After nearly a century in business, the mom-and-pop Gladstone Bakery -- known for its Birds Nests and rainbow cakes -- is going out of business due to the effects of the pandemic.
The bakery, which opened in 1925, was long a presence on Milwaukee Avenue on Chicago's Northwest Side. Today, it's an industrial building for the wholesale operation and a small retail shop in Elk Grove Village. But the pandemic has not made life easy, and the shop plans close at the end of this month.
A skeleton crew is working now going from a pre-pandemic staff of 22 to only a couple of part-timers and retired bakers who have returned to help build the final orders.
At the height of its business, Gladstone was baking hundreds of wedding cakes a week, in addition to a steady business around birthdays and the big after-church crowds.