Semifreddi’s is among the upper echelon of Bay Area artisan bread makers, but it almost...
Semifreddi’s has spread its reach throughout the Bay Area, easily cranking out 190,000 loaves a week, but it wasn’t always that way. Semifreddi’s nearly went extinct before it became a Bay Area empire.Back in 1984, Semifreddi’s was just a tiny 450-square-foot bakery at 372 Colusa Ave. in Kensington.alums Eric and Carol Pease-Sarpenaer borrowed $60,000 to convert a former real estate office into Semifreddi’s.
“From the moment the first customer bit into a crisp loaf of bread at Berkeley’s Semifreddi’s in the fall of 1984, the tiny bakery’s success was assured,” read a 1987 article by the Oakland Tribune. “Critics and the media soon followed, catapulting the tiny business from 25 baguettes a day to 3,500 a week by mid-1986.”
“We figured the name Semifreddi would be just right for our new bakery,” Eric told the Oakland Tribune in 1986. “It’s also a name that’s hard to take too seriously. And we wanted our bakery to be a fun operation.”Workers bag freshly made loafs of bread at Semifreddi's factory in Alameda, Calif. on June 23, 2023.In a strange turn of events, the Pease-Sarpenaers decided to permanently close Semifreddi’s in the late 1980s despite the mass success it gained in a matter of years.
“It was a learning process,” Rose recalls of his early days. “Bread is simple yet challenging and complicated. I had some beginner’s luck but not enough humility at first.” Tom Frainier and Mike Rose stand with a mixer and oven from the original Semifreddi's store and bakery in Kensington is on display at the Semifreddi's factory in Alameda, Calif. on June 23, 2023.Meanwhile, Frainier had spent about seven years climbing the corporate ladder at Clorox.
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