Born in the Mixer Bowl
Ask any Monsey resident and they’ll tell you that Shabbos just isn’t the same without challos from Frank’s
Frank’s Bakery
Monsey, NY
Established 1962
Every neighborhood has its iconic landmarks. Those are the stores you grew up with, the ones you think will be there forever. In Brooklyn, it’s Amnon’s Pizza. In Lakewood, it’s Shloimy’s supermarket. And in Monsey, it’s always been Frank’s Bakery. Ask any Monsey resident and they’ll tell you that Shabbos just isn’t the same without challos from Frank’s.
Now that iconic bakery has recently closed its doors. And the Frank family, clearly in a nostalgic mood, is ready to share some cherished memories. In the warm and welcoming home of Reb Yehuda and Gila Frank on a quiet street in New Square (where the doors are wide open and you can probably leave your car unlocked), I’m sitting at their oversized dining room table set with cold drinks, candies, and of course — marble cake. I’m surrounded by what seems to be the gantze mishpoochah (it isn’t).
I’m introduced to Yaakov Yosef and Miri, Estie, Gitty, and Ruchie, and children and grandchildren of the Franks. As we speak, various other family members, including some youngsters, wander over to join us. For the Frank family, our conversation is clearly a stroll down memory lane. For me, it’s an opportunity to hear firsthand how a bakery can turn a family into a cohesive unit, all of them joined together by their determination to make a good business great.
She Needs the Money
Frank’s Bakery was first established by Reb Yoel Frank z”l back in the 1950s when New Square was just being established as a community. It began as a small mom-and-pop shop serving the local families who chose to settle there. Reb Yoel, a Holocaust survivor, was actually a printer back in Hungary. But he had once purchased a building that housed a bakery, and so he was somewhat familiar with the trade even before coming to America.
Eventually, Reb Yoel decided to move his store from New Square to Monsey. Back then, Monsey was barely a shtetl and nobody could have envisioned how the community was destined to grow. Yet he must have sensed something, because in 1962, he set out to search for the perfect bakery location.
He found it in the center of town, at 51 Main Street. But the property was priced at $17,000, and he was told that it was only worth twelve.
The story of what happened next is by now family legend.
“My father went to the old Skverer Rebbe and asked what he should do,” says Reb Yoel’s son Yehuda. “The Rebbe, who knew that the owner of the property was an almanah, said to pay her $23,000 for it! He told my father, ‘She needs the money. And that chesed will help you down the road.’
“My father flipped. It was a small fortune. But he had a very strong emunas tzaddikim so he did as he was told. He bought the premises at the high price and expanded it to a full-fledged bakery. That was in 1965. And that’s when it really took off.”
The Rebbe’s blessings materialized before their very eyes. The bakery was all consuming and the work was hard, but it was a labor of love. Reb Yoel and his wife Breindel were fully invested in the store “yomam v’lailah,” say their children. Their two sons, Yaakov Yitzchok and Yehuda, were involved since childhood.
“Ever since I’m ten years old,” says Reb Yehuda. “If there was an hour and a half lunch break at yeshivah, I would take a fifteen minute lunch and spend the rest of the time at the bakery.” The bakery became an integral part of the family’s life, incorporating both children and grandchildren. Over the years, 12 family members found their employment in the bakery.
We Were a Team
While Reb Yoel immersed himself in the baking, his wife Breindel perfected the skills of customer service. “She knew every customer by name and she knew all of their children. She knew where they had moved to and what they were doing. And she always made sure to inquire about them,” says Reb Yehuda.
She also knew everybody’s favorite cake or pastry, as well as who liked their marble cake heavy and who liked it light. She would add up their totals with a pencil on a brown paper bag and tell the customers to “look it over when they get home to make sure that I didn’t make a mistake.” She never did.
And while the bakery was officially named Monsey Kosher Bake Shop, most people knew it simply as “Mrs. Frank’s Bakery.”
“She worked until a week before she was nifteres seventeen years ago,” says her granddaughter Ruchie. “The bakery was her life.”
That work ethic remained in the family even after she was gone. Reb Yehuda jokes that “my daughter Ruchie was born in the bowl of the mixer.” All kidding aside, his daughters tell me that sometimes they would stop at the bakery to say hi while on their way home from the hospital with a newborn baby.
The bakery was a second home, the work a labor of love. There were no designated chores. “Everybody did everything,” says Gila. “My mother-in-law used to say, ‘S’iz nisht mine job, dine job — It’s not my job or your job.’ We shared the work among ourselves.”
