Pretzel Vendors A Tradition In St. Louis

ST. LOUIS - Elmer Enloe holds a paper bag of golden pretzels in each hand as he paces the concrete median at a busy intersection in south St. Louis.

The stoplight finally turns red, and a driver motions him over.

"I'll take both bags," a man in a brown minivan shouts above the rattling muffler of a nearby car.

"That'll be $4," says Enloe, 84, a slender man with a weatherbeaten face and toothless smile.

"Keep the change," the driver tells Enloe as he hands him a $5 bill for the eight pretzels.

Pretzel vendors like Enloe are part of a fading St. Louis institution. From the 1920s to the early 1980s, they worked the busiest streets. Sometimes, they hawked their pretzels at bowling alleys and factories.

At one time, up to 100 vendors, mostly older men and teenage boys, earned spare cash and occasionally a living selling pretzels on a street corner.

Increased crime, changing traffic patterns and stricter government regulations have convinced most to find other work. Today, there are fewer than a dozen peddlers working in St. Louis city and county, officials say.

The seven to eight bakeries that supplied street vendors in the 1930s have dwindled to two. Both make the chewy pretzel sticks, which resemble the pudgy breadsticks found at some Italian restaurants and are just long enough to peek out of the brown bags.

Enloe, who has been working the streets for eight years, buys his pretzels from Gus Koebbe, whose shop is advertised by a sidewalk sign reading, "Gus' Pretzel Shop. Twisting Since 1920."

Koebbe, a third-generation pretzel maker who has studied pretzel history, says he knows of only two other cities - New York and Philadelphia - where pretzels are sold on the street.

His grandfather started the business in his basement and relied on his skills as a vendor to keep it going.

Koebbe bought the store from his father in 1980. His 14 workers turn out about 6,000 pretzels daily in the stick and twisted varieties. He has also added the "bratzel," a quarter-pound bratwurst wrapped in pretzel bread.

Koebbe spends his time trying to get his pretzels on supermarket shelves, but he recalls hawking them on a nearby corner.

"I got started when I was 8 years old," says Koebbe, now 40. "They were putting in Interstate 55, and I would walk up and down the street and sell my pretzels to the construction workers for a nickel apiece."

It costs 50 cents for a 3-ounce pretzel stick from Enloe, who makes about 30 cents profit.

Enloe doesn't need a sales pitch. The steaming pretzels with pebbly salt sell themselves, he says. It doesn't hurt that his perch is just across from the Anheuser-Busch brewery, which offers public tours.

"I've got a good location. Some days I sell 300 pretzels," Enloe says.

In St. Louis County, David Reavis, 63, walks up and down a median asking, "Pretzels? Pretzels? Pretzels?"

"It keeps me out of trouble, and it gives me some money," Reavis says. Reavis gets his pretzels from the area's other shop, Giegerich Pretzel Co.

Owner Irene Giegerich still uses a family recipe brought over from Germany. The company's founder, August Giegerich, opened a shop in St. Louis' Soulard neighborhood in 1844.

Like Koebbe, she won't reveal any secret ingredients.

"Ours are softer," Giegerich says. "Gus bakes his longer."

Vendors make about 25 cents each on her pretzel sticks, which are 5 ounces and also sell for 50 cents each.

Giegerich sold to about 60 vendors in 1990; now, there are six.

"For a lot of them, it's supplemental income to help them get by," she says. "I admire the fact that they're willing to get out there and work, rather than ask the government for help."