Jennifer Williams is about as unassuming a reality TV star as they come. She and her husband, Dirk, co-own Beverly's Best Bakery in Fullerton, but other than that seem like a pretty normal couple. Even the strip mall the bakery is located in is fairly unremarkable. Despite all of that, the Williams recently snagged a one-hour special on TLC called The Bakery Bunch, which aired July 11.
If the couple is so ordinary, then what's the draw for a show, you ask? Well, that “Bunch” in the title of the special refers to the Williams' 4-year-old triplets, Adler, Gennaro and Conlan (seen here in sneak peak of the show), who the couple raise while running a bakery that churns out several hundred special orders every week.
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The demand for cakes has been so great for the bakery that Williams and her husband are planning on expanding a “cake studio” to Downtown Fullerton.
Add to all of that the potential for starring in a reality show, and the family suddenly seems not-so-ordinary after all. However, Williams is still just trying to keep things in perspective.
“I haven't even thought that far in advance. I love the idea of it, it's a great prospect but its hard to imagine,” she said. “So I really am just trying to focus in on what this one show means and trying to kind of manage through the hype of this. I guess we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it.”
There's no inclination that the family will ever have to cross that bridge, though. Williams hasn't heard anything from Kaos Entertainment, the production company that filmed the episode, or from TLC about what the reaction was to the special in terms of ratings.
There's also been no word as to whether or not the network would pick up The Bakery Bunch as a series. But even if her family's time in the spotlight doesn't continue, Williams is just glad to have had the experience.
“Of course we would love it to go on…but in the end, whether it continues or not, we still have our bakery and we're still going to do our best to grow our own business,” she said.
“[The show] will just accelerate things, so certainly it would be a positive. But even without that, there's just the experience of doing just the one show… I mean that's not something that most people get to participate in. We feel fortunate just to have had our little 15 minutes.”
Even so, just 15 minutes might have put Williams' hope for a new location within reach. After all, Williams said, the show was “more advertising than we could ever buy ourselves.” The week that the show aired, the bakery saw its business jump.
The timing of the episode shows the couple's business savvy: both worked in the business world before buying the bakery from Williams' parents, Carmen and Carmella (very cute), who owned the shop for 14 years before passing it on to their daughter and son-in-law.
Now the shop that started with four employees has the chance to expand further into the Fullerton community and maybe even in to South Orange County or Pasadena, according to Williams.
Not only have the orders for cakes increased, but the bakery has also been getting calls and emails from all over the country. According to Williams, correspondence from everywhere from New York to Texas has been filling their in-boxes–people also juggling both families and businesses have been reaching out to the couple, empathizing with their heavy workload.
If she ever does enter the club of true reality TV moms, Williams would be a refreshing alternative to a lot of those other showbiz parents who seem more interested in their own fame than their family's well-being (Octomom, Kate Gosselin, were looking at you).
At the end of the day, Williams says even if they do score a primetime gig on TLC or another network, the most important thing for her and her husband is to stay true to the most important aspects of their life:
“Hopefully the core of who we are and what we do wouldn't change, so that's our goal through all of it that we can just stay focused on our family and our business, and then we'll see what happens with the rest.”
