The March 10, 2011 email from Steve Hartman made me stop in my tracks. He sent it, then ran over to my office and told me to open it.
SUBJECT: “Stop what you are doing and listen to this voicemail!”
EMAIL BODY: an mp3 file of a voicemail left for Steve. It said, “Hello Steve, my name is Jon Mills, and I am the new owner of Pratzel’s Bakery.”
I didn’t even listen to the rest of the message. I hit pause and looked up at Steve in wonderment. Mission accomplished. Pratzel’s Bakery is coming back!
January 30, 2011 was a sad day, both for St. Louis and the Pratzel’s family. After 98 years in business, the doors were shut and the dream was over. Ronnie Pratzel really wanted to make it to 100 years, and St. Louisans really wanted to keep eating Pratzel’s baked goods. However, the economy conspired to stop the clock at 98 years, and St. Louisans cleaned the bakery out on that final day. Game over.
January 31, 2011 must have been a hard day for Ronnie Pratzel. You wake up, and you don’t go to your bakery, the place you’ve been going for 40 years. Or maybe you do go in, and start cleaning the place out. What would you do on the day after you closed the doors to your family business? Maybe he watched some of the TV coverage of the final day (most of the stations were there). Steve Hartman saw the TV coverage and decided to do something about it.
After his tweet went out offering free social media services, I arrived at work. I approached Steve and said, “I’m going to be the guy providing these services; perhaps we should have discussed this!” Five seconds later, I said, “This is a really good idea. Let’s go for it and see what happens.” A tweet gave birth to a blog post. People expressed sadness. Some people didn’t even know about the closure. The retweets started coming in. The hashtag #SavePratzels was born. Word spread of the closure and our pro bono effort.
Not long after hitting “publish” on the blog post, something completely unexpected happened. Without even asking (maybe we should have asked), additional offers of pro bono help started coming in. Aaron Corson of NJC Printing was the first. AVID Magazine was second. And the offers poured in. I updated the blog post with each offer. Then Deb Peterson called. Then I did a radio appearance on 93.7 The Bull. In a mere five days (days in which Pratzel’s is all I worked on), we had generated a tremendous amount of attention to the cause.
And then things went quiet. Steve Hartman‘s wonderful ad appeared in Sauce Magazine. We did a few tweets here and there, and answered some emails from fans of Pratzel’s, asking about any progress towards a sale. Other than that, our initial push was over. We felt we had put the Pratzel’s story in front of as many St. Louisans as possible. Now it was up to St. Louis. I traded emails with Ronnie Pratzel, and he informed me that they were speaking with a very interested couple. We held out hope.
Ronnie Pratzel with new owner, Jon Mills. Photo by Scott Smith
A few weeks later, Jon Mills decided he had produced enough video documentaries in his time. He wanted a new challenge, and bringing a 98 year-old bakery into the 21st century fit the bill. Jon now owns the major assets of Pratzel’s (name, logo, recipes, 98 year old sour starter, and machinery), and Ronnie Pratzel will serve as a consultant for a year or so. Jon’s plan is to operate a retail outlet out of their bakery location at 9263 Dielman Industrial Drive in Olivette. He’s going to spend the remainder of March and April improving the bakery and building out a retail counter, with a targeted open date of May 1, 2011.
Steve Hartman, Jon Falk and I met with Jon on March 14, and we could feel his enthusiasm for this new chapter in his life. Likewise, he could tell how excited we were that Pratzel’s was truly coming back. As a social media practitioner, I used the tools before me to generate as much publicity as I possibly could about the plight of Prazel’s. Had it made a difference? Well, Pratzel’s has new owners. It seems like a victory all around. But we still wanted to know – what role did our 25-company-strong package of pro bono services play in Jon’s decision? Did he even know about our efforts? Paraphrasing Jon, he told us “I was following your efforts via your blog, and we were moved by the outpouring of support. It was was definitely an influencing factor in our decision.”
For Falk Harrison, that made it all worth it. #PratzelsSaved! Thank you, St. Louis.
KSDK News Channel 5 Covered the story on March 21, 2011
