History

Baking has been a Brunello family tradition for nearly a century.  Paul Brunello, father of Roger and Dan, immigrated to America from Venice, Italy and began the Brunello tradition of true bread baking.  Believing in his European roots of serving fresh bread, hot and steaming right out of the oven, Paul opened a small retail and home delivery bakery in 1922 in the little Northern California lumber town of Weed.  His Italian bakery became the finest in the region because it offered quality bread baked with the best ingredients fresh from the oven.

In 1956, the Brunellos left Weed and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Later that same year, Paul Brunello opened El Real Bakery in Palo Alto, which offered specialty cakes, Danish pastries, and donuts.  Predominantly wholesale, El Real Bakery served several hundred accounts with 36 trucks and maintained a steady crew of approximately 300 employees. 

By 1963, Paul enlisted his son, Roger, to join El Real after he graduated from college.  Roger had been exposed to the baking industry all his life, having spent much of his childhood helping his father at the bakery after school and during summer breaks.  Roger rapidly accustomed to the business of managing bakery operations and after his first year, took over for his father to carry on the family tradition.

In 1971, Roger and Paul merged El Real Bakery with a popular San Francisco bakery, Stemple’s Bakery, creating a larger production capacity and extending their solid customer base from San Jose to San Francisco.  In addition to increasing wholesale operations, the merger included five new retail outlets.  Through the Stemple’s endeavor, Roger gained valuable experience in baking production methods in a high volume environment that is still used today to manage Le Boulanger’s bakery operation.

After Paul Brunello’s retirement in 1976, Roger carried on the simple foundation of a family tradition he learned as a child in his father’s bakery: the idea of selling freshly baked bread - still warm from the oven - to the public in the manner of the European patisseries and panetterias.

Roger sold Stemple’s in 1977 and ventured with four business partners to create a European baking concept that began San Francisco Boulangerie.  Roger’s new bakery initially offered San Francisco sourdough and sweet French breads, and croissants, but customers soon realized the freshly baked bread added a whole new taste to specialty sandwiches, which became a huge success. The innovative baking concept grew to four stores and was later sold to Pepsico in 1980 and renamed La Petite Boulangerie.