During the afternoons the various family members would work behind the counter, which meant interacting with the customers and developing sharp mathematical skills. On Thursday evenings they would sit and braid challahs.
“It took six to eight people five hours to braid everything,” Gila remembers. And then there were the tedious chores. “We had to match up the two sides of a sandwich cookie by shape and color and then squirt the jelly between the halves.”
Whatever the job was, they were happy to do it and took great pride in their work. There was a certain sense of accomplishment, of being part of a team, a family that works together.
Make Yourself Heimish
Frank’s Bakery had its special charm. Unpretentious and down to earth, their specialties were classic babkas, rugelach, cakes and cookies with a definitive heimish touch. And the customers couldn’t get enough of it. Their sugar cookies, simple and misshapen as they may have been, were legendary. “They weren’t fancy or glamorous,” says Ruchie, “but even after we closed people were calling us to find out if we had any left.”
Their cinnamon babkas were the talk of the town. Gitty remembers one secular woman who came in every week just for those. “She wasn’t shomer Shabbos, but sometimes she would offer extra money ‘to put on the accounts of the needy.’ ”
At Frank’s, the salesgirls would cut a piece of marble cake for you right off the sheet (“You want this much? No? How about this?”), then pack it in a white cardboard box and tie it with red and white string. It was labor intensive, but it added the human dimension that is all but lost today when baked goods are sold prepackaged in plastic containers on supermarket shelves. Eventually they updated their selections by adding whole wheat bread and challaos. But the friendly atmosphere remained until the day they closed. Just about everybody in Monsey knew you could walk in through the back door where the baking was done and “make yourself heimish.”
At Frank’s the ladies were just as invested in the business as their brothers, perhaps even more so. Says Estie, “We would take the bus straight from school to help. And if we had homework, we managed to get it done between customers.”
After marriage, things didn’t change much. They’d bring their babies, put the infant seat inside a shopping cart, and then get to work. Was it messy? Yes, but nobody seemed to care. “If you wore a white skirt, you got chocolate stains. If you wore a black skirt, you were covered in flour.”
Is it true that when you work all day with such goodies you can’t even look at a cake anymore? The answer is unanimous. “No way!” they say. “We all love to eat cake, and we always will.” It turns out that half the fun of working at Frank’s was noshing on the broken bits of cookies and the uneven edges of cakes.
Still, it’s clear that the work was physically exhausting and the hours long and unforgiving. Yaakov Yosef refers to them as “stupid hours. We’re awake when everyone else is sleeping and then we get a little bit of sleep when everyone else is awake.”
Because the Franks pride themselves on their fresh baked goods, there were plenty of all-nighters, and lots of times when they worked until two or three in the morning. Thursdays were long as was Motzaei Shabbos. Three-day Yom Tovs were also challenging, with everyone stocking up on triple the number of challos and baked goods. But nothing compared to the most hectic and overwhelming night of all — Motzaei Pesach.
“We were the only bakery open that night. We started mixing and baking as soon as Yom Tov was over. By two a.m. you could already get freshly baked bread and rolls,” says Yehuda. On that night every member of the family pitched in to help. “The customers just didn’t stop coming. They would put away their Pesachdig dishes, clean up the kitchen, and then come to us for fresh bread at three or four in the morning. It was the one day we were open around the clock. Nobody slept that night.”
Frank’s was also a go-to address for chesed. On Fridays before the zeman, extra challos were picked up and distributed to needy families. The store became a haven for the unfortunate and sometimes the mentally unstable.
“My mother would serve them coffee and cake,” says Reb Yehuda. “Then she would sit and listen to their stories.” That care and compassion remained even after she was gone. “My brother would do the same thing. Sometimes he would be ready to close the store but a nebach who needed to talk was there, so he would stay and wait for him.”
There was a strong sense of erlichkeit in the business. At one point, a bakery opened nearby but was put out of business due to a fire, so their wholesale customers came to the Franks instead.
“My brother agreed to take their business,” says Reb Yehuda, “but only as long as the other store remained closed. As soon as they reopened, he refused to take away their parnassah.”
There was tremendous dedication to the community as well. “If someone came in for challos on a Friday afternoon, no matter how close to the zeman, we would serve them. Even if we already locked up the store, we would go back for them,” says Gila. “My mother-in-law used to say, ‘We’ll stay open until everyone in Monsey has candles and challah.’”
