About Us

I guess you could say that my interest in food started in my parents’ kitchen while growing up in New Jersey. My mom’s family was Polish, my dad’s family, Italian. Food was always an important part of our family life, and we took turns preparing and consuming delicious Polish and Italian meals; Rigatoni with meatballs cooked in a thick tomato sauce on one day and Kielbasa Kapusta the next.

 

When I was a child, my Polish grandparents lived with us. My first experience in the kitchen was when my Polish grandmother let me help her make cookies at Christmas. She would make her nut cups and I would operate her Androck orange, plastic, hand-cranked nut chopper.

 

My father was always eating something unusual. He would take a trip to Brooklyn over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and come home with brown bags full of things you could not find at Food Town, our neighborhood grocery store. Immediately he would start cutting pieces of capicola, soppressata, Topolino, and pecorino. He would say, “Here Mike, try this!”  He was trying to give me the experiences he had when his father had him try these foods for the first time.

 

Finally, there is my mom, who was an incredible baker. Although she usually baked pies and cakes, she once made a cheesecake for me. This was the first time I ever had cheesecake and I loved it. That cheesecake did not last long, so I asked her to make me another. My mom loves baking, but she said, “Michael, I can’t make you a cheesecake every weekend!”  So that is when I needed to learn to make my own.

 

Trying to satisfy my love of cheesecake, I began baking my own, and in a way, that’s where Sweetie’s began, though it would take a few years and a few twists and turns in the road for Sweetie’s Cheesecakes to come to life.

 

As a teenager and a young adult, I worked in several different restaurants, selling my first cheesecake at age 16 to one of my fellow workers. Occasionally, I also helped one of my best friends who was a professional chef, and it was during this time that I met Shannon, the wonderful woman who would become my wife.

 

After a long courtship we married, and I graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ with a degree in engineering management. Not long after that, we decided to move to Texas to be closer to Shannon’s family, and while I found work in fields like information technology and market research, somehow, I just was not happy. Something was missing.

 

Then life took an unexpected turn. The firm I was working for in Plano went through several changes, including hiring a new CEO. Layoffs began, and in the third round of those, I was no longer employed.

 

Later that same day I met Shannon to break the news. Shannon told me that she and our children, sensing my unhappiness, had been praying that something exactly like this would happen.

 

But what next? It took a year or so to find my bearings, but after a lot of prayers, encouragement from friends and family, and yielding to my God-given talent, I came back to my original love of cheesecake, and falling back on my recipe…Sweetie’s Cheesecakes came to life.

 

Currently, we offer three year-round flavors – Plain, Signature, and Chocolate – with seasonal flavors that change throughout the year.

 

Right now, you can find us at various farmers’ markets and other retailers in the area. We now have our own store and commercial kitchen in North Fort Worth.

 

The story of Sweetie’s Cheesecakes, which started back in my parent’s kitchen, is just beginning!

 

So, who is Sweetie? Sweetie was my dearly departed kitty cat. Love you, Sweetie.