From an Apartment Kitchen to a Growing Pretzel Company

Eric's Pretzels didn't start with a business plan, a commercial kitchen, or years of baking experience. It started in a small apartment with $150, no mixer, and a YouTube video.

Founder Eric Liddic had never made a soft pretzel before. Armed with a few basic ingredients and a willingness to figure it out, he watched a video, mixed his first batches of dough by hand on his countertop, and started twisting pretzels in his apartment kitchen.

There was no fancy equipment and no big investment. Just a belief that if you make a great product and work hard, you can build something special.

Eric began sharing the journey on social media—everything from learning how to make the perfect pretzel to the successes, mistakes, and growing pains of building a business from scratch. People started following along, trying the pretzels, telling their friends, and coming back for more.

For roughly eight months, the business continued to grow out of that apartment. Eventually, Eric's Pretzels outgrew the home kitchen and moved into a commercial bakery.

Today, Eric's Pretzels operates a commercial bakery and pretzel café inside Dot's Market in Centerville, Ohio. What started with a handful of homemade pretzels has grown into a business supplying dozens of retail locations throughout the region, serving restaurants and other wholesale customers, and shipping pretzels nationwide.

But even as the business has grown, the heart of Eric's Pretzels hasn't changed.

Our pretzels are still about doing things the old-fashioned way—making a handmade product with a hardworking team and putting quality first. Every pretzel represents the same spirit that started this company on an apartment countertop: start with what you have, work hard, keep learning, and never be afraid to build something from nothing.

From $150 and a YouTube video to a commercial bakery, we're proud of how far we've come.

And we're just getting started.