DENVER — About seven years before Steven Fabos launched what would become one of the country’s most innovative gourmet dessert providers, Paul Lapadat was just getting his feet wet in the food industry.
The two moved about their businesses for decades on parallel paths thousands of miles apart, not knowing one another or how their careers would impact not only the other’s but also the commercial baking industry.
Today, Lapadat is CEO of St. Paul, MN-based Dessert Holdings, arguably the most influential umbrella of premium dessert brands in North America. It’s the parent company to The Original Cakerie, Lawler’s Foods, Atlanta Cheesecake Company and, most recently, Steven Charles – A Dessert Company, Fabos’ brainchild (with partner Charles Kosmont), now led by the bakery’s president Rebecca O’Hara.
Fabos and Kosmont envisioned building a premier sweet goods company rooted in creativity and innovation. O’Hara spearheaded the charge of bringing that dream to fruition over the past three years, catapulting the bakery’s private label and foodservice businesses as global suppliers of exquisite baked goods, including portable treats for some of the world’s most prevalent QSR operators.
Meanwhile, Lapadat’s dream of building the continent’s leading dessert manufacturing company stemmed from the business acumen he acquired in the CPG and snack spaces; he had worked for heavy hitters like General Mills, Kraft Foods and ConAgra. But he longed for the entrepreneurial life after giving his all to corporate America, and he knew that in snacks, innovation owned the day.
