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The Baker’s Son: My Life in Business

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An inspirational rags-to-riches memoir by the founder of the most successful Caribbean business ever established in the US.

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$15.95 $11.96

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What people are saying…

“At 21, Hawthorne’s parents shipped him off to New York, where his older siblings had already relocated. He eventually found a job, started college, and began to build the multi-million dollar business Golden Krust, whose Jamaican patties are a New York staple. Hawthorne’s story is compelling on many levels: it offers a peek into life in Jamaica, a classic immigrant narrative, and a testament to the strength of family. Hawthorne’s is a Horatio Alger tale with a Caribbean flavor, which should find an appreciative audience among entrepreneurs and business aficionados.”
Library Journal

“The American question gets a great, real-life look in The Baker’s Son . . . Hawthorne’s story is at once inspirational and revelatory.”
Publishers Weekly

“In his memoir, The Baker’s Son, Hawthorne shares how an idea inspired by his father’s bakery in Border, Jamaica, grew into the 120-branch Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill. After 23 years of selling patties, pastries, sandwiches and more through Golden Krust, Hawthorne hasn’t lost sight of his values.”
New York Daily News

The Baker’s Son is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocate to the Bronx in the 1980s . . . the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree.”
The Philadelphia Tribune

“In gripping narrative that is both inspirational and instructive, Lowell Hawthorne shares how an idea infused with tenacity, intellect, and passion can become a dream realized. The Baker’s Son offers a successful playbook for any entrepreneur who seeks to play on the rough-and-tumble field of business—and win.”
—Earl “Butch” Graves Jr., president and CEO, Black Enterprise

The Baker’s Son chronicles the journey of an entrepreneur of color as he encounters amazing business lessons valuable to all: success will likely require, among many things, an organization that either is, or performs like, a tightknit family; a commitment to advancing one’s own education; a willingness to continuously ‘bet the farm’ before swelling one’s personal bank account; and a solid foundation of belief in a higher power. If you consider yourself an entrepreneur in waiting, read it! I guarantee you’ll benefit from it!”
—Bob Holland, former CEO of Ben & Jerry’s and former founding director (retired) of the YUM Brands board

“Lowell Hawthorne’s chronicle of the development of a small Jamaican business into the highly successful Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, an American business empire, is an invaluable guide to success as well as an inspiring autobiographical work. The Baker’s Son follows the visionary Hawthorne from a Jamaican childhood selling guinea pigs and rabbits for pocket money to his journey to the US in pursuit of the American Dream.”
—P.J. Patterson, former prime minister of Jamaica

The Baker’s Son should be required reading for all young men and women at the dawning of America’s age of austerity. Faith, family, and community must be the foundations for the testing times ahead.”
—Stephen Hill, CEO, Caribbean International Network Television

The Baker’s Son is an outstanding example of minority business success. In many ways, it represents a convincing case study of business success both within the Caribbean community, and in the larger American mainstream.”
—Robert A. Hill, editor in chief of the multivolume edition of The Marcus Garvey & Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers


Description

An excerpt of the digital edition of The Baker’s Son is available for free download as part of Akashic’s Jamaican Digit.

The Baker’s Son is a charming and well-crafted memoir by the co-founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, the hugely successful Jamaican-owned and -run enterprise that reaches from Massachusetts to Florida with over 120 franchise locations. Today the Golden Krust brand represents the most lucrative Caribbean business ever established in America.

An independently owned family enterprise, Golden Krust was established in 1989 by members of the extended Hawthorne family. Within a few short years, Golden Krust developed into a very successful business. The original inspiration for the company came from the family patriarch, Ephraim Hawthorne, who for many years ran a successful bakery in the secluded hamlet of Border, in the rural parish of St. Andrew in Jamaica.

The Baker’s Son is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocated to the Bronx in the 1980s. Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, personal as well as professional, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree. Not content to rest on its well-deserved laurels, the family has, in addition, established an innovative and very successful philanthropic foundation to give back to the community.

As much a “business memoir” as it is a “spiritual memoir,” the book records a profound journey of the author from his childhood within the Hawthorne family in Jamaica to his spiritual rebirth and conversion in the recent past. The author attributes the real source of his success in business to his wife, siblings, and children, and to the deep Christian faith inculcated in him by his father and mother from a young age.

Read Lowell Hawthorne’s ideas on how to run a family business in Success magazine.

Read a feature on Lowell Hawthorne at USAToday.com.

Watch an interview with Lowell Hawthorne on Arise Business Exchange.

Watch Lowell Hawthorne participation at CBS’s Undercover Boss.

Watch an interview with Lowell Hawthorne on WH-TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJZGjJhp9A

Watch an interview with Lowell Hawthorne on NBC 4 New York:


Book Details

  • Paperback: 220 pages
  • Published: 9/4/12
  • IBSN: 9781617751240
  • e-IBSN: 9781617751424
  • Hardcover
  • IBSN: 9781617751257

Author

LOWELL HAWTHORNE is the president and CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill. He has been bestowed with many awards for his entrepreneurial prowess and philanthropy. His most notable achievements include the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Jamaica Observer‘s Business Leader Award, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Medgar Evers College, and the Order of Distinction from his native homeland of Jamaica. In 2005, he established the Mavis and Ephraim Hawthorne Golden Krust Scholarship Foundation, which has awarded numerous scholarships to young persons both in the United States and Jamaica. Lowell also serves as a director of the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry and as Chairman of the Partnership Board of the American Foundation for the University of the West Indies. He lives in Westchester, New York. The Baker’s Son is his first book.

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