Nabolom Bakery, a 50-year-old establishment in Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood, will close its doors on October 18.
Co-owner Sabra Stepak confirmed the closure, which was first reported by East Bay Nosh. She declined to comment further.
Nabolom has long supplied Berkeley with fruit danishes, challah, cinnamon twists and, for the past decade, vegetarian pizzas praised by former Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho.
A collective of workers started the bakery in 1976. The business struggled to stay afloat over the next decades as group morale deteriorated and several members withdrew. The business came close to closing in 2004, when the owners announced the company was nearly $30,000 in debt and two months behind on rent.
Advance payments for baked goods allowed the bakery to stay open until 2015, when it effectively closed its doors. “Nabolom is a pretty funky place,” Cynthia Wilson, who regularly played drums with a band at the bakery, told Berkeleyside at the time. “It’s definitely alternative and the people who work there are deliciously alternative: dreamers of a better world.”
Six months later, Stepak and his business partner, Berkeley Cheese Board Collective Pizza alumna Julia Elliott, took over, paid off much of the company’s debt and reopened Nabolom. It also passed into private ownership. Stepak and Elliott renovated the space and added sourdough pizzas topped with rotating seasonal ingredients such as goat cheese, yams, okra or delicata squash.
Gn bussni
