http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/26/easter-caribbean-golden-krust/2023083/
Talk to Lowell Hawthorne for a few minutes and he'll talk to you about lessons learned, about finding opportunity in crisis.
Hawthorne, 52, the president and CEO of Golden Krust Bakery and Grill, built his family-run company — a successful Caribbean food chain that reaches from East Coast storefronts and ShopRites to Costcos in California — by overcoming obstacles. He chronicles his rise in the new business memoir, "The Baker's Son" (Akashic Books, $24.95).
Golden Krust has 120 franchises across the country, selling Jamaican beef patties, jerk chicken, sauces and authentic breads of the island. The motto is "We take the taste of the Caribbean to the world."
In order to do that, Hawthorne and his family have had to overcome challenges in the business world and an ugly episode of racism in his own Westchester neighborhood.
There was the "patty crisis," when a competitor refused to sell Hawthorne the beef patties he needed. With very little notice, Hawthorne had to devise a recipe to replace the Jamaican staple, a pocket of bright orange dough enveloping a spicy beef mixture.
"My dad, a man of wisdom, kept telling us to be calm, relax, everything's going to be OK, trust in the Lord," Hawthorne recalls. "And I was like, 'Dad! You can't be for real. I have no patties and you're telling me everything's going to be OK?' "
But Ephraim Hawthorne, a man of faith, got his son thinking, then moving, on an odyssey to create his own beef patty. The journey took him to London for the perfect dough recipe, to Chicago for the machinery to form the dough and patties, and then to Jamaica for a chef with the secret recipe.
Lowell Hawthorne was told about an old-timer named "Mel," semiretired and living in Maidstone, Manchester, Jamaica.
"I had no address to go on, no next of kin or friend's address, no listing of any kind that I could use to find him," he writes. "Just Maidstone."
"I went around the town asking 'Do you know Mel? Do you know Mel?' " he recalls with a raspy laugh. "I felt like I was on a journey to nowhere."
He found Mel, who soon came to the U.S. and delivered just the right mix of beef, scallions and spices. And Golden Krust had its own patty. These days, the factory cranks out 400 patties a minute.
"The lesson learned from that is opportunity through crisis," Lowell Hawthorne says, sitting in the Golden Krust headquarters on Park Avenue in the Bronx. "Had we not been cut off from our patty supply, we would not have achieved the success we have today. We would not have become one of the largest Caribbean businesses in this country. We have an endowment, with scholarships, 120 franchises and we employ 230 people on this block."
Rooted in Jamaica
"The Baker's Son" is an American success story that reaches back to a tiny Jamaican hilltop town called Border, to the sixth of Ephraim Hawthorne's 11 children, Lowell Hawthorne, who started in business at age 10, raising rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs. That enterprise, he writes, led him to start to "think in multiples."
He then became a successful minibus driver, ferrying tourists and college students into bustling Kingston.
He had the drive to move to the United States, arriving the day after he turned 21. Standing in the customs line at John F. Kennedy International Airport, he concluded: "This is the kind of place that embraces immigrants."
Eventually, he got a job stocking inventory at the New York Police Department, studied at Bronx Community College and became an accountant. Before long, he was working in the NYPD pensions department, crunching numbers.
In 1989, his father gathered the family together and suggested they "set up a little place" to sell Jamaican breads and buns, as he had done in tiny Border, Jamaica. And Golden Krust was born, with contributions from all sorts of Hawthornes.
"My wife, Lorna, does the HR and my brother, who worked for Ford, still oversees the trucks and machinery," Lowell Hawthorne says. "He's a part owner, but there he is in his work outfit, overseeing all the machinery."
Golden Krust occupies a full city block in the Bronx and employs 230 workers in two shifts from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. six days a week.
"Running a family business is not an easy business, but you have to be fair," Lowell Hawthorne says. Hawthornes are hired, but they are also fired. On the rare occasions when their skill set or work ethic didn't match the job requirements, Lowell Hawthorne has had to let relatives go, but he always does it gently, to still make it possible to gather around the family table without animosity.
The Golden Krust factory in the Bronx, N.Y., produces many of the company's products including their famous beef and chicken patties and breads.(Photo: Ricky Flores/The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News)
Easter bun and memories
By Good Friday, Golden Krust will have churned out 150,000 loaves of the seasonal favorite, Easter buns. The buns are actually long loaves, with candied fruit, allspice, anise, cinnamon, nutmeg and rosewater. Jamaicans traditionally serve two slices of the bun with a slice of cheddar cheese in between. But it's not just any cheddar cheese, but a particular kind of hard Jamaican cheddar cheese that comes in a can and is sold, Lowell Hawthorne says, at Korean grocery stores.
Before his death in 2006, Ephraim Hawthorne would arrive from Jamaica each year in the Easter bun season and sit in a chair beside the huge Golden Krust ovens, inspecting the loaves as they emerged, a one-man quality-control department whose opinion could send an entire batch to the garbage bin if it didn't meet his standards.
In 2007, after Ephraim Hawthorne's death, Lowell Hawthorne faced his first Easter bun season without his father's input. That year, the baker's son became the baker.
For years, Hawthorne and his family — he has three sons and a daughter — lived on Knollwood Road in Greenburgh. When he purchased land across the street, and moved into the Pocantico Hills School District, he began to build his home. Arriving at the excavation site one day, he and his family saw that someone had spray-painted racist graffiti on the lumber and the bulldozer.
"It was a painful experience for all of us," he recalls. "We had lived in the community for 10 years. We just moved across the street. But when we moved in, I called the entire community and invited them into my house, served them some Golden Krust patties and it worked out well. The lesson was to always show folks love in adversity."
Lessons learned.
