LEADERSHIP PRAYER BREAKFAST

Please join business, education, and civic leaders around San Joaquin County for the 2025 San Joaquin County Leadership Prayer Breakfast on April 24, 2025, at Crossroads Grace Church at 1505 Moffat Blvd, Manteca. This annual event allows our community an opportunity to fellowship with each other, worship together, and pray for our local, state, and national leaders.

We are proud to welcome this year’s speaker, Anne F. Beiler. Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Anne was one of eight children born into an Old Order Amish family on January 16, 1949. When she was three years old, her parents decided to join the Amish Mennonite church, meaning that, though the family retained many Amish practices, such as farming and using a horse and buggy, they were allowed limited use of modern amenities, such as electricity. She did not graduate from high school; instead, she left her studies after completing the 8th grade, as most Amish children did then.

In 1987, Beiler started making hand-rolled pretzels at a market stand in Maryland. She rented a stand in February 1988 in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and called it Auntie Anne's Pretzels. The Beilers decided to tweak the recipe and found success. Anne had no previous business experience and only an eighth-grade education, but she had eight stand-alone stores and her first Auntie Anne's Soft Pretzels store in a mall after a year. The only advertising the company had was the rave reviews from their customers. In 1989, the first Auntie Anne's franchises opened throughout Central Pennsylvania.