The Dorothy Henke Story |Dot’s Pretzels
There's a pressure that's always there — a little voice that says move faster, do more, scale quicker. I feel it too. And I think a lot of us do. So this episode is for anyone who's in a season of trying to find their rhythm and wondering if the pace they're moving at is enough.
Dorothy Henke is the founder of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels — those buttery, garlicky, impossible-to-stop-eating seasoned pretzels you've definitely had at least once. She grew up on a dairy farm in North Dakota, built a thirty-year career in finance, and was heading into retirement when a bowl of Chex mix at a wedding changed everything. She started making pretzels in a borrowed kitchen in a town of a thousand people, grew the business entirely at her own pace without a single outside investor, and sold to Hershey in 2021 for $1.2 billion. She was in her late sixties. She hand-bagged every bag by hand for two and a half years because she didn't know where it was going. She didn't want to go in the hole. And she just kept showing up. This one hit differently for me. I think it will for you too.
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Welcome back to Fifteenish. This is Leah. Hey, friends.
So, there is this kind of pressure, and I know that you know what I mean. I don't think I'm alone in this. There's this constant voice that says you have to move faster.
You should be scaling quicker. And don't forget about just always doing more. And I can't always find where it's coming from.
It's not from one person. It's not one moment. It's not one Instagram post.
It's just there, like something that you can't tune out.
I'm in a season right now where I'm honestly just trying to find my rhythm with this podcast, with work, with motherhood, with this marathon training, just really with all the things happening around me that maybe I don't always talk about.
And I catch myself with this feeling that I should be further along. Like there's this timeline that exists and I'm way behind on it.
But then I have to remind myself, there are some amazing stories that I've covered, that have these founders starting their thing, who are older than I currently am. And one of those founders we're going to talk about today.
This is the Dorothy Henke story. Dorothy is the founder of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels. I'm not ashamed to admit that they are our family's road trip staple.
And if they make it into the house, they're gone. Their fastest thing in a house to disappear. And if you've never had them, be warned.
They're one of those things that you absolutely cannot stop eating once you open the bag. All right, I digress. So let's rewind and talk about Dorothy's story.
Dorothy grew up on a dairy farm in Wapiton, North Dakota. She was the youngest of six kids. Before school, she milked cows.
After school, she milked cows. She helped her mom tend a massive garden. The garden was so big it could actually feed the whole neighborhood, not just her family.
She picked strawberries. She collected eggs from their chickens to sell for grocery money. Work wasn't a concept in her house.
It was just their everyday kind of living. And I want you to actually understand what that actually means, especially if you didn't grow up near farms or know someone who farmed.
I think we throw around phrases like hardworking or humble beginnings, and they kind of just wash over us without actually getting the full picture of what that means. Milking cows before school as a kid, that's just your life.
That's getting up in the dark in a North Dakota winter and doing the thing because the thing needs doing. You just do it, and then you go to school, and then you come home and do it all over again.
That kind of upbringing doesn't produce people who need recognition or validation to keep going. It produces people who work because working is just what they do. Dorothy graduated from Wappenton High School.
She got her accounting certificate from the North Dakota State College of Science and built a lifelong career in finance and insurance. She married a farmer named Randy. They raised two sons and a daughter.
By her late 50s, she and Randy had started winding down. They were snowboards in Arizona and they had retirement on their mind. Dorothy was ready.
She had spent decades in financial services and she was genuinely ready to rest. But then, she went to a wedding.
3:15
A Wedding Inspiration
Picture this. A wedding reception in Max, North Dakota. Max is a tiny farm town.
Maybe 300 people. Think really small town where the reception is in their local hall. There's a hot dish on every table and someone's grandma made the cake.
And in the middle of every table, a bowl of Chex mix. Well, Dorothy grabbed a handful and she started eating, but the seasoning was just too spicy for her. But what she kept coming back to were those little butter spindle pretzels that were mixed in.
There was just something about them. She kept picking them out thinking, I feel like I could do something with that. Now it wasn't like a light bulb went off for her.
