Courtesy Hank's
White Chocolate Raspberry, one of the more popular flavors at Hank's Cheesecakes
Courtesy Hank's
Hank's Cheesecakes, a nearly 40-year-old St. Louis institution has changed hands, but you’d never know it. The business, located at 1063 S. Big Bend in Richmond Heights, shares a building with Del Pietro's restaurant.
On October 1 of last year, Anthony Favazza bought the name, brand, recipes, and equipment from founder Hank Krussel.
Having gone through a similar process in 2016, when he bought the rights to Amighetti’s, Favazza (whose father, uncle, and brother run Favazza’s on the Hill) was familiar with acquiring iconic local brands. “I enjoy buying great brands and making them better,” he says. “And I can’t believe how lucky I am to own two beloved institutions.”
Favazza deliberately kept the changeover under wraps until he was sure that he could maintain consistency. “People hear about an ownership change, and they often say things are different, even when they aren’t,” he says. “We’re at the four-month mark, and product-wise everything is the same as it was before, but we did make a few additions.”
Courtesy Hank's
Courtesy Hank's
The product mix includes 50 flavors of cheesecake (in several sizes, including sheets), heart-shaped cheesecakes, minis, a handful of savory cheesecakes, standard baked cakes, “angel wings” (turtle cheesecake on a stick dipped in chocolate and pecans), wedding cakes and wedding cheesecakes, brownies, bars, and gluten-free offerings.
Favazza did make one business decision that he hoped would be a game-changer. “We’re now delivering our products—cheesecakes, individual slices, everything—using DoorDash,” he says, adding that the response has been dramatic. "One thing foodservice people learned from the pandemic is to embrace the delivery component."
Favazza says he’s also on the cusp of introducing a new product called “Cheesecaketo” (pronounced cheese-cay-keto), a gluten-free, sugar-free, Keto diet–friendly line of all-natural cheesecakes made with a nut crust. “Hank had all these components on hand. They just never got put together,” Favazza says. “We plan to start with plain, raspberry, and blueberry flavors.”
Part of the delay has been due to the cream cheese shortage, which is "real and still terrible. Every week is a battle," he says.
As it turns out, Favazza’s path to owning a cheesecake company was somewhat serendipitous. He had worked at Favazza’s throughout his childhood and Cheesecake Factory while in college. “I always loved cheesecake and the cheesecake business, and they were better at doing so many things beyond that,” he says of the corporate juggernaut.
Several years ago, when the Amighetti’s location on The Hill became Colino’s Café & Bakery, Favazza effectively lost his bread-baking operation and began looking for alternatives, ideally at an existing bakery. (At present, Amighetti’s sandwiches are made using baguettes from Fazio’s.) In his search for a bakery, he came across Hank’s, which happened to have 95 percent of the equipment that he needed to make bread and was being used to make cheesecakes, his longtime crave. The entrepreneurial wheels in his head began to spin. Hank’s used the ovens eight hours per day, which left 16 for bread baking, Favazza reasoned. This could work, he thought, and struck a deal with Krussel.
Hank’s already had a longterm, stable crew, who remained with the business. But a recent hire gave notice after two weeks. "That's why I wanted to wait for a bit to announce anything," he says.
Coincidentally, years earlier, he'd struck up a conversation with a DoorDash driver who happened to be a former baker and pastry maker—baker royalty, it turns out. “His name was Rich Pfeifer, of Pfeifer’s Party Pastries fame,” Favazza says. “I believe his grandfather started the company, his father ran it, and Rich worked there for nine years.” When Pfeifer’s closed in 1989 (the location is now the home of Kitchen Conservatory), Rich applied for a job at Hank’s Cheesecakes and was eventually hired by Straub’s, where he worked for 20 years as a pastry chef. When the short-time baker at Hank’s gave notice, Favazza called Pfeifer, who became the new baker.
“The entire Pfeifer family has been a huge supporter at Hank's so far,” Favazza says, “right down to Rich’s brother, Jerry. He’s our dishwasher. This whole process has been a win-win-win-win-win."
