After serving their country in World War II, four Cleveland brothers returned home and started Becker Brother’s Restaurant and Donuts. Almost 70 years later, patrons still enjoy donuts made by the Becker family, including a North Ridgeville location. Becker’s Doughnuts,
, is run by the daughter and granddaughter of Joe Becker, one of the brothers who started the original business on Broadview Road in Cleveland. Barb Mamrak, 65, opened the North Ridgeville shop April 15, 1980, with her husband Frank Mamrak, along with the guidance of her father, Joe Becker. With three young children, the couple planned to use the doughnut shop as a vehicle to help pay for a construction business that Frank Mamrak wanted to start. The couple’s dream ended in 1982 when Frank Mamrak was killed in an accident on one of the construction projects. Barb Mamrak, now a widow, focused on the doughnut shop where she spent the next three decades teaching her children and grandchildren how to make the pastries using recipes that her father and his brothers created in the late 1940s. ‘We have been open going on 35 years and we have been going strong,’ Mamrak said. ‘We have had ups and downs of course, but so far so good.’ ‘I love seeing the customers and interacting with them. The store has taken on a life of its own. It’s like having a big extended family, you get to know people by their first name. I know their children and now their grandchildren.’ Just as Mamrak has watched her customers grow older, marry and have children of their own, the customers also have watched her family grow. Jenny Patterson, Mamrak’s daughter, started working in the doughnut shop when she was 6. Patterson, now 38, co-owns the shop with her mother. ‘I have known some of the customers since I was 6 and they have watched me grow up,’ she said. ‘It’s a neat thing to be in a place so long and to have the family always involved. I feel very proud that it has stayed in the family. It wouldn’t be called a Becker’s if it wasn’t a family business.’ Customers enjoy the doughnuts
Gary Nagle has been a customer since the North Ridgeville story opened. ‘They always have good fresh doughnuts, friendly service and happy smiles,’ Nagle said. ‘I have been coming here for four or five years,’ said Roy Kershaw of Wakeman. ‘You don’t get good original doughnuts anywhere else than in a real doughnut shop. They taste great.’ Shop’s expansion
Patterson has expanded the doughnut choices and now there more than 60 to choose from. She has experimented with different types of doughnuts over the years and her children, fourth generation doughnut makers, have helped to create some of the more popular items. ‘I have specialty fritters made with fresh jalapenos that are stuffed with cream cheese, doughnuts with bacon on them, all kinds of gourmet doughnuts,’ she said. ‘There are doughnuts with Sour Patch Kids on them, doughnuts with M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces. All kinds of different toppings.’ The shop opens at 4 a.m. ‘It’s a hard job, you get up in the middle of the night, and you go to bed in the middle of the day,’ Patterson said. ‘My grandpa would not open until 9 in the morning, but his store was open until midnight, so people would come get their doughnuts at night for the next morning.’ As fourth generation doughnut maker, Ashley Patterson, 20, is continuing the family tradition. ‘I started here when I was 13, and I get to hang out and talk to people that I have known since I was a kid,’ Ashley Patterson said. ‘And I get to see my mom everyday. ‘It’s a really cool thing, its really cool thing to be part of something like this. This has always been something that is important to me and my family.’ The store is about to celebrate its 35th year anniversary. ‘We have earned our living on doughnuts, and my dad’s saying was that doughnuts have been very, very good to us,’ Mamrak said.
