Two Men From Detroit Bought a Roadside Burger Shack in 1983 and Wintered In It. It’s Now One of the Most Beloved Bakeries in the U.P.

In the late summer of 1983, two men from Detroit drove north until the road nearly ran out. They were looking for somewhere remote enough to become monks. What they found, on a wild stretch of M-26 along the Lake Superior shore near Jacobs Falls, was an abandoned roadside hamburger shack sitting next to a tiny resort and three cabins.

They bought it. Then winter came.

The shack had been built for summer tourists. No insulation. No plumbing. No heat, except a wood-burning stove. That was the first Keweenaw winter for the men who would become Father Basil and Father Nicholas, in a building designed to sell hamburgers in July, in a county where twenty feet of snow a year is ordinary.

They stayed.

Ora et labora

What they founded was Holy Transfiguration Skete, a Byzantine Rite community known as the Society of St. John. A skete is a monastic form that splits the difference between hermitage and monastery — solitude and silence, but shared prayer and shared work. They follow the Rule of St. Benedict, and its formula is only two words long: ora et labora, prayer and work.

Prayer was covered. Work needed a business plan, because a monastery has to feed itself.

The answer was already growing all around them. In the 1980s it was ordinary for Keweenaw families to pick wild berries and put up jam to sell. As Father Ambrose later described the logic to Bridge Michigan, “it looked like something we could do.” So they went into the woods with buckets, learned the craft from neighbors, and taught themselves the rest.

They already had a storefront. It was the burger shack. They called it the Jampot, and in 1986 — three years after arriving — they sold their first jars.

Thimbleberry

The berry that made them famous is one most visitors have never heard of. The thimbleberry grows wild across the Keweenaw: a soft red fruit that looks like a raspberry someone gently sat on, too delicate to ship far, which is exactly why you have to come here to taste it. It remains the monks’ best seller by something like four to one over everything else.

And there is a lot of everything else now. Roughly 60 varieties of jams, jellies, and preserves move through that little building — wild blueberry, chokecherry, golden raspberry, spiced peach, pear-cinnamon, brandied peach — sold under the label Poorrock Abbey. Then the baking: muffins the size of a fist, oatmeal cookies, caramels, hand-rolled truffles, and dense rum- and bourbon-soaked fruitcakes wrapped in cheesecloth that the monks cheerfully claim will improve for years. Ingredients are organic, non-GMO, and sourced regionally, so what is on the shelf depends on what the season actually produced.

The problem with being good at it

Here is the tension nobody plans for. The monks took vows that include poverty and silence. They also, accidentally, built one of the most beloved food businesses in the Upper Peninsula, one that draws thousands of people up M-26 every summer.

So the kitchen runs quiet — talking kept to a minimum while the jam is stirred. The day starts hours before daylight with prayer, moves to berries and baking, and closes with vespers. And when the business has grown past what the devotions can absorb, they have simply scaled it back. Success is not the point. Winter is what they call the desert season: the tourists gone, the lakeshore empty, cross-country skis on, back to contemplation.

They have also quietly built up the place around them, cutting walking trails along Jacobs Creek and the falls and planting an orchard of more than a hundred apple, pear, plum, and peach trees. Father Basil put the civic case for the bakery plainly to Hour Detroit: the Jampot has been “important part in revitalizing the tourist economy” in that corner of the peninsula.

Both founders are gone now — Father Nicholas in 2017, Father Basil in 2021. Three monks remain, with Father Ambrose as superior, and the shop still opens seasonally from roughly May into October, hours depending on the day and the harvest.

Go if you are up that way, somewhere between Copper Harbor and the bridge. Buy the thimbleberry. But understand what you are actually looking at: a hamburger stand that two men moved into in 1983 with a wood stove and no plumbing, still standing, still open, because they never once treated it as temporary.

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Sources, credits, and reporting details

Sources & accountability

How this story was reported

Editorial methodArchival synthesis

Last verifiedJul. 23, 2026

Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.

Verification note: Initial ledger, verified 2026-07-23 during publication prep. Founding year, the burger-shack origin, the 1986 first sales, product range, the deaths of both founders and current community size were checked against the sources listed. Opening days and hours vary between sources and change seasonally, so the article gives only a general season and advises checking. Two short quotations, each under fifteen words and from different sources, both attributed and linked. Featured image is a representative thimbleberry photograph, CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Walter Siegmund, identified as such in the caption because no openly licensed image of the bakery exists. No AI-generated or AI-assisted media.

