We’re Eli’s Cheesecake – a Chicago-born, family-owned business devoted to hand-crafting the best cheesecake in the world and making life sweeter for you and your family. We promise you: It’s the best cheesecake you’ll ever have. That’s because we only use the best ingredients, and the most important one is our people. From our pastry chefs to our cake decorators to our retail associates and buyers, we believe in “treating the other as if they were the other,” as Eli always liked to say. For us, it’s always been as much about creating meaningful opportunities for our associates and the community as it is about making delicious desserts.

It all started in 1940 when Eli Schulman — our founder, father, and grandfather — saw a foreclosure sign on his favorite neighborhood coffee shop. Armed with charisma and his mother’s recipes, he bought the place and started spreading joy through food. Forty years and several restaurants later, Eli invented Chicago-style cheesecake, known for its creamy texture, beautiful caramelization, and all-butter shortbread cookie crust. It debuted at the first Taste of Chicago in 1980 and was so popular that his namesake restaurant kitchen couldn’t satisfy the demand — so we built an entire 104,000-square foot bakery that could. And we haven’t stopped working since.