Baked Thoughts

Philip Given and Jordan Pfautz, co-owners of The Pretzel Co. in York, recently branched out and scored big. Given and Pfautz brought their pretzels to QVC on Aug. 24 and, according to a Facebook post from Pfautz, "sold 20,000 pretzels on QVC in 5 minutes."

On September 24, 2015, Philip spoke at York: Crafted's PK Nights event. PK, or Pecha Kucha, is a presentation format that limits the amount of time spent on each slide and uses images to support the presentation. The History of Bread: 30,000 years of imperfection.

Q: Your company has grown rapidly in a short amount of time. Tell us about the latest developments.

A: We opened in December, and we’ve had great success in York. Most of our business is wholesale, selling to bars and restaurants. From the beginning that was really the focus, getting pretzel products into the hands of local restaurant owners.

Why York, and why pretzels? On our recent York Dish Trip, we tapped the shop’s co-owner and mover-and-shaker Philip Given about his crowd-pleasing concept, uncovered why his “pretzel ninja” deserves celebrity status and even snagged the scoop on his coming-soon second location.

Through the course of the night, the talk — they all dislike hard pretzels, calling them “cardboard” and “flavorless” — evolves into a business plan.