This story originally appeared in Encore Magazine here and is reprinted in Second Wave through the cooperation of the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative.
In the fall of 2020, the Rev. Doreen Gardner says her parents “voluntold” her to take on a family tradition of cooking a vast amount of peanut brittle for family and friends at Christmastime. At age 67 then and retired from a successful 30-year career as a regional sales manager for AT&T and an active ordained minister at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Gardner refused.
But her response to her parents fell on deaf ears. "About six or seven times we went around about it," she says. "So Daddy comes to me and says, ‘You’re going to help your mother.’ So I did, but I was really mad because I did not want to do it.
“As I was doing it, everybody kept telling me, ‘We’ve been telling your mother for years she ought to sell her brittle.’ But Mom would say, ‘I’m not going to sell it.’ So I woke up in the middle of the night one night, and I don’t know what got into me, but I was like, ‘I’m going to show you!’ I put a post out on Facebook. I sold 200 pounds of brittle in three days.
“Then I was really mad because I had to fill all those orders. And I’m doing this out of my home kitchen. ... As I filled those orders, I swore I would never, ever, as long as I lived, make another batch of peanut brittle. ‘I’m done. The kitchen is closed. Don’t ask me. It’s over. That’s it.’”
But whether she liked it or not, Doreen Gardner had just taken the first steps toward what would eventually become a business called Papa's Brittle.
Making peanut brittle is a decades-long tradition in Gardner's family. “My mom and dad made peanut brittle for over 60 years," Gardner says. "Every Christmas holiday, we’d get in the kitchen and we would make it, and Mom would just give it away. Her list would grow and grow. Every year, people would start calling in August to get on her list,” which ultimately grew to more than 200 names.
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Brian K. Powers/Encore PublicationsVarieties of Papa's Brittle are currently sold in Michigan and Tennessee as well as online. Jacqueline Smith’s peanut brittle — which Gardner makes now, along with pecan brittle and cashew brittle — is “not ordinary,” Gardner says. “It’s rich. It’s succulent. It’s thin, full-flavored, loaded with nuts, and it’s really, really good."
Second thoughts
It was when her father, David Smith, became terminally ill that Gardner began to change her mind about making brittle. “My dad says to me, ‘Doreen, please forgive me. All I ever wanted to do is to leave a legacy.’ That’s because his mother and his uncle were business owners. Well, Papa was the sweetest, kindest, most giving and loving man. He set the tone for the family. I told him, ‘Dad, you are a legacy.’”
After Gardner's father died in January 2021 and as her mother was aging (Jacqueline would die in December 2022), Gardner reflected on the lives and legacies of her parents as well as the brittle for which they had become famous among family and friends.
“I come from a family of entrepreneurs," explains Gardner. "My (paternal) grand-mother, Celestine Hawes-Barnes, was a licensed beautician and notorious cook. She owned a barbecue kitchen called Barbecue Gardens and was one of the first cooks for Meals on Wheels in Kalamazoo.”
Hawes-Barnes also cooked for Gardner’s great-uncle Council Hawes Jr., who in 1940 opened The Pacific Club (aka The Pacific Inn), a restaurant and entertainment venue, at 504 Riverview Drive, where the Indian Trails bus company currently has a parking lot and garage.
The Pacific Club was “one of the first Black-owned private clubs in Kalamazoo,” says Gardner, and it hosted big names in jazz and rhythm-and-blues, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Junior Walker & The All Stars. And even though Gardner had co-owned and operated First Lady Hats, a clothing boutique in downtown Kalamazoo from 1999 to 2007, she took her time in establishing Papa's Brittle.
She signed up for the Black Entrepreneur Training Academy (BETA), a five-week training program for Black entrepreneurs run by Sisters in Business and Black Wall Street Kalamazoo, organizations working to promote and support Black businesses within the community.
At first, Gardner considered naming her business after her mother: Nana, Jackie, or Granny. “But all those names were oversaturated on social media,” Gardner says. “Finally, on the last day of class, I still could not come up with a name. I’m in tears. And Alisa Parker, who is a friend of my daughter, said, ‘Why don’t you just call it Papa’s Brittle because he was always in the kitchen with Nana?’ So I did, and that connected the legacy that Dad said he wanted.”
Gaining momentum
Since then, Gardner’s entrepreneurial trajectory has been like "a non-stop snowball,” she says.
