Acme Bread Company facts for kids
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| Private | |
| Industry | Food production |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Founder | Steve Sullivan |
| Headquarters |
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USA
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Area served
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California |
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Key people
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Steve Sullivan, Founder and President |
| Products | Bread |
| Revenue | $14.5 million |
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Number of employees
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168 |
The Acme Bread Company, often called Acme Bread, is a famous bakery in Berkeley, California. It helped start the "Bread Revolution" in the San Francisco Bay Area. This movement led to the "artisan bread" trend we see today. Acme Bread is still known for making some of the best handmade bread.
Contents
What Does "Acme" Mean?
The word "Acme" comes from an Ancient Greek word, akmē. It means "the highest point" or "the peak of anything." In English, it means "the best" or "perfection." So, the name suggests that Acme Bread aims to be the best bread.
How Acme Bread Started
Steve Sullivan, the founder, grew up in Los Gatos, California. He went to the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. To earn money, he worked at a famous restaurant called Chez Panisse.
During a summer trip to Europe, Steve bought a book about making bread. He was excited to try baking himself. He wanted to make bread like the delicious bread he tasted in Paris.
In 1979, the restaurant's bread supplier couldn't make enough bread. So, Steve became the in-house breadmaker for Chez Panisse. But his breadmaking needed more space than the restaurant had. In 1983, with the restaurant's support, he decided to open his own bakery, Acme.
Steve and his wife, Susan, went to France for their honeymoon. There, they learned a special secret for making bread. A winemaker suggested they use natural yeast from wine grapes to start their bread dough. When they returned home, Steve used unsulfured Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel grapes from his father's vineyard. He added them to a mix of flour and water. This created the "mother starter" that Acme still uses today for all its bread.
What Kind of Bread Does Acme Make?
Acme sells many types of baked goods. These include baguettes, batards, rolls, and pastries. They also make chocolate and plain croissants, and croutons.
Most of their main products are made with either sourdough or "sweet" white bread dough. But they also offer other kinds, like multi-grain and walnut levain. Acme sells whole loaves of bread; they do not slice them.
In 1999, after two years of careful study, the company switched to using only organic wheat flour. This means their flour is grown without certain chemicals.
How Acme Operates
Acme Bread has four bakeries. They opened a bakery in Berkeley in 1989 that only sells to other businesses. In 1996, they opened another bakery in Mountain View, which later moved to South San Francisco in 2016.
In 2004, they opened a bakery and retail shop in San Francisco. This shop is part of the famous San Francisco Ferry Building. Acme also sells its baked goods at farmers' markets. You can find them at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, and markets in Sunnyvale and Mountain View.
The main bakery in Berkeley works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has three shifts of bakers. The San Francisco location bakes only during the daytime. The larger bakeries can produce 60,000 or more loaves of bread every week.
The Bread-Making Process
Making Acme's sourdough loaves takes about 35 hours before they are baked.
- First, yeast from the special "mother starter" is mixed with more flour and water. This creates a 60-pound "sponge."
- This sponge is kept cold for 12 hours.
- Then, the sponge is mixed with 240 pounds of more flour, water, and salt.
- After mixing, the dough is shaped into loaves by hand.
- Finally, the bread is baked in a large brick oven. This oven has a rotating slab and steam humidifiers. These keep the perfect humidity to create a delicious crust.
Acme does very little advertising. They don't have salespeople or a marketing team. Most of their sales, over 80%, are to other businesses. These are mainly local restaurants and markets. For example, two fine dining restaurants, Boulevard and Farallon, buy about $60,000 worth of Acme bread each year. The shop at the Ferry Building is very popular with tourists and locals. However, it is a smaller part of Acme's total business.
Acme breads are also delivered to about 40 restaurants and stores in Sacramento. A special agent picks up the bread in Berkeley each morning. He also sells loaves to personal customers in Roseville who pick them up from his home.
See also
Images for kids
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Acme interior
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Acme bread loaves on display at Ferry Building retail shop in San Francisco
