KEVIN BRICKLIN “SOFT PRETZEL MAESTRO”

The creator of “West Coast Pretzels give us a few tips about starting a business from scratch.”

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I grew up in Philly until about 10 years old, then we moved to Scottsdale, AZ. I moved back East to finish college (D.C) and then moved to North Jersey before moving to LA in the ‘88. I was the class clown.

Tell us how your background played a part in your choosing to be a children’s educational producer ?

As I said I wanted to be in the TV business. So when I moved to LA I took whatever jobs I could. I worked at temp agencies doing accounting for studios and then became an assistant for a VP for Henry Winkler’s company (Winkler and Daniels) on the Paramount lot. From their I went to Harvey Comics, the publisher of Casper, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff and many other famous comic, where I started in Marketing, then to Director of Production to finally the Publisher.

How has your experience in the entertainment world influenced your approach to West Coast pretzels?

Certainly my experience with licensing and brand marketing helped me understand the importance of building brand awareness.

How did your abrupt departure from WB Global Publishing affect you?

It was an easy transition for me as I had started West Coast Pretzels as a home permitted Cottage Food Operation the year prior to being laid off.

What was your process in creating and setting up your business?

Tell us a little about West Coast Pretzel and where the idea came from? How has it performed over the years and did it reach your expectations??

I had the idea since I wanted a real soft pretzel which you cannot find in LA nor the West Coast. The mall pretzels are not real lye dipped, vegan pretzels. They are what I call sugary donuts. I started the remodel of a former KFC just as covid was beginning and we opened in July 2020 in the midst of Covid. So my expectations have changed and I have had to pivot to be more retail focues. But overall I think we are doing as well as can be expected for a new food business startup.

How has your family been affected by your career change?? Good and bad?

I have tried to make it a neutral effect on them. But overall I think it has been positive.

What kind of advice do you give people who want to pursue projects like you have?

If you have the means and the patience then I definitely would recommend it. However I have always had an entrepreneurial bent and am not afraid to just go for it.

What do or did you do to promote yourself? What other exciting projects are you working on now?

I use both Facebook and Instagram to promote the business and use both platforms for advertising. I do use linkedin but those posts are geared abit more towards the business aspects rather than the selling of the product. has returned I am once again pitching breweries, restaurants, food trucks and hotels to purchase our pretzels, pretzel dogs and pretzel buns. And lastly I am looking to bring the pretzels to the people using a food delivery truck to sell on the streets. We wont make the pretzels in the truck rather we would bake and sleeve at the bakery and sell pre-packaged pretzels, drinks and Philly Water Ice.

Interview by LON LEVIN

When did you first think about what you wanted to do as an adult? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

I fell in love with storytelling fairly early on. I was a big reader from an early age, and I was also quite a movie buff. A big part of my bonding with my father was centered on going to movies. I was an only child, and I began to develop a very fertile imagination. I began writing short stories in junior high, but it was in high school that I started to find formal instruction and some focus. A teacher talked me into attending an after-school creative writing workshop taught by a local published novelist named Mort Castle, the first honest-to-goodness professional writer I’d ever met. I’d heard about authors, but I’d never actually met one before. They generally weren’t around my neck of the woods. Seriously though, it was quite a formative experience for me, because I started to learn about writing as a craft. I learned how to dissect a story, I learned about structure and characterization, about style and technique… I was also very fortunate to have passionately supportive parents, who loved the creative arts themselves, and who encouraged my ambitions and pursuits

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What or Who were your influences?

I grew up in Chicago. A working-class background. My Dad was a steelworker and later a police officer, and for a time, I considered going into law enforcement myself, but I always knew in my heart-of-hearts that I wanted to write some day. Mort Castle was a big influence in that we stayed in touch throughout the years, and he mentored me in how to pursue a career in writing. He got me some work writing comic book scripts while I was in college. I adapted a Stephen King short story for a graphic novel anthology called Masques, which marked my first publishing credit. Also by this time, I had begun writing screenplays and teleplays on spec. I got a hold of some scripts and taught myself the form. I was heavily influenced by the cinema of the 70s, by the great screenwriters of that era like William Goldman and Paul Schrader, filmmakers like Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, of course. And I drew a lot of influence from the novelists I really loved, people like Richard Price, Heywood Gould, Vincent Patrick, Pete Dexter, and James Ellroy, many of whom were also screenwriters. Insofar as television, I saw that in recent years, by the time I was beginning to enter the industry, TV was quickly supplanting feature films as the preferred medium for the kind of stories that spoke to me and fired me up as a writer. Steven Bochco had started innovating the medium for long-form storytelling in the 80s, with Hill Street Blues, and guys like Tom Fontana, David Chase, and David Simon have since really brought it to full flower. They were most certainly influences.

Tell us how your background played a part in your choice to be writer/producer?

I think, ideally, a writer should mine their life and personal experiences for material, and certainly, where you come from, how you were raised, is often what shapes your voice. I guess I was driven, in some part, to write about the people who raised me, who I grew up with. It’s not always in the literal sense. Sometimes, it’s more metaphorical. But I felt a need to illuminate the world I knew personally, that I didn’t always see portrayed in popular culture. I guess the best way I could describe it… You see movies about Chicago, you always see the same go-to landmarks, but it’s not necessarily reflective of the Chicago I grew up in, which wasn’t quite a John Hughes movie. I saw stereotypes portrayed of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, and again, it bore little resemblance to the world I knew. So, I guess you could say, I sought validation of my experience, my family’s experience, in the world of fiction… There’s eightmillion-stories in the naked city, here’s one of them you might not have heard. That kind of thing.

Did you start as a writer and make a career shift to producer?

I broke into TV as a writer. There’s a hierarchy in episodic television that starts with Staff Writer, the entry-level position, then ascending through Story Editor, up to producer-level – Co-Producer, Supervising Producer, etc. Those are the titles, but they’re still writers first and foremost. As is the custom with most shows, even the staff writer is called upon to venture into the crazy, frenetic, wholly unpredictable world of the set to produce their particular episode. It’s the other part of the job, apart from writing, and you start learning it pretty quickly from the doing. It’s about being there to answer the inevitable questions that come up about tone or character motivation. It’s about making sure the showrunner’s vision for the episode is being fulfilled, it’s being their eyes and ears on set while they’re back in the Writer’s Room in L.A., dealing with a million other things. Sometimes it’s about reworking a scene or some dialogue on the day of. To that extent, it’s about staying fluid. Always about doing your part to make sure an episode comes together. I started on Queen of the South as Executive Story Editor and was eventually promoted in later seasons, first to Co-Producer, then Producer, but my primary function on the show has always been as a writer.