time, work regular hours, including the bakers, who arrive at 4:30 a.m.

When the Weinrichs learned the Navy base was closing, they contacted the base and offered to bake a cake for the final gala celebration. In fact, Channel 10 came out and filmed a segment about the cake.

Stephen said that everyone at the bakery was sad to see the base close, recognizing the large number of civilians that lost their jobs—and no more air shows, which thrilled crowds over the years.

The service people and the National Guard frequented Weinrichs.

“We’ve made cakes with the Blue Angels design. We’ve made cakes for generals,” he said.

Weinrich’s father, Edward, invented the proprietary buttercream recipe.

“It never gets grainy, like most icings,” said Stephen.

Edward, now in his mid-70s and semi-retired, was a consultant to chemists, working for a company that did food technology, said Stephen. Food, after all, is made from chemicals, though we don’t think of it that way.

“My dad developed a way of refining sugar," he said. "Our buttercream doesn’t ever recrystallize and get that sandy taste. It’s always smooth and creamy.”

Weinrich’s Bakery is such a landmark at its corner location at Easton and York road, near the Burger King, it’s hard to believe there was nothing but green farmlands when Edward Weinrich bought the property and built his bakery back in 1952.

With a shop in Germantown, he saw that people were moving to the suburbs and began looking for a suburban location, said Stephen.

The Willow Grove Amusement Park was still popular, and a trolley took passengers from Philadelphia to the park. The trolley ran right in front of the proposed new bakery.

Today a SEPTA bus stops nearby.

With his keen business sense, Edward decided this was the spot, and judging by the brisk business, it still is 59 years later.

Come to the bakery in the morning and people are lining up—take a number, please—for their coffee and sweet treats like jelly doughnuts, croissants and fastnachts, which were popular during Lent and made with a special German jelly recipe.

Naumberg, Germany, was once home to the Weinrich family.

In fact, relatives still live in Germany and pronounce the family name with a soft “ch” as in “rich.”

Young August Weinrich, Stephen’s great-uncle, arrived at Ellis Island in 1919.

August arrived with enough money to start his own bakery on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. The family "had pooled their resources" back in Germany, said Stephen.

Business was so good August wrote home: Send another family member to help out.

Next to arrive was Stephen’s grandfather, Herman Weinrich, then 17.

The bakery was so popular, August and Herman decided to open their second Manhattan bakery, this time at 80th and Third Avenue.

Their arrival in America was part of the great German immigration, which lasted from 1820 to World War I.

The Germantown section of Philadelphia, where Edward Weinrich, Stephen’s father, would open a bakery, was the first permanent settlement in America of German-Americans, who are now 17 percent of the population, according to Internet sources.

Bakers get up early, so the Weinrich tradition was to live on top of the bakery. Edward Weinrich lived on the top floor of his Germantown bakery.

“My dad was born in a bakery on Front Street in 1933,” said Stephen, the family historian.

Semi-retired now, Edward and his wife Kathryn “Kippie” still visit the bakery nearly every day.

“Dad is our consultant,” said Stephen. “He’s been in the bakery business for over 70 years.  He’s done everything and seen everything.”

Their biggest competitor, said Stephen, is Starbucks.

“I’d rather have competition from a local coffeeshop rather than a Seattle-based chain,” he said.

“This is a community,” said Stephen. “We’ve served families baking wedding cakes and birthday cakes.”

Stephen got into the bakery business as soon as he could walk.

“My favorite thing was working with my dad,” he said.

He’d report to the bakery as often as he could while attending elementary school at St. David’s in Willow Grove, LaSalle High School and Temple University, where he majored in English.

Though you’d never know it, tractor-trailers bring supplies in through the back door. Weinrich's uses 15 different types of chocolate, as well as different kinds of flour, and nuts such as hazelnuts, walnuts and pecans, all requiring checks to make sure the nuts are fresh.

Quite the connoisseur, Stephen discourses on his choice of coffee and doughnut for the day.

“If it’s a bold coffee like a Sumatra or a French Roast, then the sweetness of a glazed doughnut goes well with it,” he said.

He limits himself to one sweet treat per day.

Thinking of starting your own walk-in business like the Weinrichs did for this location on Easton Road?

“You must be in the right spot,” said Stephen. “Sit on the corner, and count the cars that drive by.”

“The second most important thing is you’ve got to know what you’re doing,” he added.

Customers filled the bakery on Easter weekend. After giving up certain foods for Lent, they were ready for the Easter breads and cakes served up by the bakery.

Could August Weinrich be smiling in his grave?

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Weinrich's Bakery and Kaffeehaus

Location: 55 Easton Road, Willow Grove, PA 19090

Phone:  215-659-7062

Hours: Closed Mondays; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.; Fridays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m.; and Sundays, 8 a.m. - 2 p.m.

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