You may have spotted packages of them near the tortillas at the Skillman and Abrams Super Target. They come in flavors like pumpkin seed cheese, veggie spelt and muesli, and are enclosed in a colorful label proclaiming “Doctor Kracker.” (And no, that’s not a misspelling.) What you might not have known is that these “krackers” arer baked right here in Lake Highlands.

Carsten Kruse and his partners were searching for an alternative to traditional chips and crackers when they stumbled upon a recipe, and each other. Growing up in Germany where his father ran a bakery, Kruse was destined to become a baker himself. He came to the states in the 1980s and was hired by Whole Foods Market to manage its Dallas bakery.

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It was there he met future business partner George Eckrich, who shared a love for baking and innovative recipes. The pair became increasingly frustrated working in a large corporate bakery and wanted to create something new. “There are so many genetically modified foods out there,” Kruse says, so they developed a joint venture to create a simple yet tasty snack food.

Their schemes took them to Kruse’s native Germany where they met Dr. Klaus Karg, a baker who had been developing a recipe for flatbread, a German staple. They decided to use the recipe to create a crunchy flatbread cracker. Soon afterward in 2003, the partnership led to the creation of Doctor Kracker, with the products made in a factory at Miller and LBJ.

“Dallas is the perfect location for shipping all over the country,” says Eckrich, the company’s marketing director.

The three men made it their mission to provide a cracker that’s good for people. Diabetics can eat them because they are made of organically grown grains and seeds, which the company’s website touts as “excellent sources of fiber and omega-3 fatty acids.” Plus, each flavor contains flaxseed in the dough, which offers benefits such as protecting bone health and preventing heart disease – not to mention gives them that crunchy consistency.

But Eckrich stresses that the crackers aren’t medicine, they’re food – people want to eat them simply because they taste good. In fact, Eckrich enjoyed the seeded spelt cracker for breakfast the morning he was interviewed for this story, as he does nearly every morning.

“It’s like having to choose between your children,” Eckrich says of picking a favorite cracker flavor. “It’s funny how we [the founders] all gravitate toward one.”

Kruse enjoys the Klassic 3 Seed “with a good spreadable cheese,” he says, adding, “Airplane food nowadays is just awful, so I take a bag [of crackers] with me.”

Both Eckrich and Kruse enjoy being able to pursue their passion for baking, but they have other reasons for loving what they do, says Eckrich.

“I’m 56 years old,” he says. “At this point in my life, financially we’re successful, but what’s more important is that we feel like what we do is making a difference in people’s lives. We get a lot of positive feedback from customers. That’s very gratifying.”

For information visit drkracker.com.