The Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill is the hugely successful Jamaican owned and run enterprise that reaches from New York to Florida with more than 120 franchise locations.

Founder Lowell Hawthorne's memoir, “The Baker's Son: My Life in Business (Akashic Books, with Michael A. Grant, $24.95),” is the story of how the Golden Krust empire was built, from a village shop in Jamaica to the heights of American enterprise.  

Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree.

Today the Golden Krust brand represents the most lucrative Caribbean business ever established in America and one of the most profitable Black businesses operating in the United States.

An independently owned family enterprise, Golden Krust was established in 1989 by members of the extended Hawthorne family. Within a few short years, Golden Krust developed into a very successful business.

The original inspiration for the company came from the family patriarch, Ephraim Hawthorne, who for many years ran a successful bakery in the secluded hamlet of Border, in the rural parish of St. Andrew, in Jamaica.

“The Baker's Son” is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocated to the Bronx in the 1980s. Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, personal as well as professional, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree.

Not content to rest on its well-deserved laurels, the family has, in addition, established an innovative and very successful philanthropic foundation to give back to the community.

As much a business memoir as it is a spiritual memoir, the book records a profound journey of the author from his childhood within the Hawthorne family in Jamaica to his spiritual rebirth and conversion in the recent past.

Hawthorne attributes the real source of his success in business to his wife, siblings and children—and to the deep Christian faith inculcated in him by his father and mother from a young age. P.J. Patterson, the former prime minister of Jamaica, noted that, "Lowell Hawthorne's chronicle of the development of a small Jamaican business into the highly successful Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill, an American business empire, is an invaluable guide to business success as well as an inspiring autobiographical work."  

Contact Tribune Staff Writer Bobbi Booker at (215) 893-5749 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .