Essen Bakery owners say they closed for a mental health break. Their employees say they’ve been ghosted.

When the owners of Essen Bakery announced they were closing their shops in Norris Square and South Philly, it was always supposed to be temporary. Tova and Brad du Plessis announced they were "hitting pause" on May 31 and would be back with "renewed energy, sharper focus, and a few exciting improvements" in three days.

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Almost three months later, the shops are still closed and the workers who ran them have no idea when they'll return, if it all. They say they've borrowed money from friends, family or banks to make rent while the du Plessises have ignored their questions and concerns. According to multiple Essen Bakery employees, the couple has been radio silent with staff since June — and blocking anyone, including their own employees, who discusses the fraught situation on the bakery's social media pages.

Brad and Tova du Plessis didn't responded to multiple requests for comment.

Hints from the start

It wasn't always this way, though the people who worked for the company say chaos was baked into the business plan. Essen Bakery began in 2016 with a small storefront on East Passyunk Avenue. It was a breakout moment for Tova, a former line cook for Zahav who racked up four James Beard Award nominations for her shop's breads and pastries, inspired by the recipes from her childhood in an Orthodox Jewish community in South Africa. When Essen expanded to a larger space in Norris Square last year, her husband Brad, a former wine consultant and sales manager, took the reins of the wholesale and catering operation.

The employees who staffed the new shop, nicknamed Essen North, remember an "every man for themselves" mentality. Communication was scant from the du Plessises, they say, who were often in their office or otherwise unavailable. In the absence of clear direction, workers tried their best to figure out solutions.

"There was definitely kind of a feeling of nobody really knew what they were doing," said Ginny Payne, a front-of-house worker at Essen North. "But everything always worked itself out in the end, at least on my end."

After the du Plessises fired a manager, the problems piled up. Payne remembered finding a mouse in the fridge, and walking over to the bakery "three or four times" to get a single paycheck. Another Essen North employee, who was one of several former workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said they could not cash checks without the bank calling her bosses for permission. Maranda Leecen, who worked primarily at the South Philly location, said they repeatedly opened late because the baked goods, which were prepared at Essen North, weren't coming to the East Passyunk shop in time.

"You could tell that stuff just wasn't being streamlined correctly because they didn't have those managers there," Leecen said.

The anonymous Essen North worker added: "I would say by like April we had established a way to kind of do things without Tova and Brad because she wouldn't even answer phone calls at that point."

A 'temporary reset'

Despite the issues, the staff was blindsided when the du Plessises abruptly closed both locations on May 31. In a message posted to the bakery's Instagram account that day, the owners announced a three-day pause to "take care of what matters most— our people, our health, and our future.

"Running a bakery is a labor of love," the post continued. "Just like dough needs time to rest in order to rise, we’re prioritizing rest, reflection, and recharging so that when we reopen, we do so with renewed energy, sharper focus, and a few exciting improvements to our menu and spaces."

The employees of Essen Bakery found out the same day the public did, via a message on the company's Slack channel. The message, a screenshot that was shared with PhillyVoice, characterized the closure as a "temporary reset" and promised to reopen "bigger, better, and uncut" on June 4.

"Operations across both locations have become disorganized and out of sync with the vision we have for Essen, and we ultimately decided that in order to give the business the attention it needs, we would need to sacrifice a few days sales, efforts that we anticipate paying off with radically increased sales across both locations," Brad wrote.

Workers scheduled for upcoming shifts say they did not receive more direct communication than this Slack message, a management choice that would become a pattern in the ensuing weeks.

The reopening was soon pushed back another three days. Then one more. By June 7, there was no reopening date, just a promise to follow up. The excuses for the delay varied from a broken air conditioner to failed investments. As the cycle continued on Slack, staffers started to voice concerns about their income. It was only after a worker asked, multiple sources and a Slack screenshot confirm, that the du Plessises offered reduced-hours unemployment benefits.

"I didn't want to bring this up but yeah I'm not going to make rent this month," one employee wrote.

"I'd just like to know if I … still have a position at the bakery," another posted to Slack.

There finally seemed to be momentum in mid-June, when Brad and Tova called a few people in to prep the space for reopening. But then the cycle started anew, until June 20, when multiple sources and Slack screenshots confirm the du Plessises went silent.

"I literally thought we were going to reopen the third week of June," the anonymous Essen North worker said. "I was even in the building helping clean, reorganize the food station, prepping everything. And then all of a sudden they were like, yeah, we're not gonna reopen this weekend. We'll let you know. And that was literally the last I ever heard of them."

By that point, several workers were already in dire financial straits. Some had been denied unemployment. Leecan, who received benefits, worried they would be compromised by the June 16 reopening date the du Plessises had provided on the form. The anonymous Essen North worker, who also obtained benefits, still had to take out a loan to pay rent. Even with a new job, they are still paying it off. Payne said she doesn't eat some days.

Kristin Hunt/for PhillyVoice

A note on the door of the Essen Bakery in South Philly says the shop is 'taking a short break.'

Owners go public

Despite these hardships, some workers at Essen Bakery say they weren't truly upset until their bosses granted an interview to the Inquirer. In the story, published July 30, the du Plessises described the personal mental health struggles they said caused the closure and "acknowledged that most, if not all, employees have been able to secure other jobs." The couple also pledged to offer all interested employees their jobs back when they reopened, hopefully in time for Rosh Hashanah in September.

For the staff of Essen Bakery, it was the first they'd heard from their bosses in over a month.

"I think the article kind of gives the impression that the employees are taken care of and that was definitely not the case," a front-of-house employee said. "The unemployment information was published late and obviously not everyone, myself included, got unemployment. I think they also said in the article that they were happy to hear that most of their employees had gotten jobs, which, that's not something they can say for sure because they never reached out to any of us."

Before the Inquirer article went live, Leecan said she was planning to let the entire ordeal go. But after reading the du Plessises' account of the closure, she posted a nearly 5-minute video to TikTok sharing the employees' perspective and urging customers not to return to Essen Bakery.

"To just be blindsided and ghosted and then only to see and be spoken to and spoken about through an article — that just didn't sit right with me," Leecan said. "It made me feel mistreated and it made me feel like my story, what we went through, wasn't going to be told. And that's what led me to make my video."

Leecan claimed in the video and a subsequent interview that comments she left on the Essen Bakery social media pages were deleted and her accounts were blocked. Another employee said the same thing happened to her boyfriend, who left comments about "how they're treating employees." Essen Bakery has turned off comments on their Instagram post sharing the Inquirer article.

The workers who once made coffee, bagels and babka at the company's storefronts aren't just angry. They're disappointed. One employee described Essen Bakery as a "safe, welcoming establishment" with great coworkers and clientele. Payne said she was thrilled to join the team after leaving a previous job that took a toll on her mental health.

"When I got the job at Essen, it meant a lot to me," she said. "It was a great job. You know, I enjoyed doing the work. I felt very happy to be working in that environment. I could walk to work. It was honestly terrific.

"I can't express enough that I'm not some disgruntled employee, who had issues all this time. I genuinely loved working there."

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