Anne F. Beiler

Who is Anne F. Beiler?

Anne F. Beiler is an American businesswoman and founder of Auntie Anne's pretzels.

Beiler was born into an Old Order Amish family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1949. When she was three years of age, her parents became members of the Amish Mennonite church. Growing up in a family of eight children, Anne was the baker and bread maker among them. When she was a teenager, she had a waitressing job that taught her about customer service. Later, she worked at a food stand at a farmers' market. It was there that she learned how to make pretzels the old-fashioned, Pennsylvania Dutch way – soft and doughy.

In 1987, Beiler started making hand-rolled pretzels at a market stand in Maryland. She then rented a stand in February 1988 in Downingtown, Pennsylvania and called it Auntie Anne's Pretzels. The pretzels they sold during the first weeks of owning their stand tasted "horrible." The Beilers decided to tweak the recipe and found success. Anne had no previous business experience and only a ninth grade education, but she had eight stand alone stores and her first Auntie Anne's Soft Pretzels store in a mall after a year.