Mark Kwasigroch
Mark Kwasigroch baking experience goes back to 1975 as a cleanup boy for Gladstone Park Bakery and eventually as a baking apprentice to a full time baker, manager, owner, territory manager for a global baking company, to a Chef Instructor at Kendall College of Culinary Arts, to a co-owner to a wholesale bakery that serves parts of the U.S. and Canada.
Mark was fortunate to be taught by many master bakers from Europe, Central America, Mexico, and the United States. Every teacher Mark has had taught him many styles in baking technique as well as theory, making for a very unusual way of teaching the skills that were so sacred to the masters from a past era!
As a pastry instructor at Kendall College, Mark was able to implement his knowledge to prepare students for the real baking world and to use practical baking skills to navigate around an ever-changing baking culture.
Veronica Canete Kwasigroch
Veronica Canete Kwasigroch was an aspiring pastry chef at the age of six, taking her mother into bakeries and having her mom ask if Veronica can get a job in their bakery so that Veronica too can be a chef! Years of only dreaming, Veronica came to the United States and enrolled at Kendall College of Culinary Arts to become a culinary chef. Kendall did not have their baking program for a baking degree started yet so Veronica continued her second passion of a cooking degree.
During her second year of her program, Veronica started to take elective courses in baking and pastry to heighten her love affair of baking! She would take some night classes after spending her mornings and afternoons cooking, to prepare wonderful cake decorating, fondant sculpting and flower making.
When Veronica completed her culinary degree as the Escoffier Award Student for the best in her class, she had the opportunity to open a bakery/food to go café with classmates. Veronica in the first nine months was the pastry chef and eventually the surviving owner of the café because her partners went back to the corporate world jobs. Being pushed as the sole operator of the café, Veronica used her baking and cake decorating skills to turn the café into a full time bakery, changing the name of the store to Dream Cakes and making only cakes and pastries.
Veronica took her skills to Whole Foods Market and started selling assorted cakes and pastries to the Chicago market and eventually to the Midwest regions. Along the way in picking up Mariano’s/Kroger and other distributors. Veronica’s love for Mexico and baking turned her business to exactly what she wanted… to make people happy buying her treats that her and her Mom dreamed up as a little girl!
Look for our products in all the Chicagoland Wholefoods, Midwest and Canada stores under our Dream Cake brand.
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