The story
In 1926, Paul Helms of New York took early retirement for health reasons and moved his family to Southern California. Helms started construction on a building between Washington and Venice Boulevards in 1930 and, on March 2, 1931, the Helms Bakery opened with 32 employees and 11 delivery coaches. Helms was reported to have wanted his delivery vehicles to be known as coaches, noting that garbage is delivered in trucks.
The Helms motto was "Daily at Your Door" and every weekday morning, from both the Culver City facility and a second Helms Bakery site in Montebello, dozens of Helms coaches, painted in a two-tone scheme, would leave the bakery for various parts of the Los Angeles Basin to San Gabriel Valley, when the network of freeways had not yet been built. Each coach, piloted by a "Helmsman", would travel through assigned neighborhoods. The driver periodically pulled (twice) on a large handle that sounded a whistle or stopping at a house where a Helms sign, a blue placard with an "H" on it, was displayed in their windows.
1932 Olympics
Helms Bakery become the "official baker" of the 1932 Summer Olympics when Paul Helms won a contract to supply bread for the 1932 games in Los Angeles. His slogan was "Olympic Games Bakers - Choice of Olympic Champions." Four years later, in time for the 1936 Summer Olympics, Germany asked Helms for his bread recipes. The U.S. teams at London and Helsinki requested his bread be served. Early Helms vehicles sported the Olympic symbol, and it also appeared on and was mentioned in, the Helms logo on the bread wrappers, the company logo, and sign.
Paul Helms died on January 5, 1957, at age 67, but the business continued to operate, run by family members. Its delivery network gradually grew to include Fresno to the north; San Bernardino to the east, and south to Orange County and San Diego. The San Bernardino facility was located on the northeast corner of Mt. Vernon Avenue and Birch Street.
Apollo 11
In the company's final year of operation, a marketing campaign netted Helms a contract to furnish "the first bread on the moon," via the Apollo 11 space mission.
Closure
Citing changing consumer shopping habits, and the threat unionization by drivers, the Helms company ceased operations in 1969. Paul Helms Jr stated, “The irreversible reality is that this form of merchandising is no longer needed by the consumer.” The Marks family purchased Helms Bakery in the early 1970s and initiated adaptive reuse of a historic structure.
From Wikipedia’s article on Helms Bakery, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3