September 4, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Bredenbeck’s Bakery owner maintains family tradition
by JOEL HOFFMANN

Bredenbeck’s owner Karen Boyd (Photo by Erin Vertreace)

“We don’t waste an inch of space,” said Karen Boyd, proprietor of Bredenbeck’s Bakery, as she led me behind two glass display cases (filled with cookies, donuts and Danish pastry) and into the humid baking room.

From start to finish, it takes about eight hours to make a wedding cake — but that’s the easy part.

Getting the bride to commit to a cake design is the real challenge.

“Some brides will call us two or three times before the wedding because they see something else they want,” Diana Anello said as she shaped a five-tier cake on Bredenbeck’s second floor.

But that’s not a problem, Boyd said as we climbed the stairs to the cake-tasting room.

“As you can see, everything goes,” she said.

The plain butter cream cake is available for those with a more conventional taste. But for those who want to make a statement, the options are astonishing. Trimming and color and shape are negotiable.

The demand for three-dimensional sculpture cakes has grown with the Food Network’s ratings, Boyd said. It has raised the level of expectations and artistry, and Bredenbeck’s, now in its 25th year in Chestnut Hill, is responding to the trend.

“Every cake is important,” she said.

Bredenbeck’s has been a Philadelphia tradition since 1889, when Frederick R. Bredenbeck, a Bavarian immigrant, opened his first shop in Northern Liberties. For three generations, the Bredenbeck family ran the bakery and ice cream store in Northern Liberties and at satellite locations in Germantown, Mt. Airy and Mayfair. In 1954, the Bredenbeck family handed the recipes and business name to Walter and Otto Haug, Boyd’s father and grandfather.

Boyd’s family has been intertwined with the Bredenbeck family for decades, but she tried to distance herself from the tradition by getting an education degree at Temple University and going into teaching. But she found herself drawn back to the business, and in 1983 she opened Bredenbeck’s in Chestnut Hill and taught herself the family trade.

Her work weeks are always busy (six days, 60 hours), but she doesn’t regret her decision.

 “I’m really happy that after 25 years I can still say that I love what I do,” she said.

The smell of the bakery is a time machine for Boyd. It takes her back to the days of her youth and reminds her why she got into the baking business in the first place.

“The older I get, the more I appreciate that I make people happy,” she said, adding that baked goods cannot help but make people feel warm inside.

Boyd plans to “steer the ship” for at least another 10 years, but she knows that she will have to consider the future of Bredenbeck’s soon enough. She has three children — Lauren, 21, Irvy, 19, and Jacob 17 — and although they have always been willing to help their mother at the bakery, none of them has yet expressed interest in taking over.

But there’s no need to fret about that yet, she said. Despite the rise in flour, dairy and sugar prices, business is good, and the customer base is constantly expanding through mail-order cookie delivery across the country. (She has even shipped specialty German cookies to Alaska and Puerto Rico.)