All in a Day’s Work
Some memorable moments stand out for the children. Reb Yehuda remembers the time, years ago, that he caught a petty thief red-handed. Sensing that the crook would arrive that night, Reb Yehuda waited in the car. Sure enough, the bad guy came and made his way inside.
“This was way before cell phones so I had to run to call the police from the payphone. When they came they told me they’ll follow me inside since I know my way around.” Yehuda led the cops to the criminal, who had in the meantime tried to pilfer some loose change from a pushka — and a Danish from the display case.
Then there was the time Gila was working in the store until six o’clock in the morning with her new baby, Yaakov Yosef, keeping her company — and there was a huge snowstorm happening outside. “The streets had been plowed and a tremendous mountain of snow was piled up at our door. I was stranded in front of my own home balancing an infant in my arms with no way to get in!”
One year on Purim, Reb Yehuda was carefully decorating an elaborate cake for a customer. Just as he was finishing, a drunk wandered in and within moments destroyed the beautiful cake. “My father didn’t get angry,” Gitty remembers. “Instead, he decided to join in the fun and patted the drunken guy’s face with frosting. That Erev Pesach the man came back to the store to say he could still smell the delicious coffee frosting four weeks later.”
It seems one needs a good sense of humor to be a baker. But I wonder aloud what other qualities are needed. “It always helps to be a people-person,” someone suggests. “And you need good hands, steady hands, to decorate the cakes,” offers another.
Most of all, I discover that one needs to understand the science of baking. Nowadays, this can probably be learned in a classroom from a French pastry chef in a school for culinary arts. But the Franks developed their skills during on-the-job training. By trial and error they’ve learned what effect baking powder will have on a cake recipe, how to adjust the amount of yeast according to the weather outdoors, how to determine the perfect consistency of beaten egg whites, and a thousand little details that are part of the baking process. “My grandmother,” says Estie, “could just look at a recipe and see if it would work. “
But what about the inevitable arguments and disagreements that arise when people are in business together? Didn’t family members ever get angry or resentful?
Reb Yehuda explains that the situation at Frank’s was unique. About 25 years ago, he embarked on his own business venture in the construction industry.
“Financially,” he says, “this meant I wasn’t dependent on the bakery. That made it easier to avoid fights and arguments.” But despite having another business to tend to, he and his family spent countless hours at Frank’s finding tremendous satisfaction in the work. “There’s a sense of pride when you know you’re making a good product. And that gives you a certain pleasure.”
Moving On
The bakery was recently sold, says Reb Yehuda, because of health issues. “My brother is not well,” he explains, “and I’m not a youngster anymore either. Coming home at 2 or 3 a.m. night after night takes its toll. We realized there was no choice.”
The next generation has also moved onward. Most of the children have set themselves up in various businesses. Yaakov Yosef builds staircases, a daughter works as a sheitelmacher, and another couple sells garage doors.
But they miss the bakery, they tell me. They miss the Thursday evening rush, the Shabbos meals peppered with chats about challah, the joy of slicing into a freshly baked marble cake, and even their celebrity status in the Monsey community.
No wonder the family is still a beloved icon. When the neighborhood associates you with the heavenly smell of freshly baked challah, you know you’re going to be considered everyone’s best friend.
Says Reb Yehuda, “The present is connected to the past. And the past is ingrained in all of us.” They may have left the bakery business, but running a bakery will always be an integral part of the Frank family.
The world has changed since Reb Yoel Frank opened a bakery over 50 years ago. Monsey has grown way past its original borders. Sleek mega-supermarkets are now part of the landscape in virtually every large Jewish community, offering everything from sushi bars to artisan breads.
And that’s all a positive indication of communal growth. But after all is said and done, we all crave the simple and basic pleasures of life — and we yearn for classic, timeless comfort food. More often than not, that translates into a coffee and a Danish.
Facts about Frank’s
- In the Franks’ massive oven, 600 loaves of bread were baked simultaneously.
- Approximately 1,800 large challos were sold on a typical Erev Shabbos.
- An industrial-size mixer efficiently prepared 1,200 pounds of dough at one time.
- On Motzaei Pesach, 6,000 to 8,000 loaves of bread were baked, and 60 to 70 sheets of cake were sold.
- During the summer, huge exhaust fans helped control the heat of the ovens, as did the 18-foot high ceilings. In the winter, the warmth emanating from the ovens made the bakery the hottest place to be!
(Originally Featured in XXX, Issue XXX)
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