Frisch’s head baker for 41 years, other commissary kitchen workers lose jobs Friday just before Christmas

CINCINNATI (WXIX) – Frisch’s Big Boy head baker for nearly 41 years and other employees at its kitchen commissary in Walnut Hills tell FOX 19 NOW they lost their jobs Friday just before Christmas.

The man behind Frisch’s sweet and savory pumpkin pies, Bruce Woods, said they knew layoffs were coming as a dizzying array of locations closed due to evictions but management kept their last day a secret until now.

They were told Thursday to report to the plant for a meeting at 6 a.m. Friday, he said, that’s when they were abruptly notified they were out of work.

“We were the dedicated people. We were the backbone of the company. That’s where it all started, at the commissary kitchen. We knew we were going down with the ship, but we didn’t know it would go down like this,” said Woods who baked Frisch’s pumpkin pies, fudge cakes and cheesecakes from scratch.

He said management gave each of the 26 employees including him a 5-page contract they had to sign and return to that day to receive their “severance pay” via mail or direct deposit.

Woods was stunned and said he felt betrayed when found out he would only be paid $2,000 for four of his 19 PTO days (paid time off).

“If you don’t sign it, you don’t get the check. We had no choice. They said if you don’t sign it by today and it isn’t turned in today, you don’t get it,” He told FOX19 NOW. “They told us the company is shutting down. Any disability claims we have will be terminated by the end of the month, we get nothing.”

FOX19 NOW has reached out to Frisch’s for comment.

The contract also has a clause saying Frisch’s isn’t liable for any future illnesses caused while working there, he tells FOX19 NOW.

Woods declined to give us a copy of the contract or even show it to us because he said he feared repercussions from the company.

The contract orders them not to talk to the media but Woods says he wants the public to know that the employees at the heart of Frisch’s restaurants, the plant where the commissary kitchen is located, are no longer there.

He said he raised his hand at Fridays meeting and asked management why he wouldn’t be paid for the rest of his vacation time: “She said that’s all we got, the company’s broke.

“It hurts me to have them do me like this. Here it is Christmas and I have no job. I was the head baker,” Woods said. “I had cancer and came back to work after my operation as soon as the doctor would let me. I kept asking. He said ‘You have to be careful, Bruce.’ I couldn’t take off during COVID. Once the government gave out that money, we couldn’t find anybody to work. I was there every day and this hurts me.”

Woods proudly told us he ran two “huge ovens by myself, each one is about as big as a one-car garage. I baked 288 pumpkin pies from scratch in each oven. I put 140 fudge cakes in each oven. From the time that I started back in 1984, me and my boss figured I’d bake about a million and a half pies.”

Beyond pies and other desserts, the commissary kitchen is where Frisch’s meat for hamburger was ground and its soups, salad dressing and produce were all prepared from scratch and then trucked out to restaurants.

Woods said he plans to start looking immediately for another job.

It’s not in his DNA to sit at home.

“I am not ready to draw my social security. I gotta work. I just turned 66. My birthday was two days ago,” Woods said.

“I am going to fill out some applications and try to find a job. I can’t stay at home. My dad raised us to be workers. We work. Once you’ve raised that way to work, it’s in your system. You work work work. The job I did was a lot of bending lifting stretching. I can work.”

As for Frisch’s restaurants that remain open, Woods warns customers that once what’s in the freezer at the commissary kitchen is gone, “I have no clue where they are going to get it next week for Christmas. They are not going to have the same desserts.”

Orlando-based NNN Reit, which owns 66 Frisch’s restaurants, has filed eviction actions on dozens of locations after the restaurants failed to pay more than $4.5 million in back rent, according to FOX19 NOW media partner The Cincinnati Enquirer.

In the latest round of court-ordered evictions, Frisch’s iconic Mainliner restaurant on Wooster Pike Fairfax has been ordered to vacate, court records show.

The Frisch’s Mainliner location has been a fixture in Greater Cincinnati since it opened in 1939. It was named for the first tri-motor passenger plane that operated from nearby Lunken Airport, according to Frisch’s website.

Court records show more than 20 restaurants face eviction in Southwest Ohio, a quarter of Frisch’s nearly 80 locations in the Tri-State, according to the Enquirer.

Seven restaurants in Northern Kentucky have also been ordered to vacate, including locations in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader.

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