Life & Work with Jeff Dewes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Dewes.

Hi Jeff, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hello, and thank you. My wife and I had semi-retired in 2019 and were traveling the country in our RV. We ended up in northern Michigan early spring 2020 when the pandemic hit. We decided to stay where we were at in our RV and ride out the pandemic. I have always truly enjoyed my grandmother’s cinnamon roll that she made for all our holidays. Her recipe has been passed down from generation to generation for over 100 years. When Grandma died in 1975, my mother took over that tradition. I come from a family of all boys, so when my mother passed in 2016, I decided to take over that tradition. I had no baking experience, so it took me almost two years to perfect the recipe! My wife and I decided to see if we could find a farmers’ market in northern Michigan that would allow us to sell our cinnamon rolls during the pandemic. The farmers market in Petoskey, MI, said we could, so we made 75 rolls for the first farmers market and sold out in twenty-five minutes. We started renting a commercial kitchen and hired an employee to help us make 218 rolls for each farmer market. We continued to sell out within two hours at each market. We had people asking if we could bake our rolls for their weddings, birthday parties, showers, etc. so we decided to see if we could find a small storefront in downtown Petoskey to open our gourmet cinnamon roll bakery. We did and named the bakery after my grandmother whose first name was Matilda; everyone called her Tillie. My family origin is from Germany, and Tafel is a German word for table, So hence the name Tillie’s Tafel. We made 700 rolls for our grand opening on December 4th, 2020, and sold them all in less than 2 hours. In 2021 we sold over 80,000 gourmet cinnamon rolls and in 2022, we sold over 93,000 gourmet cinnamon rolls. My wife Patti and my daughter Allie help manage and run the bakery and we are looking forward to future expansion. We enjoy working with the local schools and nonprofits in fundraising efforts and truly appreciate the residents of northern Michigan and what they have meant to us over the last two years.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think the biggest hurdle we faced was not having any food service experience, my wife was an interior designer, and I was an owner of a lumber yard. We were prepared for the challenges of opening a grassroots business, but the challenges of a food service business took us bit by surprise it was a big learning curve! Our biggest challenge was packaging and waste, since we make our rolls daily and do not sell any day-old products, we had to find ways to calculate proper daily yields and avenues for any rolls left over at the end of the day. Moomers Homemade Ice Cream, out of Traverse City, uses our frozen roll pieces to mix with their cinnamon ice cream to create Tillie’s Tafel Gourmet Cinnamon Roll Ice Cream. We also have a local brewery that takes our day-old rolls and uses them to make a cinnamon roll IPA. We have faced the same hurdles that a lot of small businesses have faced over the past 2 years with staffing, inflation, and material resourcing. But with the help of the community and business-to-business networking, we are seeing steady growth and are constantly moving toward working more efficiently daily.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
What we do at the bakery that we feel sets us apart from others is our attention to detail and quality. We start every day at 1 AM in the morning and make every roll from scratch on a daily basis, from the dough to the filling to the frosting. If you come into Tillie’s Tafel at 8 AM in the morning, you will receive a fresh baked cinnamon roll right out of the oven. There is nothing better than a fresh Tillie’s roll! Depending on what time of the year it is, we bake between 300 to 1,400 fresh rolls daily. We participate in many local farmers’ markets and events and deliver to 16 different wholesale accounts across northern Michigan. The fact that this all started with a simple recipe handed down from my family over several generations is just amazing to us, and we understand the importance of protecting our family’s legacy through this cinnamon roll. We try not to take anything for granted and are extremely grateful for the opportunity we have been given. My mother called these generational blessing, things that get handed down from generation to generation that do not have much financial value but mean everything to the family. When you come to Tillie’s Tafel we want you to feel like you have come home and experience our generational blessing.

What are your plans for the future?
We are currently looking into franchising our model and expanding it across the Midwest and hopefully across the nation soon. To achieve that next level, we need to add some automation to both our production and delivery process of our rolls. We have hired an award-winning pastry consultant out of Chicago to help up with this process. We have also just purchased 2 state of the art bakery vending machines that are designed with our custom graphics and stocked daily with fresh gourmet cinnamon rolls and sugar cookies. We plan on placing these machines in airports, hospitals, large factories, and colleges all around the state. Our end goal is to have 20 machines placed strategically throughout Northern Michigan by the end of 2024. We are also working on a frozen take-and-bake roll that can be distributed across the nation so consumers can purchase and bake in the comfort of their own home. Although we feel these are all great ways to experience a Tillie’s roll, there is nothing better than the experience of coming into our bakery in downtown Petoskey, Michigan and having a fresh gourmet Tillie’s roll right out of our oven!

Pricing:

• $6.00 Per Cinnamon Roll

Contact Info:

• Website: tilliestafel.com
• Facebook: Tillie’s Tafel

Image Credits
Patti
Allie
Jeff