In the summer of 2021, Gardner began making her large batches of brittle in the commercial kitchen space at the small business incubator Can-Do Kalamazoo.
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Brian K. Powers/Encore PublicationsAn illustration of the face of Doreen's father, David Smith, adorns Papa's Brittle packaging.She debuted Papa’s Brittle at the Kalamazoo Black Business Expo at the end of that summer, garnering the show's People’s Choice Award and a prize of $250 for “Best Food Vendor.” Five months later, in January 2022, Gardner was the first Black entrepreneur to win the Makers Mart competition held by the economic development organization Southwest Michigan First, earning a prize of $2,500 plus free attorney and marketing services. That October, Papa’s Brittle won the national NAACP’s Black Entrepreneur Award, which came with a $25,000 award and mentorship from Daymond John, an investor on the ABC reality television series
Shark Tank.
With these awards, Gardner and Papa's Brittle began gaining visibility beyond Kalamazoo. The company was one of 100 Midwest businesses highlighted at Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour in Chicago in July 2023, and Gardner was a featured vendor at the 2024 National Football League’s draft in Detroit. Gardner and her employees have displayed her product at national trade shows, including the National Restaurant Association Show, National Confectioners Association’s Sweets & Snacks Expo and National Grocers Association convention.
"When we go places and give samples, people grab some and walk on. Then they do a U-turn and come back for more,” Gardner says.
Bringing it home
Kalamazoo Forward Ventures, a $50 million investment fund that invests in Black entrepreneurs, granted Gardner money to renovate a restaurant space at 6541 Stadium Drive into a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen, as well as secure distribution in 48 additional stores. On April 11, her father's birthday, Gardner held a grand opening of the new facility.
Currently, Gardner has four employees, whom she calls "helpers," who make Papa’s Brittle. She expects to hire four to eight full-time employees and eventually operate her kitchen for two or three shifts, allowing her to triple the company's productivity and satisfy large orders from grocery distributors in Atlanta and other markets who want her product.
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Brian K. Powers/Encore PublicationsA picture of Gardner's parents, Jacqueline and David Smith, the inspiration for her business, was present at the ribbon-cutting for Papa Brittle's commercial kitchen.At the same time that she aspires to have Papa's Brittle “go global,” she also wants the company to create something bigger than sweet treats.
“My ultimate goal for Papa’s Brittle is to build a plant on the Northside. That’s where I grew up, and that’s where I want to land,” she says, noting that she would like to hire employees from the neighborhood so that “if my employees don’t have transportation, they can walk to work.”
She intends to offer 401(k) financial plans to enable her employees to buy a house, put their children through college, build a nest egg, and create generational wealth. “I want to have a training program and lessons and talk about money management, and I really want to be able to close the wealth gap for people on the Northside through meaningful, gainful employment,” she says. “I don’t want to just hand you a paycheck but to impact and change your life. That’s really my goal and mission.”
She also talks about developing a “redemption plan” for hiring those who "have made bad choices or mistakes in their life."
"I don’t want to just hire you but to also move you along and give you the opportunity to use the skills and talents God gave to you so that you can really discover who God created you to be and you can feel that joy of life and purpose and sense of fulfillment,” she says.
“I want my people to know they’re not just making brittle and packing bags but to ask, ‘What can we do to enhance the business? How do we get better? How do we grow?’ I want to have roundtable discussions with all employees to see where their creativeness is. Once you engage people like that, they feel important. That’s the culture I want to establish.
“My better years are behind me," adds the 72-year-old, "so I want to impact the lives of those who are coming up, to enable them to make good decisions.”
With the success of Papa's Brittle, Gardner is being sought out as a role model. “The growth of my business has inspired so many people,” she says. “People want to sit down and talk with me or ask me questions about how I did this or how I did that.
“Sometimes I think we limit ourselves as to how far we really think we can go and how big we think our business can be. I believe Papa’s is that business that’s breaking those barriers. People see that and it’s like, 'Well, shoot, if she can do it, I can do it too.'
“Everybody has different gifts. Maybe they’re supposed to sing or play an instrument or dance or be on stage. This is about community, and so we’ve got to invest in the community that we want.”
Robert M. Weir is a writer, author, speaker, book editor and authors’ coach. You can see more of his work at robertmweir.com.
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This story is part of the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s coverage of equitable community development. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. To learn more, visit swmichjournalism.com.