@Kritic @Box Cutta @Blackking @The HONORABLE SKJ @Family Ram
Black Excellence
Talk to Lowell Hawthorne for a few minutes and he'll talk to you about lessons learned, about finding opportunity in crisis.
Hawthorne, 52, the president and CEO of Golden Krust Bakery and Grill, built his family-run company — a successful Caribbean food chain that reaches from East Coast storefronts and ShopRites to Costcos in California — by overcoming obstacles. He chronicles his rise in the new business memoir, "The Baker's Son" (Akashic Books, $24.95).
Golden Krust has 120 franchises across the country, selling Jamaican beef patties, jerk chicken, sauces and authentic breads of the island. The motto is "We take the taste of the Caribbean to the world."
In order to do that, Hawthorne and his family have had to overcome challenges in the business world and an ugly episode of racism in his own Westchester neighborhood.
There was the "patty crisis," when a competitor refused to sell Hawthorne the beef patties he needed. With very little notice, Hawthorne had to devise a recipe to replace the Jamaican staple, a pocket of bright orange dough enveloping a spicy beef mixture.
"My dad, a man of wisdom, kept telling us to be calm, relax, everything's going to be OK, trust in the Lord," Hawthorne recalls. "And I was like, 'Dad! You can't be for real. I have no patties and you're telling me everything's going to be OK?' "
But Ephraim Hawthorne, a man of faith, got his son thinking, then moving, on an odyssey to create his own beef patty. The journey took him to London for the perfect dough recipe, to Chicago for the machinery to form the dough and patties, and then to Jamaica for a chef with the secret recipe.
Lowell Hawthorne was told about an old-timer named "Mel," semiretired and living in Maidstone, Manchester, Jamaica.
"I had no address to go on, no next of kin or friend's address, no listing of any kind that I could use to find him," he writes. "Just Maidstone."
"I went around the town asking 'Do you know Mel? Do you know Mel?' " he recalls with a raspy laugh. "I felt like I was on a journey to nowhere."
He found Mel, who soon came to the U.S. and delivered just the right mix of beef, scallions and spices. And Golden Krust had its own patty. These days, the factory cranks out 400 patties a minute.
"The lesson learned from that is opportunity through crisis," Lowell Hawthorne says, sitting in the Golden Krust headquarters on Park Avenue in the Bronx. "Had we not been cut off from our patty supply, we would not have achieved the success we have today. We would not have become one of the largest Caribbean businesses in this country. We have an endowment, with scholarships, 120 franchises and we employ 230 people on this block."
Rooted in Jamaica
"The Baker's Son" is an American success story that reaches back to a tiny Jamaican hilltop town called Border, to the sixth of Ephraim Hawthorne's 11 children, Lowell Hawthorne, who started in business at age 10, raising rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs. That enterprise, he writes, led him to start to "think in multiples."
He then became a successful minibus driver, ferrying tourists and college students into bustling Kingston.
He had the drive to move to the United States, arriving the day after he turned 21. Standing in the customs line at John F. Kennedy International Airport, he concluded: "This is the kind of place that embraces immigrants."
Eventually, he got a job stocking inventory at the New York Police Department, studied at Bronx Community College and became an accountant. Before long, he was working in the NYPD pensions department, crunching numbers.
In 1989, his father gathered the family together and suggested they "set up a little place" to sell Jamaican breads and buns, as he had done in tiny Border, Jamaica. And Golden Krust was born, with contributions from all sorts of Hawthornes.
"My wife, Lorna, does the HR and my brother, who worked for Ford, still oversees the trucks and machinery," Lowell Hawthorne says. "He's a part owner, but there he is in his work outfit, overseeing all the machinery."
Golden Krust occupies a full city block in the Bronx and employs 230 workers in two shifts from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. six days a week.
"Running a family business is not an easy business, but you have to be fair," Lowell Hawthorne says. Hawthornes are hired, but they are also fired. On the rare occasions when their skill set or work ethic didn't match the job requirements, Lowell Hawthorne has had to let relatives go, but he always does it gently, to still make it possible to gather around the family table without animosity.
The Golden Krust factory in the Bronx, N.Y., produces many of the company's products including their famous beef and chicken patties and breads.(Photo: Ricky Flores/The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News)
Easter bun and memories
By Good Friday, Golden Krust will have churned out 150,000 loaves of the seasonal favorite, Easter buns. The buns are actually long loaves, with candied fruit, allspice, anise, cinnamon, nutmeg and rosewater. Jamaicans traditionally serve two slices of the bun with a slice of cheddar cheese in between. But it's not just any cheddar cheese, but a particular kind of hard Jamaican cheddar cheese that comes in a can and is sold, Lowell Hawthorne says, at Korean grocery stores.
Before his death in 2006, Ephraim Hawthorne would arrive from Jamaica each year in the Easter bun season and sit in a chair beside the huge Golden Krust ovens, inspecting the loaves as they emerged, a one-man quality-control department whose opinion could send an entire batch to the garbage bin if it didn't meet his standards.
In 2007, after Ephraim Hawthorne's death, Lowell Hawthorne faced his first Easter bun season without his father's input. That year, the baker's son became the baker.
For years, Hawthorne and his family — he has three sons and a daughter — lived on Knollwood Road in Greenburgh. When he purchased land across the street, and moved into the Pocantico Hills School District, he began to build his home. Arriving at the excavation site one day, he and his family saw that someone had spray-painted racist graffiti on the lumber and the bulldozer.
"It was a painful experience for all of us," he recalls. "We had lived in the community for 10 years. We just moved across the street. But when we moved in, I called the entire community and invited them into my house, served them some Golden Krust patties and it worked out well. The lesson was to always show folks love in adversity."
Lessons learned.
@Kritic @Box Cutta @Blackking @The HONORABLE SKJ @Family Ram
Black Excellence
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