L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 32 L'Italo-Americano F rom Seattle's finest dining establishments to the local McDonald's, from grocery s t o r e s t o t h e S p a c e N e e d l e Restaurant, Gai's Northwest Bakeries was a popular supplier of breads and rolls for the better half of the 20th century. The bakery was started by Giglio Gai, an immigrant from Roccella Ionica, Calabria, who arrived in Seattle in 1904 at the age of 14. By the 1920s, Giglio was baking French bread in a brick oven in his home and then delivering it door-to-door to his customers. Giglio opened New Home B a k e r y i n 1 9 3 1 i n S e a t t l e ' s Central District. A decade later, he purchased the Seattle French Baking Co. from another well- known Italian food purveyor, the DeLaurenti family, and changed t h e b u s i n e s s n a m e t o G a i ' s Seattle French Baking. Giglio's hard work was starting to pay off, and the company was on its way to becoming the top special- ty-bread baker in the state. All three of Giglio's children, including daughter Rose, helped out. But it was sons Phil and Henry, who took over the com- pany following Giglio's death in 1953, who turned it into a baking powerhouse. Gai's Northwest B a k e r i e s b e c a m e S e a t t l e ' s l a r g e s t b a k e r y , c h u r n i n g o u t s o m e $ 2 0 0 m i l l i o n w o r t h o f bread a year. Even if Gai's bread was not on your weekly shopping list, it was hard to escape seeing the company's quirky "mascots" around town, prominently fea- tured on the back doors of the bread delivery trucks. Two cartoon characters, both very 1950s-looking in the way they were drawn and in their manner of dress, peered out from the back of the truck. One fellow was wearing a toque and round- rimmed glasses; the other had on a n a p r o n , s h i r t a n d n e c k t i e . "Drive carefully! The loaf you save may be your own!" one of the characters is saying. What most Seattle residents did not know was that the car- toons depicted the Gai brothers themselves. The taller one with s p e c t a c l e s a n d c h e f h a t w a s Henry. His shorter dark-haired companion was his brother, Phil. T h e b r o t h e r s a p p e a r e d o n other promotional products, as well. A circular metal lapel but- ton created to hand out to cus- tomers showed Henry wearing an old-fashioned signboard on w h i c h w a s p r i n t e d " R e a l l y Good!" Standing next to him is Phil, smartly dressed in a three- piece suit and holding a loaf of crusty bread. "Henry and Phil G a i a r e p e r s o n a l f r i e n d s o f mine," proclaimed the custom button. The brothers were as differ- ent in their personalities as they were in their physical appear- a n c e . H e n r y , k n o w n a s M r . Inside, tended to Gai's baking operations and was in charge of administration and the physical p l a n t . P h i l , k n o w n a s M r . Outside, was more outgoing and gregarious, known for his sense of humor. Not surprisingly, Phil was the company's chief sales- man in charge of market devel- opment and distribution. He had a passion for cake decorating and loved to hunt and fish. "Henry had a huge office up high in the bakery where he could look out over all the ovens a n d m i x e r s a n d p a c k a g e r s , " recalled one local contractor who worked with Gai's in the 1970s. "He had on all white bak- ing clothes, the hat you see [in the ad] and he was covered with flour...Later, I met Phil and he was nattily dressed and drove a b i g r a d i o - e q u i p p e d s t a t i o n w a g o n . W h e n s o m e f a n c y restaurant was short of specialty baked goods, Phil was radioed and he hot-footed an order right over." P h i l a n d H e n r y b e g a n t o diversify the product line and seek new customer markets, expanding the business from supplying restaurants to selling to fast-food chains. Gai's began baking hamburger buns for sev- eral local fast-food establish- ments, including Dag's drive-in c h a i n , a n d t h e n s e c u r e d t h e account to supply hamburger buns to McDonald's. Eventually, Gai's provided burger buns to most of the big fast-food chains in the area, including Burger King, Wendy's, Jack in the Box, RITA CIPALLA Gai's Northwest Bakeries: A Seattle institution and baking powerhouse for more than 50 years and Red Robin. Flexibility and nimbleness w e r e h a l l m a r k s o f G a i ' s Northwest Bakeries and key fac- tors in its success. When the Space Needle Restaurant needed French bread delivered twice a day, seven days a week, Gai's accommodated them. When cus- tomers said they preferred to buy their bread sliced rather than whole, Gai's made it happen. The main bakery was a hub- b u b o f a c t i v i t y — m a c h i n e s whirred and clacked, flour dust filled the air and speckled the floor. Hamburger buns were turned out at a rate of 760 a minute on an automated produc- tion line operated by just 13 peo- ple. By the 1980s, the business e m p l o y e d m o r e t h a n 1 , 4 0 0 workers in bread mills from Vancouver, B.C., to Portland, Ore. A fleet of 480 bread trucks delivered loaves, rolls and buns through the Northwest. In 1992, Gai's merged with the San Francisco French Bread Company to form Pacific Coast Bakeries, the largest wholesale baking company on the West Coast. This joint enterprise pro- duced up to four million pounds of bread products a week. At the end of the 1990s, once again responding to customer demand, Gai's developed a rus- tic bread line called Pane di Paolo to compete with the arti- san bread market then gaining in popularity. A team of six bakers p r o d u c e d 2 0 P a n e d i P a o l o loaves a minute, almost a snail's pace compared to the hundreds of hamburger buns coming off the assembly line in the same amount of time. In 1997, the Gai's brand was sold to U.S. Bakery, headquar- tered in Portland, Ore., the hold- ing company for Franz breads. The whimsical cartoon image of the Gai brothers is no longer seen on the delivery trucks as they make their rounds up and down Seattle streets. Henry Gai died in 1983 and his brother Phil in 2005. Gai's Northwest Bakeries was a supplier of breads and rolls to several of Seattle's most elegant restaurants including this one at the Space Needle, some 600 feet above the ground SEATTLE ITALIAN COMMUNITY Phil Gai (above) and his brother Henry put the customer first, a strategy that enabled Gai's Northwest Bakeries to become the largest baking company on the West Coast. (Seattle Times)

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