Low-carb secret behind Johnson County’s Three Bears bakers
After the holiday sweets of December have packed on the pounds, customers come to Bulk It later in the winter “ready to get off sugar,” said Nancy Baum, co-owner of the store in Lenexa.
While that could mean giving up carbohydrates and missing out on bread and buns, Baum stocks a line of locally produced baked goods that are “keto and diabetic friendly,” Baum said.
They’re baked by Lenexa-based Three Bears Bakery & BBQ, owned by Jabin and Natalie Olds. The two didn’t intend to start a bakery when they decided to try a low-carb, high-protein keto diet in November of 2017.
But there was a catch. Jabin Olds, 35, is a trained baker, and Natalie Olds, 34, has a sweet tooth.
Jabin earned a degree in bakery science from Kansas State University in Manhattan in 2007 and spent 14 years in the baking industry.
“Giving up bread was hard for me,” Jabin said.
And Natalie needed cookies.
So, they experimented with their own recipes for low-carb bread and eventually expanded to cakes, pies, cookies and crackers. Their baked goods are free of sugar, low in carbs and high in protein.
Their enterprise began with a bake sale on Facebook. When they decided baking was their business, the Oldses turned to K-State Olathe and the kitchens and expertise of those at the Food Innovation Accelerator.
They began using the K-State kitchens in April of 2019 and made 100 loaves of bread that month.
“Now, we make 100 loaves a day and 50 to 60 dozen cookies,” Jabin said.
They take orders on line and and custom-bake birthday cakes and other special-occasion requests. They ship to 46 states.
In fact, the Oldses found such a demand for their products that this month they moved off the K-State Olathe campus and into their own 5,000-square-feet building in Lenexa.
“They’re graduating,” said Bryan Severns, manager of food programs and services at K-State Olathe. “Our purpose is to give young companies a way to get started here and eventually move to their own space.”
Severns describes the Three Bears Bakery & BBQ as “an artisan bakery” with high-quality specialty-diet baked goods.
The Oldses bake with almond flour, eggs and butter, a no-calorie sugar replacement and at times, a kind of culinary magic that turns a bland vegetable into a delicious fruit.
Taste their Zapple pie, for example, and your taste buds will tell you it’s filled with fresh, juicy apples.
Your taste buds would be wrong.
Zapple pie looks and tastes like apple pie but it’s filled with zucchini “to keep the sugar content down,” Jabin explained. “Apples are high in fructose.”
A partnership with a flavor house allows Three Bears to thousands of different flavors such as strawberry champagne, passion fruit, vanilla mango and maple bacon chocolate chip.
In the beginning, the Oldses sold directly to consumers. In late 2019, they acquired a wholesalers license and now have about seven accounts, like Bulk It, in the Kansas City area.
Though their business has grown, it’s still just the two of them. Natalie and Jabin Olds do all the baking, packaging, marketing and management.
The third “bear,” their 4-year-old son, Perry, is what inspired the Three Bears name.
While the emphasis is on the bakery side of Three Bears Bakery & BBQ, the Oldses also make barbecue sauces and rubs and plan eventually to offer smoked meats by the pounds.
The Oldses have found success not only with their business but also with that four-week keto diet trial of 2017.
Jabin has lost 96 pounds and Natalie 98.
“We haven’t come off the diet since then,” Jabin Olds said.
Three Bears Bakery & BBQ is at 13723 W. 108th St. in Lenexa; threebearsbakerybbq.com