There was no moment of like, oh, this is my big idea. Remember, she was leaning towards retirement. She just thought what she probably always thought when something wasn't quite right in the kitchen.
She thought I could do better than that. So she went home and started messing around. She bought packets of spindle pretzels.
She raided her spice cabinet and made a run to Sam's Club for more. She started mixing and tasting and adjusting and starting over. She was going for something specific.
She wanted buttery, garlicky, a little cheesy with a slight pepper hit that crept up at the end. She knew what she was looking for. She just had to find it.
And eventually she did. And she started bringing the pretzels to family gatherings. People lost their minds over them.
Then in the winter of 2011, while she and Randy were in Arizona, a friend asked Dorothy if she could make a few bags as gifts for her clients.
4:37
Unexpected Demand
It was just a small favor for the holidays. And Dorothy of course said sure. She made the bags and her friend handed them out.
And then, her words, the phone was ringing off the hook. The clients wanted more. Where do we get more?
Who makes these? How do we order them? She said later, well, I'll tell you what, it wasn't anticipated.
It was definitely not a goal of mine. I was going to retire. But, yes, that but, you know that but, that one thing that changes everything.
Remember, Dorothy was 60-something years old with no business experience, no food industry background, really just no idea of what it takes to create a business from nothing.
She didn't know anything about bagging equipment or labeling regulations or food safety supply chains or even distribution. And to top it off, she was shy. She said it herself, I couldn't go face to face.
I'm too shy. Now, the reason that she named the brand Dots instead of Dorothy's was because she looked at the name and thought, Oh my God, this sounds like an old lady. And Dot just looked better on the bag.
And because of that, it let the real Dorothy hide behind the scenes. So do you want to know what she did instead of pitching investors or hiring a marketing team or going after big retail?
Well, she borrowed the commercial kitchen at the Velva North Dakota Grocery Store after the baker was done for the day.
6:04
Organic Business Growth
That's it. She made pretzels and 30 pound batches. She packaged them up herself.
She sent out gallon bag samples to gas stations across North Dakota because she said you had to get it in people's mouths. She called every six weeks to follow up. She and Randy even showed up at Pride of North Dakota trade shows.
She said people would walk up to her booth, pick a sample cup of pretzels, and probably think, what the heck, it's just a pretzel. But then they'd taste it, and then they'd just stop and go, oh my God.
And then we'd look around for who was responsible. She said the more shows she did, the more people they'd see go, Dot's is here. And she said that was the fun thing.
That is what kept them going. I love that image so much. Just Dorothy and Randy at a folding table at a trade show in North Dakota, watching strangers eat pretzels and just having that little moment.
Something about that whole scene is just so wholesome, right? Dorothy and Randy were just two really good people who believed in this enough to keep showing up. She handbagged and weighed every single bag of pretzels for two and a half years.
Because she said she just didn't know where it was going. Two and a half years by hand because she didn't know where it was going. And at some point, she put her phone number on the bag, which led to, and I cannot make this up, marriage proposals.
Yes, marriage proposals because her number was on a bag of her pretzels. She had late night calls from people who had discovered Dot's pretzels and apparently felt strongly enough to propose. She said, and I quote, Stupid me.
I put my phone number on the bag. Oh my God, I am just dying thinking about the scenario. And I just have to laugh at that moment.
She was just this sweet woman who just didn't know what she didn't know. But she kept going. She grew the business at exactly the pace it could sustain.
Did you hear that last part? Exactly the pace it could sustain. When pretzels got into Seneca gas stations, she didn't immediately go looking for the next thing.
That was enough for now. When an enthusiastic Ace Hardware rep started spreading them through the national network, same thing, she let it settle. She let each step be what it was before she took the next one.
She didn't go knocking on Walmart's door. She just let it grow at the pace she wanted it to grow. She said her whole guiding principle was, I didn't want to go in the hole.
That's it. Just don't go in the hole. The first production facility they opened in Elva was inside a rundown building.
The city let them refurbish. The early production line was about as scrappy as you'd expect, improvised, manual, and held together with whatever worked.
