After 12 years, kolache dreams go flat at a Fort Worth bakery and cafe. It’s closing
Twelve years after launching their campaign to create the Great North Texas Kolache, Blair and Wade Chappell will close Pearl Snap Kolaches on Jan. 31.
The Chappells filled their west side bakery and coffee cafe with Texas icons — coffee from Big Bend Roasters and plenty of Czech kolaches and sausage klobasnek from the Central Texas town of West.
Pearl Snap won Fort Worth’s loving embrace from the start. The Chappells started as a pop-up and catered parties and meetings. Then, they opened the bakery, 4006 White Settlement Road, along with business partner Greg Saltsman, and briefly operated a second location on South Hulen Street.
But then came the pandemic, inflation and a labor shortage. Restaurant customers’ turned away from long breakfasts or coffee visits toward an emphasis on quick-service grab-and-go drinks, delivery and rushed dining.
A recent menu expansion added more of Pearl Snap’s celebrated burgers — made on kolache buns — but didn’t draw enough new business to turn the breakfast cafe into an all-day family restaurant.
“Kolache sales are steady — it’s just not enough,” Wade Chappell said.
“We have families who have come here over the years. Our kids grew up here ... As a parent with kids, this is really hard,” he said. The books in the dining room were their own children’s, for example.
Like thousands of Texans, Chappell’s Texas Longhorns-loving family grew up stopping at one of West’s bakeries for kolaches on their way to or from Austin games.
Pearl Snap’s kolache was more fluffy and buttery than the Czech version served in West since Village Bakery opened in 1951.
But it was so tasty and served in such a variety of flavors — blueberry crumble, for example, or pecan pie — that the Pearl Snap kolache won Grand Champion at the Caldwell Kolache Festival.
“He [Wade] and Greg were teaching themselves how to make bread in my kitchen and learning how important yeast was,” Blair Chappell wrote in a message.
The reason Pearl Snap pulled the plug was simple, she wrote: “The cost of food — the difficulty of hiring, training and retaining staff and keeping customers happy, to name a few ... please appreciate servers, chefs and restaurants!”
