Business View Magazine
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went to close, they found out that they weren’t getting
the recipe. So they had to develop their own recipe to
make the business work.
“They spent a lot of grueling hours, lots of sampling,
and many, many different batches to come up with the
recipe that we enjoy, today. They had a second loca-
tion in a farmers’ market in Shipshewana, Indiana,
and that’s where I discovered them. Ben and I became
friends. He introduced me to all of his bakery items,
and then, eventually, to the pretzel, which I thought
was just out-of-this-world good. I shared that with my
business partner, Brian Krider. Once he tried the prod-
uct and fell in love, we both knew that it was really
something special.
“We started wholesaling Ben’s bakery items, including
the pretzel. We were selling to just a couple of places
as a lunchtime item for them. That went on for a cou-
ple of years – just selling product here and there and
eventually Brian had this epiphany one day and said,
‘We should just start a pretzel business around this
pretzel.’ So, we wrote a business plan in ’07, focused
around a company called Ben’s Soft Pretzels. It was
going to be kind of a brick and mortar, mall-type loca-
tion, a fresh-baked bakery. We didn’t know very much
at the beginning. We figured we’d get into this and
learn a lot about it as we go. We added a franchising
component to the business plan and said that when
we get to a certain point we’re going to start franchis-
ing, because we know this product is that good.”
The partners opened their first store in Elkhart, in
May 2008. Their all-cash investment paid them back
within the first year. That success led to opening up
store number two within 18 months of the first one;
