Wausau bakery owners to appear on Fox reality competition 'Crime Scene Kitchen'
WAUSAU − When Hannah Reyes, 37, and Kathleen Regelman, 34, do something, they jump in both feet first.
That's how the military wives and moms started their own Wausau-based boutique-style bakery business Cup & Cake in early 2021, only a year after Regelman says she baked her first cake. It's also how they approached purchasing a 60-year-old family-run Wausau bakery less than a year later.
And that is how they found themselves competing on the second season of the reality baking competition "Crime Scene Kitchen," which will premiere at 8 p.m. June 5 on Fox.
"You have to be a very specific kind of crazy to do this," Regelman joked.
Women filmed 'Crime Scene Kitchen' a year ago
"We did not pursue this," Regelman said of their participation on "Crime Scene Kitchen."
Instead, the duo had just taken over as owners of Kreger's Bakery, 1506 N. Third St. in Wausau. They say they were in over their heads when they got a message on Instagram asking them to participate on the show.
"We just laughed," Regelman said. "We get a lot of spam messages, so we didn't think it was real."
But eventually they did reach out to the show producers, and once they heard the women's stories — that they are military wives and moms of a combined seven kids, ranging in age from 2 to 9, and that they had only recently started a bakery with almost no baking experience — "they were intrigued," Regelman said.
The show filmed about a year ago, and the women have been waiting to find out when it would air.
"It has been hard to wait this long," Regelman said.
Even harder, though, was figuring out how to film a reality TV competition with a new bakery and seven children.
"We had to leave our families. My husband was activated. My daughter was only 1 at the time. My parents moved into my house," Regelman said. "We had a brand-new staff at the bakery, too."
They say they were completely unprepared for the experience.
"We have a lot of mixed emotions, but mostly we were stressed out," said Reyes, a Wausau native. "We have been in a lot of stressful situations, but neither of us have done reality TV before, and we went into it blind."
Hosted by Joel McHale, each episode of the reality cooking competition begins at the scene of the crime — a kitchen that was used to make an elaborate dessert that has since disappeared. The chef teams of two are challenged to scour the kitchen for clues and ingredients to figure out what was baked, and then must recreate the recipe based on their guess for celebrity judges Curtis Stone and Yolanda Gampp. Each week, bakers are eliminated and the winner at the end of the season takes home a $100,000 prize.
Reyes and Regelman can't talk about their time on the show just yet, or how they fared, but both women say looking back at the experience, they are glad they competed.
"We laugh really hard at some of the things that happened," Regelman said. "We created memories for us, and we created something special for this town."
'We took a leap of faith' when purchasing Kreger's Bakery
Regelman said taking over a business that was run by the same family for over 60 years is one of the hardest things the women have ever done. The legacy bakery is still known as Kreger's Bakery; the women's boutique-style cake and bakery business is called Cup & Cake.
"It's essentially two brands existing in the same building," Regelman said.
Regelman said the women have made changes at the bakery little by little — "baby steps" — and the positive comments have outweighed anything else.
"There are a lot of people who were really excited to have something new in town, and others who didn't want to see anything change," Regelman said. "It was extremely challenging to meet in the middle."
Reyes said they are building a great team of employees at the business, which still includes Todd Kreger, the son of the former owners, and really great customers, too.
"If we would have gone in knowing how hard it would have been, we probably wouldn't have done it, and we definitely wouldn't have done it without the other person," Reyes said. "It's been quite a wild ride, and there have been a lot of ups and downs. A lot of great moments."
The women say they also have a lot of great ideas and exciting things they are looking forward to doing at the bakery.
"We tell customers we did not want to see this bakery go out of business because it is a staple of Wausau," Regelman said. "So we took a leap of faith and decided to take it on. We are excited to bring something to this community that is new. We are military wives and moms, and we want to thank the community for supporting us."
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Editor Jamie Rokus can be reach at jrokus@gannett.com or follow her on Twitter at @Jamie_Rokus.
This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: Wausau bakery owners: 'Crime Scene Kitchen' was a memorable experience
