Facing mounting personal, legal, and financial pressures, acclaimed baker Tova Du Plessis has permanently closed Essen Bakery and said she is considering filing for bankruptcy protection, six months after she and her husband announced unexpectedly that they were “hitting pause for a few days.”

The four-time James Beard Award nominee’s shops, on East Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia and Berks Street in Kensington, never reopened after the announcement on May 31, which blindsided her estimated two dozen employees.

In late July, Tova Du Plessis told The Inquirer that she and her husband, Brad, were “navigating deeply personal challenges” and hoped to reopen in September. Meanwhile, disgruntled former employees and investors had been left in the dark.

Du Plessis said it took a long while before she realized that reopening was not an option. “I don’t think that I can really pull off what I need to — not just to be open, but to make it financially sustainable,” she said. “There always was that potential, but after what I experienced, I just don’t have the confidence, the head space, and the people in place.” She also said her struggle with narcolepsy, the chronic interruption of the sleep cycle, had worsened.

Du Plessis said she had explored different plans to relaunch or restructure Essen but couldn’t make any of them work. “I think I just needed to come to terms with that,” she said.

The early days

Du Plessis, who turned 40 last summer, grew up in a kosher home in Johannesburg, baking challah for Shabbat each week. She and Brad, her high school sweetheart, relocated to the United States while she pursued a biology degree at the University of Houston with a goal of becoming a doctor. Following a trip to Paris, she pivoted toward cooking. They headed to California, and she enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus in Napa Valley, where she specialized in baking and pastry arts.

While working at the Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa, she met chef Michael Solomonov during his visit as a guest chef in December 2011. Soon after, she and her husband moved to Philadelphia, where she worked as a line cook at Zahav before becoming sous chef at Citron & Rose, the Main Line kosher restaurant that Solomonov and Steve Cook briefly consulted on. She then served as executive pastry chef at the Rittenhouse Hotel.

In 2016, she leased a storefront on East Passyunk Avenue near Dickinson Street to launch Essen, which became known for its challah, babka, laminated pastries, and seasonal breads. Great reviews followed, including four James Beard Award semifinalist nominations for Outstanding Baker between 2017 and 2020.

By 2022, with Essen outgrowing Passyunk Avenue, Du Plessis began looking for a second, larger location. In January 2023, she signed the lease on a newly constructed building on Berks Street, a half-block from the Market-Frankford El near Norris Square, at the corner of Berks and Hope.

Financial strain

Tova Du Plessis said financial pressures began mounting last spring. She is facing a lawsuit filed by their Berks Street landlord over unpaid rent, and the space, just off Front Street, is being shown to prospective tenants. The landlord of Essen’s East Passyunk Avenue location has found a new tenant, Du Plessis said last week.

The Du Plessises are also in arrears on a loan repayment to Frank Olivieri, owner of Pat’s King of Steaks. Olivieri said he and his wife, Nancy Schure, had provided a “substantial” amount of money last year to help fund the Berks Street shop, which opened in November 2024 after nearly a year of delays Du Plessis attributed to contractor issues and permitting. Initially investors, Olivieri and Schure later converted their ownership stake to a loan, he said.

Olivieri said they had been customers of the Passyunk Avenue location when Brad Du Plessis contacted them last year to ask if they would be interested in investing. Olivieri said he noticed issues with day-to-day operations, and eventually, he said, “It just seemed like we were becoming more like counselors rather than investors.”

Later, Olivieri said, the couple ignored his advice and grew silent. “You have to have an open line of communication to be successful, and unfortunately that’s one of the components that was missing,” he said.

Employee fallout

It was the silence that distressed the idled Essen employees, too. They told The Inquirer over the summer, after its July report that the bakery owners hoped to reopen, that they were given no clues about the business’ future. Several former employees disputed the couple’s assertion to the newspaper that they had been taken care of during the shutdown.

In the days after the closing, one former employee said, workers messaged the couple to say that they couldn’t pay their rent and were desperate to learn when they would be able to work again. “After several promised reopening dates came and went with no opening, they simply stopped responding to staff,” said the worker, who asked for anonymity because they wanted to move on with their life.

Another employee, who had worked at Essen from September 2024 until the shutdown, aired her grievances in a TikTok video. Others told PhillyVoice, in an article published Aug. 13, that they were suffering and that the Du Plessises were blocking the accounts of people who discussed the situation on social media.

Personal strain

Tova Du Plessis said that just before the shutdown, she and her husband were “discovering issues in our relationship that we didn’t understand, and it was impacting the business in such a drastic way. Running the business was our escape from dealing with our issues.”

The stress in their marriage “was just magnified because we were running a business together,” Du Plessis said. “It was undeniable — it was a problem we had to face head-on.”

Initially, they thought that a brief shutdown would suffice, “but as we tackled those issues, we were discovering how deep and difficult they were,” she said.

The stress in their marriage ‘was just magnified because we were running a business together. It was undeniable — it was a problem we kind of had to face head-on.’

Tova Du Plessis

The loss of income added further stress. Brad Du Plessis, who had left his job in wine sales in April 2024 to work with his wife, got a new job over the summer. “But then I had to face the reality that I didn’t have another partner or investor,” she said. “I didn’t feel I could do it on my own.”

Looking ahead

Last week, Du Plessis said she was attempting to sell all of Essen’s baking equipment. She said she believed that bankruptcy was the next step.

Despite Essen’s failure, Du Plessis said she remains proud of what it accomplished. “It made me really feel like I’m part of a community,” she said.

» READ MORE: Recipe: Essen Bakery’s black-and-white cookies

She said she wants to take several months before making her next move. “I’m still too affected by the burnout and the loss,” she said. “It’s not just giving up the business. It’s a whole bunch of family and relationships.” Du Plessis said she wants to return to baking, possibly even for someone else. Brad Du Plessis, who declined to comment for this article, is working again in the wine business. “He’s really in the position he should be in,” she said.

“For a long time, I was afraid I’d be looking at bankruptcy and divorce — and I’m happy to say I’m probably just looking at bankruptcy,” Du Plessis said last Friday. “To me, that’s a happy ending, or a beginning, depending on how you want to see it. I actually feel like this experience may have saved our marriage.”