Three Brothers Bakery:
The King and Queen of Disasters
Interview with Janice and Bobby Jucker,
Owners, Three Brothers Bakery, USA
By Lee Hoverd
That Three Brothers Bakery, a family business with 200-year-old roots, has a successful strategy for facing adversity is no surprise. For the award-winning purveyor of traditional baked goods and desserts, the challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic may be unique, but operating under extreme circumstances is nothing new.
Having survived the ravages of World War II in Europe, brothers Sigmund, Sol and Max Jucker, who came from a long line of old-world bakers, immigrated to Houston, Texas. Once settled, they established their bakery – a continuation of the family business in Poland – making handmade, artisanal bread, rolls, cookies, cakes and pies. Even though the newcomers offered an unfamiliar product, their perseverance and craft saw them through, as it continues to do today.
Representing the family’s fifth generation, Sigmund’s son Bobby and his wife Janice now run the award-winning business. Their tenure has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows: in 2014, they received widespread national attention after their Pumpecapple Piecake was featured on The Food Network. Only six years before, however, Hurricane Ike had torn the bakery's roof off, and the Juckers were forced to put operations on hold for nine months while they rebuilt. Just like the four generations of bakers before them, Janice and Bobby have become familiar with the uncertainty that is part of managing any business.
We spoke to Bobby and Janice about applying the inspiration they draw from Sigmund's story, how they learned the importance of preparedness and why people are the priority in a crisis.
Images courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Images courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
How much did your family’s origin story behind Three Brothers Bakery resonate with you and influence your transition into the business?
Bobby: My father and his brothers were Holocaust survivors, which is incredible, but their stories started to lose their impact with me because I heard them so often. When I began working in the business, however, I developed an entirely new appreciation for them. I saw first-hand how hard my father and uncles were working, not only as business owners but also as craftsmen – deeply passionate about their product. For example, they would work for hours at a time preparing traditional Kaiser rolls by hand. They passed that skill onto me, and now I believe I’m probably one of the last producers of handmade Kaiser rolls in the world.
While working closely with my father and uncles, I heard their stories of courage and resiliency, and their dedication became engrained in me. They came to a country where white bread was the staple. There wasn’t a bakery like ours anywhere in Texas, but they persevered, nevertheless. I can remember customers coming from over two and a half hours away to buy our corn rye and the heavy rye we still make today. Entire families, and even communities, would order ahead and come to collect as many as 90 loaves of bread before making the long trip home. It wasn’t until after I started working at Three Brothers Bakery that I really understood what an accomplishment that was – how my father and uncles were true survivors.
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
COVID-19 isn't the first crisis that you've had to navigate as owners. How have the Gulf of Mexico's infamous storms impacted your business over the years?
Bobby: The first tropical storm was Allison in 2001 – it flooded the bakery and caused quite a bit of damage. At the time, I honestly didn’t know if we were going to come out the other side intact, but I thought about what my father and my uncles had gone through years ago and used that as inspiration to pick myself up and move forward, no matter how hard or daunting it seemed. And that’s what I did.
Several years later, in 2008, Hurricane Ike rolled through and ripped our roof off. We were consequently shut down for nine months, working from a trailer and doing any of the baking in borrowed kitchens. It was a difficult time, but again, thinking about my father and uncles, and everything they had been through, helped me pick up the pieces.
Janice: We made sure we kept our commitments. We weren’t selling retail and wouldn’t for nine months, but we had the Houston Astros baseball team contract to fulfil and events to supply cakes for. For example, couples and families had wedding dates planned, and we needed to honour our commitments to them.
Bobby: We pretty much threw everything away and started over, but then our business started to take off, and we entered a growth phase and began opening more locations.
Janice: We hired a general manager and management team, which was essential to our growth as there were limits to what Bobby and I could accomplish on our own. He was tied up making products in the back, and I was busy with customer service in the front. The management team allowed us to pursue expansion.
Bobby: I was very protective of the products we were making and the high standard we were making them to, but our business coach persuaded me to empower our employees. So, I incorporated them into the baking process, and soon enough, I was delegating other responsibilities besides. They did fantastically, and it gave me the freedom to appreciate what my family had built and was continuing to build. It helped changed my attitude and perspective, and consequently made me a better business owner.
