Goodbye, Jerabek’s: Century-old St. Paul bakery closes its doors

You can add these beauties to the list of things you can’t buy in Saint Paul anymore.

jerabeks

Jerabek’s New Bohemian Bakery suddenly closed both of its Saint Paul locations yesterday.

Owners Russell Spangler, Ronda Vincent and John Wills broke the news on Facebook.

Jerabek’s will halt operations Sunday Oct 20.

We cannot express in words the pain involved in the decision to suspend operations at Jerabek’s. Numerous physical, financial, and emotional challenges have made us unable to properly lead and run the business.

Our personal obligations and stresses have piled up to a breaking point that we need to address before we lose the things in our lives that are most important to us. Our neighbors and regular customers have been so wonderful that we cannot thank you all enough for the support you gave our institution, and we thank you for your recent outpouring of support once word was out that we were halting service.

We feel shame and remorse that we are are so sudden in our inability to continue to serve you, please understand that recent circumstances forced us to act quickly.

Thank you for the faith you had in us , we sincerely apologize we could not follow-through with the dream that we had for Jerabek’s. Perhaps this will open doors for others to build and enact a similar dream.

An Appeal to the Community:
Our wonderful staff were the motivation to keep us going over the past few months when we worked on our personal challenges, and we are indebted to them in many ways. I know they will be looking for new work, and if you could find it in your heart to point them toward any open doors you may know of, it would be a huge help for our community. They are talented people with big hearts.

With deep regrets and apologies,

Russ, John, and Ronda; Jerabek’s former owners

The baker at Jerabek’s started working there when he was about 17, WCCO reported in a profile three years ago. That was almost 40 years ago, but a fraction of the 107 years the bakery has been a part of the city.