Randy once said, I knew she was always really dedicated and all in, all in, all the time, and also in no hurry. By 2019, Dot's was the sixth highest selling pretzel brand in the country.
9:08
Hershey Acquisition
She was right behind household names like Snyder's and Rolled Gold, she hadn't taken a dime of outside money, and she still didn't have national distribution. She had gotten there largely through Ace Hardware stores.
And in November of 2021, Hershey acquired Dot's for $1.2 billion. Keep in mind that Dorothy was in her late 60s, she had started making pretzels at an age when most people are just trying to figure out what to do with themselves in retirement.
And she ended up here selling to Hershey for $1.2 billion. Now when she talked about the sale, the way she described it had nothing to do with the money.
She said, I created my pretzels to share with those people closest to me and have built the business with the idea of sharing them with everyone. That's the whole thing. Share them with everyone.
Again, how wholesome is she?
10:10
Sustainable Pace
And here is what gets me about that. Dorothy didn't build dots to prove anything. She didn't build it to beat out any of her competitors.
She built it because someone kept asking for more, and she kept saying yes at exactly the rate that she could handle. That is the whole lesson right there. It's all about pace, not slow, not fast, just hers.
It was the rate that she could sustain without going in the hole. And somehow, doing it exactly that way without anyone pushing her or timing her or telling that she needed to move faster, she built something worth $1.2 billion.
This image of Dorothy in that commercial kitchen in Velva late in the evening after the bakers gone home, making 30 pound of batches of pretzels by herself. No one was watching. She didn't know if it was going anywhere.
She was just doing the work because she was good at the work, and someone kept asking for more. She has said that the thing that she's good at is working, just working, showing up and doing the actual thing.
We live in this world that usually rewards the people yapping about their success. The person who posts all the highlight reels makes the hustle look aspirational. Dorothy is the opposite of all of that.
She's shy. She would rather be in the background. She even named her own company something other than her name so she could hide behind the brand.
That's not a small lesson there. That is actually a deeply countercultural one. The pressure to be visible and to move fast and to announce and pitch and hustle and grow.
It's everywhere. And Dorothy just ignored all of it. She knew what she was good at.
She knew what she wasn't good at. She knew how fast she wanted to go and she just went that speed. I'm trying to hold on to that in my own life right now.
The season of finding my rhythm and honestly, it's a harder season than sometimes I make it sound. Finding your rhythm isn't about being slow or fast, it's about moving at the pace that is actually yours.
Not the pace that someone else decided you should be at. Not the pace the Internet says a successful person moves at. It's the pace that lets you do your best work without going in the hole, financially, emotionally, and physically.
It's the pace that you can sustain. What would you build if you stop trying to move at someone else's speed and just started? Because here's what I know, the timeline you're behind on or that you think you're behind on, someone else made that up.
The pace that you're supposed to be moving at, that's not yours.
So whatever it is that you're sitting on right now, the thing that you keep saying you'll start when the timing is better, when life slows down or when you feel more ready, maybe the timing is already right. Maybe your pace is already enough.
Maybe you just need to start. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.
Sources & Disclaimer
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine — The Origins of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels (March 2020)
InForum — A Seasoned Entrepreneur, Dot Henke Named The Forum's 2021 Area Person of the Year
InForum — Why There's No Stop in North Dakota's Pretzel Queen Dot Henke
KX News — Someone You Should Know: Dorothy 'Dot' Henke, Creator of Dot's Pretzels (June 2021)
Grand Forks Herald — Dot of Dot's Pretzels Shares Snack-Tastic Success Story
Bismarck Tribune — Dot of Dot's Homestyle Pretzels Shares Success Story
Rural Gold Podcast — Dot's Pretzels: Dot Henke the Accidental Entrepreneur (October 2021)
1 Million Cups Fargo — Dorothy and Randy Henke Entrepreneurial Journey (October 2019)
All facts shared in this episode are based on information available at the time of recording. Any personal reflections, interpretations, or opinions are my own. If anything is found to be inaccurate, I'm happy to issue a correction.
