City slickers

Have Cheesecake, Will Travel

Jennifer and Terry discover how Wow! Factor’s decadent desserts are satisfying customer cravings miles away at hotels and restaurants across Canada and the U.S.

Story by Jennifer Cockrall-King and Terry Juzak   photography by John Gaucher

“Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first,” wrote the American author Ernestine Ulmer. We wonder what Ms. Ulmer would think of us jumping headlong into a stainless steel vat of freshly whipped cream cheese icing? Our eyes bulging and our stomachs groaning, we tear ourselves away from the temptation and over to the next stop on our tour of Wow! Factor Dessert’s confectionary wonderland. 

In fact, “wow” is a word we just can’t stop repeating over and over again as we stand in the midst of a dessert-lover’s dream, hundreds of cakes whizzing around us on conveyor belts. The bakers have long since finished their night shift. Now lab-coated and hair-netted “pre-finishing” and “finishing teams,” as they’re called, are expertly and swiftly assembling layers and applying finishing flourishes before the cakes are cut into perfect wedges.

The most amazing part of our tour, however, is to discover that these cakes are destined for hotels and restaurants from coast-to-coast in Canada and across the U.S. as far south as Texas. Some will even make their way onto those sumptuous dessert buffets on cruise ships. On average, 25,000 Wow! Factor cakes are made every month in this 16,202–square–foot facility just 15 minutes east of Edmonton.

We stop to imagine dessert-ophiles biting into a Wow! Factor Caramel Apple Cheesecake in Tallahasee, Florida, or the multi-layered Chocolate Mocha Obsession Cake in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with no idea that these tasty cakes were made thousands of kilometres away in Sherwood Park, Alberta.

“Essentially, we know how to make a really good frozen dessert product that thaws well,” explains the energetic company founder and vice-president, Joanne Yaakov, in her lilting South African accent.

Joanne starts with “good, pure ingredients” which meet her very exacting standards. Recipes are developed, which can take up to a year in some cases, and then are tested and tasted before eventually making their way into the lineup of 65 to 100 desserts. Wow! Factor desserts are whipped up in commercial-sized batches, assembled, finished, cut, boxed, shrink-wrapped and frozen at their facility.

And here’s the trick to having each slice arrive tasting as fresh as the day it was made: all of the desserts are kept frozen from production facility to transport truck to distribution hub to client, across provinces and borders. A black box recorder travels along with each shipment to monitor the temperature range within which the desserts need to stay so that they arrive at their destination in perfect, frozen condition. Thawed, cakes that contain fresh cream have a three-day refrigerated shelf life and other desserts have a five-day refrigerated shelf life.

It’s a system that Joanne and her husband Bryan Yaakov, company president, have been developing since the company started in 1982. Back then, Joanne was baking cakes and appetizers in a small commercial kitchen that she installed in their basement. Bryan, who had been working in the oilpatch service industry, came aboard Joanne’s company to look after sales and distribution while Joanne baked.

“It was a homemade product that had some originality,” recalls Joanne of the company’s almost immediate success. Within three frantic months, the business had outgrown the Yaakov’s house and the focus was pared down to cakes. They moved their business to its current location in Sherwood Park.

As the company expanded, the Yaakovs were able to maintain the quality while increasing the volume of cakes they produced. However, with their luxury, special-occasion product, the Yaakovs knew that they needed to think about exporting from the very beginning.

“Within about two years, we had the Edmonton market covered. Then we moved on to the Alberta market, and then the western Canadian market,” says Bryan. From their humble beginnings, they grew to supply international clientele like Boston Pizza restaurants and Holland America cruise lines. Wow! Factor Desserts is now one of many companies that are part of Alberta’s agri-processing industry, which produces close to $10 billion worth of products and exports almost $3 billion of those products to international markets every year.

The next frontier for the Yaakovs is the Asian market. In November, they’re off to Shanghai, China, for a foodservice tradeshow. Japan, and even Dubai with its ultra-high-end hotels and casino lifestyle, are other markets on their radar.

Thank goodness, for our sake, that they haven’t forgotten about their market closer to home. Joanne presents us with wedges of their four most popular cakes: Mango Berry, Key Lime and the Classic European cheesecakes, and a slice of Triple Chocolate layer cake. Mouths full, we manage a few muffled “wows” as we clean our plates.

For more information on Wow! Factor Desserts visit their website.