Grand Central Bakery


Grand Central Baking Company d.b.a. Grand Central Bakery is an American bakery chain with locations in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington and their metropolitan areas. It was founded in 1972 in Seattle's Grand Central Hotel building. The bakery is known for its artisan breads.

History

The predecessor to Grand Central Bakery was a shop called "The Bakery" that was opened in the former Grand Central Hotel building in Seattle's Pioneer Square by Gwenyth Bassetti. She left the business, returning in June 1989, when the shop was renamed "Grand Central Bakery". In 1993, Bassetti's son Ben Davis helped turn an "old nursery building in Portland's Hawthorne District" into the company's first location in Portland.

Today

As of 2012, Grand Central's head baker in Portland was Sean Coyne. Coyne was the head baker at Per Se from 2003 to March 2005. As of 2012, Mel Darbyshire was the head baker in Seattle. She was replaced as head baker in Portland by Coyne.
As of December 2015, the company had six shops in the city of Portland proper, and in that month it opened its first suburban shop in Oregon, located in Cedar Mill, an unincorporated area that is within the Portland metropolitan area.