LEBANON, Pa. — At Shuey’s Pretzels, Christmas season starts long before Halloween, and coal isn’t on the naughty list.
Holiday orders for the coal oven-baked pretzels fill up months in advance. Some people will even place their 2025 Christmas orders when they pick up this year’s treats.
“Come the holidays, people want pretzels,” said Douglas Shuey, one of the bakery’s owners.
Shuey’s Pretzels started in 1927 and moved to its current location on the east side of Lebanon in 1941.
While much has changed since the 1940s, these pretzels have not.
“We’re an old operation here. We’re not high-tech,” Shuey said. “We hand twist the pretzels and we bake them in a coal-fired oven.”
Shuey and his brother, Clayton, bake pretzels every day except Sunday, often getting to the bakery a little after midnight to make sure pretzels start getting twisted by 3 a.m. and into the oven by 4.
Each day they bake 200 pounds of pretzels.
And they need every single pound, especially during the holiday season.
“We have people that pick up hundreds of pounds of pretzels at a time,” Shuey said.
Shuey’s is open Wednesday through Saturday, selling pretzels out of their store front to customers that often line up out the door — especially for the soft pretzels available only on Saturday.
But those in line looking to buy a salty Christmas gift might be out of luck. Any pretzels left over that aren’t part of orders are sold to day-of customers, but there aren’t often many left during the holidays.
“It’s always been a problem for us for supply and demand. It’s a slow process,” Shuey said. “That’s a problem, but I think it’s also a selling point.”
Shuey said modern pretzel makers can crank out 200 pounds of pretzels each hour and over 1,000 pounds per day. But mass production leads to a more basic pretzel.
“Our pretzels are unique because we still make them the old-fashioned way,” Shuey said. “My grandfather said ‘don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.’”
The bakery doesn’t plan on modernizing. And the high demand doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Shuey said they have plenty of regular customers all year long, and then get an influx of customers that order pretzels every Christmas.
The hope is to have all the holiday orders baked and ready to go by the Saturday before Christmas.
The shop closes each year between Christmas and New Year’s, but it’s not really a vacation for the Shuey family. They spend that week cleaning the entire bakery after their busiest season and getting ready for a new year of customers looking for an old-fashioned snack.