34 | OCTOBER 15 • 2020 

D

akota Bread Company, a popular 
West Bloomfield bakery known 
for its challah, will reopen next 
week under surprising new management. 
Earlier this week, Friendship Circle, a local 
Lubavitch-affiliated nonprofit focusing on 
individuals with special needs, announced 
the purchase of the bakery, which will be 
used as a venue to create job opportunities 
for adults with special needs.
The bakery will close temporarily Oct. 
16-18 to transition into a kosher-certified 
establishment. Reopening is scheduled for 
Oct. 19, and a private ribbon-cutting cere-
mony will follow.
Friendship Circle plans to keep all 11 
Dakota Bread employees. Within a month, 
the training program should be up and 
running. Once it is, existing staff will con-
tinue to bake during their regular shift, 
with a second shift added for training. This 
model will allow the bakery to keep up 
with the high demand. 
When Friendship Circle co-founders 
Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov began 
sharing the news about the acquisition, the 
response was almost always the same. After 
the initial enthusiasm came the gentle, but 
stern warning not to change the recipe.
For those concerned, the award-winning 
challah recipe will remain exactly the same, 
promises Bassie Shemtov. 
“The most important thing you can do 
for individuals with special needs is to 
fill their day with purpose in a way that 
includes them in the community, and 
this bakery will do exactly that,
” said Levi 
Shemtov. “It’
s exciting to be able to take 

a brand like Dakota and say that we are 
going to keep the challah recipe exactly 
the same and give our young adults this 
incredible opportunity.
” 
The sale came about through what 
Bassie Shemtov considers divine provi-
dence. After running Dakota Bread for 
almost 21 years, owners Tom and Jennifer 
Wilson were thinking about retirement. At 
the same time, Ron Hodess, chair of the 

Friendship Circle board of directors, gently 
pushed the organization to start a bakery.
When the Wilsons bought Dakota 
Bread, they hadn’
t even heard of challah. 
They just knew it was a hugely popular 
item at the bakery they were about to buy.
Although Dakota sells a variety of bread 
and baked goods, challah is literally their 
“bread and butter.
” Tom Wilson said they 

sell between 2,500 and 3,000 loaves each 
week, constituting approximately 75% of 
their business. 
This year between Rosh Hashanah and 
Yom Kippur, they sold between 10,000 and 
11,000 challahs, Wilson estimated. Before 
Rosh Hashanah, it’
s not uncommon to 
wait up to two hours to purchase a bread 
— almost as long as some High Holiday 
services. 
Hodess credits his wife, Sue, with the 
idea of opening a bakery. Their sons Jay, 
27, and Andy, 24, successfully worked in 
a bakery, which was one of two vocational 
pilot programs started by Friendship Circle 
approximately five years ago. The bakery, 
along with an art program, was created to 
fill a void in services for those aging out of 
the organization’
s programming.
Based on the success of these models, 
Friendship Circle opened the Soul Café, a 
restaurant that trains and staffs individuals 
with disabilities, and the Soul Studio, a 
supported studio art program. However, 
some participants in the bakery program 
had a difficult time working in the café 
because it required different skill sets. 
Jay Hodess was one of the participants 
who thrived in the bakery because mak-
ing challah is a straightforward process 
involving repetitive steps. In contrast, the 
restaurant environment was not a good fit 
for him. Hodess anticipates both his sons 
will work at Dakota Bread.

EVENTS PLANNED
Future plans for the bakery include hosting 
community events such as challah baking 

A New Twist
at Dakota Bread
Friendship Circle buys popular bakery,
considers weekly challah subscription service.

JENNIFER LOVY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

eats | drinks | sweets
Nosh

“We are going to keep 
the challah recipe
exactly the same.”

— FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE’
S LEVI SHEMTOV

Bassie and 
Rabbi Levi 
Shemtov

COURTESY OF FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE