Oh, who doesn’t love a nice, cool slice of cheesecake? Well, today, July 30, the Quesnel Bakery has been serving up fresh, homemade cheesecake to celebrate National Cheesecake Day, and kicking off their weekly celebrations early.
The Quesnel Bakery is turning 49 years old on Friday, and one of its original owners is turning 82 years old on the same day.
To mark National Cheesecake Day, the Quesnel Bakery baked up fresh batches of desserts that, according to the bakery’s owner, Gerd Teetzen, “normally don’t sell so quickly.”
In a matter of hours, the bakery sold out of its first batch, and baker Danielle Carter was already in the middle of finishing its second, with a third already planned.
“We made three kinds, a lemon, a raspberry, and a cherry,” says Carter. “We make ’em right from scratch, like everything we do. No items are pre-made. We normally sell four or five slices [of cheesecake] a day, but today we’re hitting 45, maybe 50 already.”
“We have a lot of people phoning in to make sure they get theirs set aside,” Teetzen adds. “It’s pretty phenomenal, there are so many elements to putting together a cheesecake. They’re so tricky. So we normally don’t do a lot of them. It’s so great to see people loving these desserts on these ‘National’ types of days.”
While promoting these special desserts is easier with these National appreciation days, according to Teetzen, it’s not the biggest celebration the Quesnel Bakery is preparing for this week.
Friday, August 1, the Bakery turns 49 years old, on the same day one of its founders, Gerd’s father, Horst Teetzen, turns 82.
In celebration of its 49th and Horst’s 82nd, the Quesnel Bakery is having a fundraiser until August 2, selling its classic Happy Face Cookies and Black Forest Cake. The proceeds from the fundraiser are going to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Quesnel.
“We are making whole batches of the nostalgic cookies that we made in the past and the community will hopefully remember,” says Teetzen. “It’s just a great way we could give back to the community that has given us so much.”
Teetzen can remember from back when the Quesnel Bakery started as part of the Safeway strip mall, before the store expanded, before the Bakery found its current home, which it has been there for 27 years.
“We pretty much were the only bakery in town for that time,” Gerd reflects. “There was another bakery at the West Park Mall — he didn’t quite make it — so for a time it was Safeway, when it was strip mall, the Bank of Commerce, the Liquor Store, and then us.”
According to Teetzen, the bakery started with his father taking an opportunity when he first moved to Canada. Horst Teetzen first apprenticed to become a baker from the time he was 14 years old. Coming to Canada as a baker, and landing a job at the Kamloops Safeway, before coming up to Quesnel to work in the bakery.
“There weren’t as many hours as he needed, so he had to pause being a baker and got a job in the Cariboo Pulp Mill,” Gerd says. “He became a fourth-class steam engineer. But then an opportunity to buy the bakery came up, and it’s just his passion. He thought he should and had to take the opportunity… and the rest is history.”
The Quesnel Bakery is truly a family-run business. Gerd himself, apprenticed under his father from a young age. Gerd says he told his father, “I’m going to be a baker too.” Gerd, like his father, spent some time away from baking while in the military, before returning and picking up the family passion again.
For Horst, the passion has never left.
Although retired, Horst and Gerd’s mother, Christa Teetzen, is still found in the Bakery baking up a storm.
“Every day, he’s in here at three o’clock, making sausage rolls with me, “Gerd says. “My mom, she’s still involved too. She used to run the store; she apprenticed in sales back in Germany. She still comes around Christmas time. That’s her thing. My wife is the person behind the scenes now, and between her and my father, those two keep the wheels turning around here.”
From its Happy Face and Dinosaur cookies, to its one of a kind chocolate fudge that covers their Long Johns, the Quesnel Bakery has become a staple for the Quesnel community to go to, and out of towners to experience. According to Gerd, the demand for nostalgia and the sense of home community has grown in the last few years.
“It’s something people harken back to when they have a chance to get back to Quesnel,” Teetzen says. “The number of people I get who have left, and they all come back. There is a nostalgia factor when they first come back into the bakery, and we love being able to welcome them back as though they’ve never left.”
Gerd also recognizes that the Quesnel Bakery really isn’t just his and his family’s business. “It’s the community’s and our employees’ as much or more than it is mine,” he says. Each employee has made a memory, left a mark in the Bakery that is “irreplaceable”.
Danielle Carter has been with the Quesnel Bakery for going on nine years this year. First I started off in the front helping customers. Then Carter apprenticed under a former pastry chef at the Bakery, Tony Lyons. Now, Carter is the one making the delicious cheesecakes that were sold for National Cheesecake Day.
“I sometimes miss helping the customers,” says Carter. “They’re such a pleasure to serve, and we don’t get too many people who are sad to get a donut a day.”
“This business has grown to more than just one person. It’s not just me and my family, it’s all of our workers. It’s a team of people that make up what this is,” says Gerd Teetzen. “It’s their passion and their lives, too. It’s why we call this the Quesnel Bakery Family.”
The Quesnel Bakery’s fundraiser for Horst’s Birthday and its Anniversary will run on Friday, August 1, through Saturday, August 2.
Teetzen and Carter, suggest calling the Bakery to reserve an order, as things may sell out fast.
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