Alvarado Street Bakery

Alvarado Street Bakery began in 1977 as a part of an employee-owned non-profit business called the Red Clover Worker's Brigade, an umbrella organization for several natural foods businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. By 1981, only two businesses still operated, Alvarado Street Bakery and Santa Rosa Community Market. Five of the eight workers of the bakery, Bruce Gustin, Diana Thomas, Louisa Aranow, Sandy Turner, and Debbie Edwards, separated from the market to found the Semper Virens Bakery Food Cooperative, Inc. which does business under the name of Alvarado Street Bakery. The name comes from a knocked over Alvarado Street sign from Venice Beach, Los Angeles from a sprouted wheat berry delivery run.

The bakery's growth and use of organic ingredients was partly responsible for its success within the organic food industry in the 1980s. Alvarado Street Bakery ships out over 40,000 loaves of bread a day that they bake in their solar-powered bakery, and is best known for the flour-less sprouted wheat breads that they produce.