A week in the life of Jack Leach includes dribbling basketballs at school, cooking salted caramel in the kitchen, and selling cheesecakes from Jack’s Cheesecakes concession trailer.
Jack doesn’t say much. But his accomplishments speak for themselves: He can shoot hoops better than most of his classmates at Oconee County High, where he’s a senior; he won The Taste of Oconee County baking contest for “Best Dessert” four years in a row; Jack also won two gold medals at the Special Olympics in his home state of Georgia.
These days, as dad Brent Leach, 51, crumbles graham crackers at home, as he prepares fruit sauces, Oreo crumble, and melted butter, awaiting Jack’s return from school, both father and son have found their life’s work in Jack’s Cheesecakes business.
But Jack, now 19, didn’t find his sweet spot right away.
“He just wasn’t talking when other kids were starting to talk,” Mr. Leach told the Epoch Times, speaking of Jack’s childhood, adding that Jack’s hearing tests checked out all right. “I don’t know if they really diagnosed him for autism. But the spectrum is so big.”
At age 5, Jack was diagnosed with apraxia—a type of communication disorder.
“It was a little bit upsetting at first, but he became very sociable,” Mr. Leach said. “He started excelling.”
Mr. Leach’s mom—Jack’s grandma—helped Jack make his first cheesecake as a teenager, before he made his first one solo around age 14. Then his mom, Bari, bought him his first set of cheesecake pans.
Jack started making cheesecakes almost every evening at his home in Watkinsville, and they began donating them to his school. Pretty soon, he was selling his delicious baked goods to teachers on a coffee cart to raise money for disabled students; occasionally, staff would miss the cart, and so they started calling him for cheesecakes.
“So, we set up a little online Facebook business for him,” Mr. Leach said.
Before the family knew it, Jack’s Cheesecakes was born.
Now, with 10 selling locations across Georgia, Jack’s Cheesecakes has grown by leaps and bounds since it first opened five years ago. “We ended up getting so busy that I had to quit my job and work full-time with Jack,” said Mr. Leach, who had worked for Comcast and also in the restaurant industry. The demand for Jack’s cheesecakes grew so high, they had to hire his mom, and it became a three-man operation.
“We have four restaurants that sell [Jack’s] cheesecakes by the slice,” Mr. Leach said. “We’ve got two locations that sell our stuff around the Clearwater, Florida, area where I used to live.”
While Jack supplies the culinary talent and prefers working alone in the kitchen, Mom and Dad are the support; on school days, before Jack gets home, Mr. Leach helps prep the mise-en-place by cracking eggs and getting crusts and toppings ready. He also handles promotion of the business on social media.
Their typical week starts with buying all their ingredients for the week on Sunday. On Monday, Dad wakes up at 7 a.m. and starts hustling online, and the rest of the day is spent making cheesecakes in the kitchen. The cooking sometimes spills over into Tuesday.
“When we first started, we cooked out of the house. But now we rent a kitchen in Winder,” Mr. Leach said. “It’s a commercial kitchen that we rent by the hour.”
Once the lavishly-topped cheesecakes are cooked, packaged, and stowed in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer, the family kick back, await orders, and make deliveries the rest of the week. As many as 70-100 cheesecakes are made and moved on any given week.
Top flavors include traditional New York cheesecake and salted caramel, while key lime, lemon blueberry, white chocolate raspberry, and cookie dough are also popular favorites. They sometimes rotate in seasonal flavors.
Mr. Leach calls it “the best job I ever had,” being able to “work with my best friend every day.”
And Jack has become a kind of celebrity in Oconee County, Mr. Leach said, adding that he even gets recognized in neighboring counties. He’s received invites to numerous county fairs.
“We’re doing Winnett County Fair right now,” his father said.
With all the attention, he’s had the chance to be aired on Channel 2 and Fox 5 Atlanta, generating an explosion of business for the young entrepreneur. He may be a man of few words, but “he’s a heck of a salesman,” his dad said.
Lately, through GoFundMe, they purchased a concession trailer for Jack’s Cheesecakes, meanwhile aiming to grow the business further by hiring more special needs young adults full-time. “There is something they can do to be a valuable part of their community,” Mr. Leach said.
Looking ahead, the team at Jack’s Cheesecakes hope to franchise out concession trailers to more special needs families so they, too, can attend local fairs or farmers markets and have their own little piece of the cheesecake business.
