We would like to show love to all of the brilliant humans with which we have had the opportunity to collaborate. We have chosen to partner with these businesses/individuals because, to us, they exemplify our ideologies of sustainability, integrity, and creativity.
Cru Chocolate
After pursuing a degree in Engineering and an advanced degree in Sustainability, Karla McNeil-Rueda studied Cacao technology and fine chocolate confectionery at the Chocolate Institute of Latin America and the Caribbean in La Habana, Cuba.
She learned to integrate and combine her empirical and cultural knowledge of chocolate with her experience as an engineer and founded Cru Chocolate, a hand crafted bean to bar company that sources fine Cacao from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to use in their chocolate and other Cacao based creations.
Cru Chocolate’s mission includes a focus on assisting people at origin in creating and growing their own business by providing education and facilitating small scale equipment.
When we first opened we collaborated on a delicious chocolate bar and later on used their cacao in a couple of our stouts. We can’t wait to work with them again. Stay tuned…
ORANGE DRAGONFLY
With over 40 years of combined experience planning events that range from weddings, corporate and team building events, to community and family events. It was time for this mother daughter team to put our experience and organizational skills to good use.
Susan has always had a love for gardening and using her plants and flowers to create arrangements for friends and family. She has a natural talent for organizing, and entertaining. This has made event coordination and floral design workshops a natural transition after retiring from a career planning corporate events, and mentoring a workforce of over 7500 people.
Kristina has always had a keen eye for detail, and a knack for style and design. What started as helping friends and acquaintances with parties and informal day of coordinating for weddings, has turned into a passion for helping create and personalize each event. Incorporating this experience along with her calm demeanor helps set the tone for a perfectly executed day.
You’ll see Susan and Kristina at Mindscape one Wednesday of each month. Visit their website below to sign up for your next class.
THE ACME BREAD COMPANY
Steven and Suzie Sullivan founded The Acme Bread Company in 1983 to bake bread for restaurants and stores who wanted to offer better bread than was generally available on the wholesale market at the time. Today the company is run by a group of five managing shareholders including Rick Kirkby, Claudio Rezende, Monica Contois along with Steven and Suzie Sullivan.
When the bakery started up in 1983 they made only four different kinds of Bread: Pain au Levain, Sweet Baguettes, Upstairs Bread, and Challah. Relying largely on the requests and suggestions of customers, as well on their own occasional inspiration, they have expanded their product list over the last thirty-some-odd years to include more than 100 different products. Since they began operation all of their whole-grain flours have been organic but since the nineties, Acme has been incorporating as many organic and locally sourced ingredients as possible. Most significantly, in 1999 they made the switch to 100% organic flour. They also use organic raisins, pumpkin seeds and flax seeds sourced by their flour provider, Keith Giusto.
Acme has also done several things over the years to incorporate environmentally friendly procedures and technology. In 2008 they covered their largest wholesale bakery in Berkeley with photovoltaic panels in order to generate much of their own electricity. They now fuel all of their diesel trucks (and diesel generators) with “renewable diesel”. It is produced from renewable sources (vegetable and animal fats) and burns very clean and efficiently. They make an effort to donate all fresh leftover bread to charitable organizations, schools, and nonprofits. They collect day-old bread and bread that is returned to them the following day from retailers such as supermarkets into a container that is picked up by a company that processes it into organic livestock feed. Finally, they encourage their customers to minimize paper waste by offering a five-cent-per-loaf discount when they forgo all packaging on bread they purchase in their shops.
We love using Acme’s delicious bread for our paninis, charcuterie boards, and hummus plates and look forward to trying out other offerings of theirs on seasonal specials.