Ask Chris Kowal why he and his family wanted to come to this country, and his answer is similar to that of other immigrants, then and now.
“For a better life,” said Kowal, owner and operations manager at Ideal Bakery, an Eastern European wholesale bakery that just opened its new facility in Elk Grove Village.
Specifically, dad Kazik’s American dream meant owning a business.
They first did that a decade after leaving the southern part of Poland and arriving on Chicago’s South Side, with their purchase of a small bread shop on the city’s Northwest Side in 2006.
Then they added on: Sister Mariola opened a Polish deli in a Romeoville strip plaza in 2008. The family bought Ideal — its retail bakery long a presence on Milwaukee Avenue south of Lawrence Avenue in Chicago — in 2015. A few years later they absorbed the production of Chris’s Bakery on the South Side.
They quickly outgrew a small baking production facility in Norridge, leading to their purchase and rehabilitation of the 31,000-square-foot factory that opened in recent weeks in Elk Grove Village’s business park.
It’s where Ideal’s employees already are mixing, shaping and baking some 40 varieties of bread distributed to more than 200 independent grocers, stores and delis in the city and suburbs.
Bread maker Jacek Onik mixes rye and wheat and other ingredients to create about 40 different types of bread at Ideal Bakery in Elk Grove Village.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
And come next spring, they’ll be joined by bakers, cake decorators and pastry chefs from Jarosch Bakery, the Elk Grove Village institution whose owners are retiring and merging their business with Ideal’s.
There are fewer and fewer mom-and-pop bakeries around anymore, but Chris Kowal, 35, is a relatively new dad.
Deciding to forgo plans to attend college after graduating from Romeoville High School in 2007, Kowal got into the family baking business right away.
He says hard work, long hours — especially around holidays — and sometimes little pay got them to where they are today.
“My mantra was always, ‘I’m going to get mine one day … the (Aug. 23) ribbon cutting was the first day,” said Kowal, a Bolingbrook resident. “This place is just so cool. I’m so proud of it. We all are. We worked for 18 years — it seems like a blink of an eye — my sister, my dad and me, to get to this point.”
The Kowal family bought the Pratt Boulevard warehouse a year ago — even before they were contacted by Ken Jarosch, who had been looking to pass along his business for some time. He and wife Kathy — an Elk Grove Village trustee — have been working there since the late 1980s, after previous careers as engineers for McDonnell Douglas. Ken’s parents, Herb and Betty, started the bakery in 1959 with the help of George Jarosch, Herb’s dad, who immigrated from Germany in 1919 and worked in several Chicago bakeries before opening his own.
Ken and Kathy Jarosch, who have worked at their family business, Jarosch Bakery, since the late 1980s, are retiring and handing operations over to the Kowal family, which owns Ideal Bakery.
Daily Herald file, 2011
The Jarosches still plan to work through the holidays and help with the transition, which eventually will have their production staff of 30 to 40 come under one roof with Ideal’s 40 to 50 employees. Up to another 25 full-time and seasonal employees who work at Jarosch’s long-standing retail shop at 35 S. Arlington Heights Road will remain there.
Kowal emphasized all employees are keeping their jobs, and all the Jarosch recipes and staples are staying the same.
He does plan to introduce some Ideal breads, kolaczki and other desserts at the Jarosch store and see what sells, and what doesn’t.
Rows of Polish kolaczki are made — all by hand — at Ideal Bakery in Elk Grove Village.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
“We’re going to let the customers decide,” Kowal said. “We’re not subtracting. We’re only adding.”
Amid fears of mass production expressed by some customers, Kowal noted a new 2,500-square-foot Jarosch retail store will have an oven where cookies, croissants, cupcakes and muffins will be baked fresh every day. The current 6,500-square-foot storefront eventually is coming down, along with the rest of the Elk Grove Woods Plaza shopping center, as part of Elk Grove Village’s and Wingspan Development Group’s mixed-use redevelopment of the southeast corner of Arlington Heights and Higgins roads.
And despite perception of the sheer size of Ideal’s new plant — besides bread and oven rooms and three pastry rooms, the space includes an employee lunchroom, locker rooms, offices and storage — there’s only a little bit of automation in use.
“We’re putting all that dough on a table, cutting it by hand, molding it by hand, rolling it by hand,” Kowal said.
Two of those hands belong to his mother, Helena, who on a recent visit was pouring fruit fillings and pinching dough together to make kolaczki. In the office was brother Matt and brother-in-law Wally.
Helena Kowal makes kolaczki in one of the pastry rooms at Ideal Bakery’s new wholesale facility in Elk Grove Village.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
They’re among the staff of Polish, Ukrainian and Mexican immigrants who work for Ideal — some who have been with the bakery since the family purchased it.
Chris Kowal partially attributes the business’ growth in recent years to the influx of Ukrainian refugees who came to the area after Russia’s invasion. Ideal sells bread at a number of stores that cater to Eastern Europeans, including Montrose Deli, Rich’s Foods & Liquors, KD Market and Stefania’s European Food Market.
Kowal also saw the business grow during the pandemic, when more people shopped at grocery stores and made lunch at home since they couldn’t go out to eat.
The company’s eight trucks make deliveries to every store at least three times a week, ensuring shelves are stocked with fresh bread.
Ideal doesn’t add preservatives, and uses unbleached and unbromated flour. Kowal installed a water filtration system in the new bakery for the bread making process.
“We’re not a bread aisle bakery. We’re not spongy. We’re not shelf life of three weeks. We try to be as natural as possible,” he said.
Polish rye is the biggest seller; thousands of loafs are baked every day. But there’s also multigrain, sunflower, pumpernickel, sourdough, ciabatta and seven-grain, among others.
Every loaf of varying size is shaped and scored by hand, then sent by conveyor belt into one of Ideal’s 14 ovens.
Loafs of Polish rye bread move via conveyor belt to oven at Ideal Bakery’s new location in Elk Grove Village.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
“No pun intended, but this is our bread and butter,” Kowal said. “We started as a bread company, and it’s still our main focus. But we do a lot of pastries.”
The old Ideal Bakery in Chicago — opened in 1928 by German immigrants Hans and Berta Heissman, and run by the Schroeder family for years starting in the late 1950s — now is closed.
Ideal and Jarosch employees likely will begin working together after Easter, Kowal said.