Primary sources

1. Michigan Dreaming Bucket List: UP bakery run by monks offers pastries, prayers — Bridge Michigan

   Featured image record. Published Aug. 20, 2025. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright Bridge Michigan; brief quotation with attribution.

   Supports: Two men from Detroit bought land on the Keweenaw in 1983 to start a monastery; locals commonly picked wild berries and sold jams, which Father Ambrose said looked like something they could do; the monks started with thimbleberries, a sweet red berry resembling a flatter, wider raspberry; they now sell around 60 flavors of jams and preserves including pear-cinnamon jelly, apple butter and brandied peach; Father Ambrose and Father Sergius live at the monastery on the same property as the bakery.

   Sole quotation from this source is a seven-word Father Ambrose fragment.

Additional reporting

1. Jam-Packed Piety — Hour Detroit Magazine

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright Hour Detroit; brief quotation with attribution.

   Supports: Monks arrived in late summer 1983 and began picking berries, teaching themselves to make jam by the following summer; the shop sits about three miles east of Eagle River on M-26; ingredients are non-GMO and organic with dairy, eggs and fruit from Michigan purveyors and rotating availability; wild thimbleberry outsells other flavors by nearly four to one; the skete developed walking trails along Jacobs Creek and Falls and planted an orchard of over 100 apple, pear, plum and peach trees; Father Basil on the shop role in revitalizing the local tourist economy.

   Sole quotation from this source is a nine-word Father Basil fragment.

2. Superior Sanctuary: A Band of Monks Makes Jam on the Keweenaw Peninsula — MyNorth / Traverse Magazine

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright MyNorth; cited.

   Supports: Holy Transfiguration Skete, Society of St. John, follows ora et labora and the monastic rule of St. Benedict; talking is kept to a minimum in the Jampot kitchen; jams made from wild thimbleberry, dandelion flowers, chokecherry and bilberry; the community balances prayer against running a busy business, hospitality against silence, and business success against a vow of poverty; winter is described as their desert season of rest and contemplation.

3. The Jampot Monks of Keweenaw — UP Connect

   Featured image record. Published Jul. 28, 2025. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright UP Connect; cited.

   Supports: Monastery founded 1983; Byzantine Rite community under the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago, also known as the Society of St. John; a skete allows both individual seclusion and communal prayer and work; the Jampot bakery established in 1986 beginning with wild berry preserves; roughly 60 varieties today; co-founders Father Nicholas died in 2017 and Father Basil in 2021; three monks remain with Father Ambrose as superior; storefront open seasonally May through mid-October.

4. The Jam Pot, an Unsuspected Secret Pleasure — 99WFMK (Townsquare Media)

   Featured image record. Published Nov. 22, 2024. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright Townsquare Media; cited.

   Supports: Two friends drove from Detroit in 1983 intending to become monks and found a hamburger shack beside the road next to a tiny resort and three cabins; the shack had no plumbing, heat or insulation and was meant only for summer visitors, leaving a wood-burning stove for warmth through a hard first winter; they sold their first items in 1986 from that building; the shop sits near Jacobs Falls, three miles east of Eagle River and five miles west of Eagle Harbor at 6500 M-26.

   Primary source for the burger-shack origin and first-winter conditions.

5. Monk-made jams from Michigan, with a Byzantine twist — Aleteia

   Featured image record. Published May. 13, 2022. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Copyright Aleteia; cited.

   Supports: The Jampot sold its first jar of preserves in 1986 from local wild berries; the monks follow the Benedictine Rule and also sell handmade chocolates, fruitcakes, muffins, fruit-and-nut mixes and cookies under the name Poorrock Abbey, in flavors including wild thimbleberry, golden raspberry and chokecherry.

6. The Jampot — University of Michigan personal pages, Ann Arbor Agenda archive

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. Archived magazine column; cited.

   Supports: The Society of St. John came to the Lake Superior property in 1983 finding a mix of beauty and harshness suited to monastic life; they began picking berries and canning preserves the first summer for modest income; products include bourbon or rum-soaked fruitcakes wrapped in cheesecloth claimed to keep and improve for years, caramels, carrot cake muffins and oatmeal cookies; monks serve customers themselves; business growth forced them to scale back to attend to devotions.

Photo and media credits

1. Rubus parviflorus 9481.JPG — Walter Siegmund / Wikimedia Commons

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 23, 2026. CC BY-SA 3.0; credit Walter Siegmund.

   Supports: Featured image: ripe thimbleberry fruit. Representative species photograph identified in the caption as not taken at the Jampot. Local copy resized without cropping.

   No openly licensed photograph of the bakery or monastery was available.

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