Janice: Then, we got hit by the floods in 2015, which were pretty devastating. We had almost three feet of water in our store, and numerous machines had to be replaced. All the walls had to be cut out and repaired – a total mess. But our employees worked with the restoration company to help rebuild everything; they played an integral role in getting us back on our feet.
However, after we opened and sales started to climb again, two other floods closed us down for a short time. The biggest of these came as a result of Hurricane Harvey, which filled the bakery with four and a half feet of water. So, yes, perseverance has kept our business going. But one important thing is that we always continue paying our employees, even when we’re forced to shut down temporarily. We believe that paying your team, no matter what, is the key to recovery.
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Photo by Gittings Photography
Photo by Gittings Photography
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Does the COVID-19 pandemic feel different compared with the other disasters you’ve been through?
Bobby: When the pandemic hit and everything shut down here in Texas, our business cratered overnight. People didn’t come to the bakery; they were all going to grocery stores instead. We were worried, but our general manager was on top of everything and had ordered more gloves than usual and other personal protective equipment a month before the pandemic really took hold. Still, we weren’t sure if we would come out the other side, despite feeling like the king and queen of disasters. But Janice, in particular, is an advocate for preparedness – especially when it comes to business. Our perseverance, backed by preparedness, has been crucial to our business’s survival and, ultimately, Three Brothers Bakery is thriving.
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Janice: It’s so important to be prepared for uncertainty. You need to always be looking at your insurance policy and developing contingencies based on any number of things that might happen, but many smaller businesses don’t really explore any of that because they haven’t yet experienced a disaster. As a result, many have been struggling to find their footing during this pandemic.
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
It’s so important to be prepared for uncertainty [...] but many smaller businesses don’t really explore any of that because they haven’t yet experienced a disaster. As a result, many have been struggling to find their footing during this pandemic.
How has your disaster strategy adapted for the current pandemic?
Janice: Over the years, we’ve learned that you have to run your business the way your customers want to buy your products. We’re not adapting to the pandemic as much as we’re adapting to the needs of our customers. Because there’s a very high level of sanitation in food service already, the only big changes for us were introducing face masks and learning how to manage social distancing for our customers. The latter didn’t go smoothly at first, and it was our customers who brought that to our attention. That’s why it is so important to listen to your customers: they will tell you how to best serve them.
What are your recommendations to facilitate recovery after a critical event such as a natural disaster or COVID-19?
Janice: There are four parts, and the first is the most important: people. You need to make sure that your team’s needs are taken care of, and that means paying them. Here in the US, you can’t put payroll on credit, so it’s important to always have enough cash resources in the bank to pay your people – I recommend three months of payroll in reserve, but even a month would be great. The second part is money, and it’s important to have two different kinds: short-term and long-term. The short-term money is the payroll reserve, while the larger, long-term financial resource will pay for everything it takes to recover. Usually, you secure the long-term money through good insurance or a loan of some sort, so it’s important to have that taken care of in advance – not after a crisis has hit. Also, all the necessary papers to do with those preparations must be easily accessible, well organised and stored in the cloud.
Assets, even in the form of equipment or vehicles, are the third part. A replacement or repair plan that can be promptly executed should be outlined prior to a disaster. During a pandemic, the assets are your people. All the moving pieces, such as clean-up, media and marketing, and customer relations must be managed. It’s not enough to simply open up the doors again: you need to reach your customers and have a strategy to get them back inside the doors.
Bobby: From a management standpoint, it’s critical not to make quick decisions in the middle of a disaster; it’s beneficial to take a step back, take a breath and watch things play out a little before making decisions. Also, don’t take too much time reveling in self-pity. Dealing with crises is all part of being a business owner. It’s typically not a matter of “if” but “when”. When a crisis happens, you have to be prepared to pick yourself up, only have one pity party and get back to work. Fortunately, in our case, a slice of our pecan pie helps a lot.
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
Image courtesy of Three Brothers Bakery
It’s critical not to make quick decisions in the middle of a disaster; it’s beneficial to take a step back, take a breath and watch things play out a little before making decisions.
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