Proud History

BeadLor didn't start with me — it started almost a hundred years ago, with my grandmother.

In the 1920s, she played in an all-girls band on the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit, touring and performing at a time when that wasn't an easy thing for a woman to do.

Woman sitting on a wooden platform holding a saxophone, wearing a long dress and a necklace, with clarinets at her feet, in vintage black-and-white style.
Group of women in white dresses sitting and standing around a piano, with musical instruments and a painting or photograph on a large drum in front.

When that chapter ended, she channeled that same drive into something new: a bakery. That bakery is still running today, now in its fourth generation as a family-owned business.

Black and white photo of a building with a sign that says 'Grebe's Bakery' and an address, surrounded by a small garden, with additional signage about parking and other locations.
Cover of a bakery industry magazine from February 24, 1979, featuring two people, a woman and a man, standing in front of a display of baked goods at a bakery. The top of the cover has the title 'Bakery Production and Marketing,' and there are articles about bakery plant efficiency and a picture of Mrs. Grebe, a bakery owner.

My mother carried the torch forward in her own way. With her mother's help, she started a prepared salad manufacturing business in Milwaukee — Country Maid Foods — which has now spanned three generations.

Exterior of a retail store with a brown wooden facade, black awning with gold lettering, and a pair of black and white signs labeled "Retail Store." There are bushes and a trash can near the entrance, with a sidewalk leading up to the door.
Sign for Country Maid Inc. advertising specialty salads, desserts, dips, and potato baskets, with the year 1919 at the bottom, surrounded by green shrubbery and trees in the background.

Then there's me. I spent three decades in the deli and restaurant business, following the family thread of food service, before realizing my hands wanted to make something different. I traded restaurant management for beading trays, and BeadLor was born.

Every generation of my family has taken something they loved and turned it into something built to last — a band, a bakery, a food business. BeadLor is my version of that: handcrafted jewelry made with the same care my grandmother put into her music, and my mother put into her kitchen.