Our Story

Bavarian Born. Milwaukee Bread.

January 2012

Matt and Katie Wessel move to Munich, Germany, to spend the year abroad. During that time they fall in love with Bavarian soft pretzels.

January 2013

After moving back to Milwaukee, the couple creates Milwaukee Pretzel Company, LLC, and starts making test batches in Matt's mom's kitchen. After rave reviews from family, the couple rents space at Wild Flour Bakery in South Milwaukee to produce small batches.

Someone making pretzels by hand

July 2013

Milwaukee's iconic Germanfest festival invites MPC to run a booth. With only 3 weeks to prepare, Matt and Katie bribe family and friends with pizza and beer to make 2,000 pretzels. Their booth is a huge hit and leads to the company's first wholesale customers.

January 2014

MPC moves operations to a shared kitchen space in Milwaukee's Third Ward where it hires its first employee and buys its first commercial mixer.

March 2015

After a year of promising growth, MPC relocates again to a dedicated space in the Milk Plant building in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood.

September 2015

MPC expands beyond local delivery and starts their distribution journey with Greco Foods and U.S. Foods, bringing Milwaukee pretzels throughout the entire state of Wisconsin and into Minnesota.

August 2016

Online orders begin to ship for the first time, giving customers the ability to enjoy Milwaukee pretzels out of their home freezer.

July 2017

Seeing food safety as paramount to earning customer trust, Matt and Katie invest in SQF certification and begin MPC's first formal Food Safety and QA program.

June 2020

As a strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee pretzels find their way to grocery freezers for the first time.

Milwaukee Pretzel Boxes in Freezer

December 2020

Wrapping up a record year for direct-to-home orders, MPC starts offering gift boxes for the holiday season.

March 2021

MPC makes another move, this time to their own facility on Milwaukee's Northwest side.

April 2021

MPC becomes the exclusive pretzel supplier of the Milwaukee Brewers, launching the business into the sports stadium category.

A child eating a pretzel at a baseball game

December 2022

As a complement to its busy hand-rolling line, MPC adds automated machinery from Germany to provide much-needed capacity, including a robotic pretzel twisting machine!

November 2024

Just three years after moving into their 22,000 square-foot building, MPC adds an additional 28,000 square-feet to make room for pretzel production, warehousing and storage space.

Working @ MPC

Without our amazing people we would knot (get it?) be able to make our amazing pretzels. Learn more about our vibrant culture and generous benefits.

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In the Media

Once in a while people take the time to say really nice things about the work we're doing. Here are some links to some of those stories!

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Giving Back

Our fundraising program has given over $1M back to organizations across the country. And every year a portion of our online sales benefit the Randol Thomas Wessel Memorial Fund, honoring the short but inspirational life of our owners' firstborn son.

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