Coronavirus shopping cleared out some bread aisles. Local bakeries have stepped up.
If you’ve got a loaf of bread, you’re halfway to a meal. In snows or hurricanes or when uncertainty looms, bread has become one of the pillars of emergency shopping.
A handful of local bakeries are making sure there’s plenty of bread to go around, even as the grocery aisles can be hit or miss.
Neomonde is one of the oldest and busiest bakeries in the Triangle, sending bread out of its ovens since the 1980s. Like all North Carolina restaurants, Neomonde is only selling takeout right now, but its breads are also being sold at the company’s locations in Raleigh and Durham and at Sassool in the Morgan Street Food Hall.
Neomonde founder Joe Saleh said white loaves are $2.25 and wheat and multigrain loaves are $2.50.
“We wanted to keep it simple,” Saleh said. “We wanted to keep in mind what the customer needs.”
With everyone struggling a little or a lot, Neomonde bakery is selling a few of it breads at below wholesale prices. Saleh said the company hoped to offer relief to those finding only barren shelves in grocery stores.
“What disappeared off the supermarket shelves after the sanitizer and the paper towels?” Saleh said. “It was the bread that was next to go. ... This is us supporting our convictions and having the community in mind.”
Pay it forward
Raleigh’s Union Special Bread makes a version of the soft white bread near and dear to so many. Owner Andrew Ullom calls his version the “People’s Loaf,” a sliced bread with some sourdough culture mixed in. Union Special is also offering loaves of bread for customers to send to Raleigh’s Interfaith Food Shuttle.
“It’s keeping our bakers busy,” Ullom said. “Union is not donating bread, this is the community purchasing bread for other folks. It’s a good way for the community to get involved and help each other and a way for us to go to work everyday.”
In Union Special’s online ordering system there’s the option to buy a loaf for Raleigh groups like the Interfaith Food Shuttle and the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. So far, Ullom said people have donated more than 700 loaves of bread and several thousand rolls.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like right now for parents and children who rely on school lunches,” Ullom said.
Similarly, bakeries like Yellow Dog in Raleigh and Strong Arm in Oxford are making sure their bread gets to people who need it. Yellow Dog is making weekly bread deliveries to the Parkview Manor senior home for the next month, they said on Instagram. Strong Arm, who delivers throughout Durham, will donate a squishy loaf of white bread to the Area Churches in Ministry for every loaf customers donate themselves.
The power of bread
So far, Union Special has kept its staff intact, Ullom said, even as restaurants and bars are closed. The bakery only takes online orders now to minimize interaction, with customers picking up their bread, pastries and sandwiches at Union’s counter.
“We’re extremely lucky we make bread and turkey sandwiches,” Ullom said. “We have a bit of normalcy on our side.”
Ullom said he can’t fully explain the ransacking of the bread aisle in times of turmoil, but that he does understand it.
“I really do think that if there’s bread in the house everything’s going to be OK,” Ullom said. “If there’s bread, it’s something you can do a lot of different things with. A quick snack, a sandwich. It’s an object that gives you comfort.”
