An old-school Philly bakery calls it a day after 88 years in business

The casual observer would be forgiven for thinking Philly’s baking scene is in its prime. There’s an abundance of new entrants whipping up custom cakes, sourdough loaves, or gooey cookies, building reputations and customer bases on Instagram before going brick-and-mortar.

But this social media-driven sector is a world apart from Philly’s old-school bakery network, comprising generations-old places that born-and-raised Philadelphians and suburbanites sometimes take for granted, having spent decades grazing on the same danish, petit fours, and sheet cakes at holiday functions and family parties.

The area will lose one of those local gems come March 2, when Rilling’s Bakery closes the doors to its Warminster location in the Davisville Shopping Center. It marks the last chapter of an 88-year family legacy.

Owner Michael Volz and his sister, manager Diane Volz, announced the impending closure recently; they’re both ready to retire from the baking business, having spent nearly all their lives in it. The siblings have been working together at the 868 E. Street Road Rilling’s — officially known as Rilling’s Bucks County Bakery — since 1989.

During a recent visit to the Warminster bakery, customers streamed in to buy butter cookies, meltaway rings, pound cakes, and more. They approached the Volzes to share their condolences.

“I’m so sorry to hear,” one man said, a package of doughnuts in hand. “I’m diabetic and I’m still sorry to hear.”

In discussing their decision, Michael, 61, and Diane, 54, cite myriad changes that have made business more grueling. There are big-picture items — the pandemic has drastically altered customer behavior, ingredients aren’t the same, good help is harder to find — and small-scale ones, too, like the customer who called the bakery at 5:45 a.m. during Christmas week to complain about too many raisins on their mini cinnamon buns.

That may have been the last straw for Diane, who fielded the call; she was contemplating taking over the business from Michael but ultimately decided against it. “Life’s too short to be so stressed out,” she said. (She’s toying with the idea of opening a coffee shop and serving up a select few family recipes.)

Retirement has been on Michael’s horizon for a couple years. “It’s not that the business is not good. It’s just the frustration of the day-to-day operations,” he said. “It’s time, after 44 years of me working full-time six, seven days a week.”

“Everybody says the third generation usually screws things up, but I don’t think we screwed anything up. I think we did A-OK,” Diane said, with Michael nodding in the background. “I realized the day before we announced that we’ve been working in the bakery business longer than our parents did. They taught us to work hard, though, so they could retire at an early age. It’s an exhausting, exhausting job.”

Rilling’s Bakery was founded in Brewerytown in 1936 by Willy and Martha Rilling, two German immigrants who met and married in Philly. They leased a small shop at 26th and Girard that served up bread and pastries from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and half a day Sunday.

The Rillings moved their outfit to then-rural Castor Avenue in 1939 and ran it for years before selling in 1948. They took a breather before repeating the pattern again and again, hopscotching through the Northeast as they did so. They had a bakery in Mayfair at 7328 Frankford Ave. from 1948 to ‘52. From ’53 to ’59, they were at 11704 Bustleton Ave. in Somerton. In 1962, they opened 8756 Frankford Ave., near Pennypack Woods.

Their grandkids — Michael, Diane, and older brother Carl — grew up in a two-bedroom apartment over the Pennypack bakery. Michael remembers folding bakery boxes as a child, just as his mother once had. “That was cheap babysitting,” he said with a laugh.

Michael and Diane’s parents, George Volz and Martha Rilling Volz, took over the business full-time in 1976, ushering in Rilling’s real heyday.

With the Pennypack store humming along, the Volzes opened the Warminster store in 1981, in what was then a family-owned shopping center with a supermarket. A third store came online at 7959 Verree Rd. in 1983. A Suburban Station outpost followed in 1984, the same year the family broke ground on a 20,000-square-foot bakery at 2990 Southampton Rd. The plant would supply breads, cakes, and pastries for all Rilling’s outposts, which peaked at seven locations. It also did a fair bit of contract baking, supplying sweets for Acme, ShopRite, Pathmark, and more.

“We had like four or five trucks on the road every day,” Michael remembers. “That got [to be] too much for me.”

In 1992, the Volz family sold all but the Warminster shop — which Michael took over in 1989 — to another company, which operated the business under the same name until 2012.

It’s a lot of history to walk away from, but Michael and Diane are at peace with it. Even as they relish in hearing from old customers, they stand firm in the decision.

“Somebody came in for croissants yesterday; she said we made the best croissants,” Diane said. “We haven’t made croissants in 16 years.”

They made the decision to close at the beginning of February. They gave longtime employees and customers a month’s notice. “We were trying to figure out what day [should be our last],” Diane recalled. “I said, ‘Maybe we should do it Easter Saturday,” and he said, ‘I don’t have another holiday in me.’”

That means Bucks County and Northeast denizens will have to look for their lamb cakes or fondant-frosted chicks elsewhere this Easter, not to mention the mini danishes and sticky buns, butter cakes, and braided German sweet bread. Their absence will be noted.

“My family came to Frankford Avenue. My mother’s 97, loves your recipes,” a customer interjected as Michael and Diane reflected on the past. “I just want to say, thanks for the memories.”