Oak Park's Star Bakery to close after 108 years, citing rising costs of labor, ingredients
Citing rising costs and difficulties resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Star Bakery on Coolidge in Oak Park will close its doors. The last day for business will be July 2 for the bakery that has served Jewish baked goods to metro Detroiters since 1915.
Owners of the Star — known for its many Jewish baked goods, especially bread such as challah, rye and mandel — announced the closure Tuesday morning. The Star's sister bakery, Diamond Bakery at 6722 Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield, will remain open.
"Due to the rising costs of labor and ingredients and continued difficulties from the pandemic, the business could no longer remain viable,” Star Bakery owners Daniel Buckfire, David Schechter and Stacy Fox said in a news release.
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Fox, the previous owner of Marty’s Cookies in Birmingham, is a managing partner for both Star and Diamond Bakeries. She will remain as a consultant for Diamond Bakery, according to a news release.
The owners bought Star Bakery in late summer of 2021 from Esther Leibowitz and her late father, Ben Moskovitz, who had owned the Star for more than 50 years, Buckfire said. Months later, in November 2021, the owners bought the Diamond Bakery in West Bloomfield.
“It was a very hard decision to close, and we did everything we could to try to save Star Bakery and make it profitable,” Buckfire said in a news release.
Fox noted increases in the cost of ingredients and that “wholesale customers chose to go with machine-made products rather than the artisanal bread made by Star Bakery.”
“We understand these economic decisions, but a small bakery can’t compete with big manufacturers,” she said.Buckfire reached by phone said that difficulties with the closure were also connected with labor issues. “We had tremendous difficulty in hiring and the labor costs,” Buckfire said. “We had to increase our payroll to attract labor.”
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The bakery, Buckfire said, employed eight to nine full-time employees along with nearly 10 part-time staffers. There will be some job loss, the owners said, but production of some bakery items will continue at Diamond Bakery.
“We are hoping at least three employees will be moving over (to Diamond Bakery),” Buckfire said.On the wholesale side, a large part of the business at Star Bakery, Buckfire said, was their bread was sold to many metro Detroit restaurants and delicatessens. Previous owners, he said, had long-term relationships going back decades.
“Wholesale was always a significant part of the business at Star Bakery, and we determined that we were no longer competitive on this side of the business,” Buckfire said. “We knew that was a risk, we found we were not competitive.”
It was shortly after the owners bought the bakery, Buckfire said there were competitive issues.
“All of our bread are artisanal and handmade,” Buckfire said. “There are large wholesalers that use machines to make the bread and we were not competitive on pricing.”
At Diamond Bakery, Buckfire said, they have the demographics. “We are a Jewish bakery; demographically Diamond Bakery is a much stronger location than Oak Park,” he said.
“We felt the business was not sustainable as it is right now. It’s very important to have a Jewish-style bakery in metro Detroit and our strongest chance of success in doing so is Diamond Bakery in West Bloomfield.
Contact Detroit Free Press food and restaurant writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news to: sselasky@freepress.com. Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter. Subscribe to the Free Press.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Star Bakery in Oak Pak, known for Jewish baked goods, set to close
