APRIL 2016
H
business elite canada
5
one fateful day in 1972. What started out
as a get-together with the ladies quickly
escalated into a business proposal. One of
her more enthusiastic guests offered to be
Ogus’s first customer.
“When I started doing this, I never thought
in my wildest dreams that I’d be where I
am today,” Ogus said. “I just did what I did,
and what I loved.”
Her husband, Michael Ogus, was the de-
signer and architect of the Canadian Bank
of Commerce Building at the northwest
corner of Bloor and Yonge streets in To-
ronto. The two restaurants in this building
are where Carole’s Cheesecake Company
delivered their first bulk order of cheese-
cakes.
The 1970s were a time when most menus
in Toronto offered a dolefully limited vari-
ety of desserts, littered with preservatives
and stabilizers. Restaurants wanted cakes
they could freeze and unfortunately for the
classic cheesecake, a real graham cracker
crust does not freeze well.
So in an effort to continue using quality
ingredients and meet the needs of her
customers Carole invented the Topless,
Bottomless Cheesecake. Anything extra
— chocolate cream, almonds, lemon me-
ringue, or strawberry — was embedded
into the cheesecake itself. What seemed
odd at the time, would quickly become
common practice in the baking world.
“Before I knew it I was getting calls from
all kinds of places.”
