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In 1950, Harry Rosen and his Master baker created the recipe, which has been a part of the family for three generations. Harry opened Junior’s Bakery on Flatbush Avenue that year, and it’s been in business ever since. Kevin Rosen, President of Junior’s and grandson of Harry Rosen, is the third generation to be involved in the restaurant, and is one of only 3 people who know the secrets of their confections. His father, Walter, has retired from the business, and his younger brother, Alan, is in charge of sales and marketing.
Though he watched the business thrive under the leadership of both his grandfather and his father, he knew that technology was the key to continued viability in the 21st century. He began by computerizing back office operations, and continues to champion state-of-the-art solutions for the family business, ultimately putting Junior’s in cyberspace.
When ex-Brooklynites, some living as far away as California, started calling Kevin and asking him to mail them cheescakes, he knew Junior’s was ready for national exposure. He began mailing the cakes, even creating the specialized packaging used to ship them, but soon realized that a more efficient system was needed in order to handle the volume of orders he was receiving. No off-the-shelf software solution existed that met his needs, so in 1993, Kevin developed his own program that would allow him to handle mail order on a large-scale. This software has now been integrated to fulfill the orders placed on the website.
In the 1990’s, Kevin began to look to the Internet as another potential sales portal, and soon, the first incarnation of the Junior’s Cheescake website was born. His motivation was simple: Everyone was putting up websites! He proceeded the way so many other businesses did, by contacting a large web shop that could build him a web site.
E-commerce sites were appearing at a record rate, so he was confident he could fins a company that could build a Junior’s store online. At that time, Kevin felt that most important criterion for selecting the web design firm was simply finding the company that could provide results at the most competitive price.
