Acme Bread
Acme Bread is an institution - upon arrival at one of their retail locations, it's not unusual to encounter a (quickly moving) line out the door of customers waiting patiently to purchase their wholesome goods. When the bakery opened in 1983 Acme made only four different kinds of Bread: Pain au Levain, Sweet Baguettes, Upstairs Bread, and Challah.
Relying largely on the requests and suggestions of customers, as well on their own occasional inspiration, they have expanded their product list over the last thirty-some-odd years to include more than 100 different products, sold to their wholesale customers or at their Berkeley or San Fransisco retail locations.
Steven and Suzie Sullivan founded The Acme Bread Company in 1983 to bake bread for restaurants and stores who wanted to offer better bread than was generally available on the wholesale market at the time. Above is a vintage photo of Steven at Chez Panisse before he and Suzie started the bakery. Today the company is faithfully run by a group of five managing share-holders including Rick Kirkby, Claudio Rezende, and Monica Contois along with Steven and Suzie.
Since their founding, pure ingredients have been integral to Acme's success and they incorporate as many organic and locally sourced ingredients as possible including 100% organic flour. Their carefully curated network of suppliers includes: organic California olive oil from ENZO olive oil company, organic raisins, pumpkin seeds and flax seeds sourced by their flour provider, Keith Giusto and organic California sweet cream butter made by the Rumiano Cheese company.
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