Addiction is cruel. It can destroy lives and futures and tear families apart. Sometimes, out of tragedy, beauty can emerge. The story of Dave Dahl and Dave\u2019s Killer Bread is one of the best examples of how healing and redemption can come out of something as painful as addiction. Dave Dahl\u2019s life wasn\u2019t exactly easy. He grew up in a family of bakers, but that didn\u2019t stop him from making some very bad choices in his life. Battling depression and addiction, Dave was sent to prison for a total of 15 years on drug charges and burglary. For most of those years, he was in self-destruction mode and didn\u2019t do anything to get out of that cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On his last prison sentence, he finally had a revelation. Combining antidepressant medication, therapy, and a class he took on computer-aided drafting while incarcerated, Dave saw a new light. He became sober and decided that he wanted to turn his life around and build something positive. He wanted to create, not destroy. After getting out of prison, Dave\u2019s older brother Glenn allowed him to come back to the family bakery (then called NatureBake). Dave used the passion and energy he\u2019d been keeping bottled up during those last few years to focus on creating breads that were hearty, organic, packed with seeds and grains, and more nutrient dense than anything on the market at the time. Dave did multiple iterations, wrote down notes, and obsessed over getting just the right flavor and texture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2005, Dave showed up at the Portland Farmers Market with his loaves of Dave\u2019s Killer Bread. The result? His bread sold out, his story made the headlines, and the new brand took off like wildfire. He put his conviction on the front of the packaging and didn\u2019t try to hide it. He was a convicted felon who used to do drugs who had gotten a second chance. And people loved him for it<\/em>. Consumers believed in Dave\u2019s redemption and they believed in his bread. In the years that followed, Dave\u2019s Killer Bread quickly became the country\u2019s number-one organic bread. By 2015, Dave\u2019s Killer Bread was sold to Flowers Foods for $275 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave\u2019s belief in redemption is something that the brand is still built on today. Dave\u2019s Killer Bread has a long-running initiative called Second Chance Employment at its Oregon bakery and other locations around the country. The baker hires people who have criminal records and gives them a second chance in the same way that the company gave Dave one. The brand has a campaign on its website called \u201cReal Chances. Real Change. Real Talk.\u201d where it interviews these people and shows videos of their \u201creal\u201d stories and what it means to them to have had a second chance. All of these people show similar traits to Dave, strength, determination, gratitude, and a belief in the restorative power of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people they hire, known as \u201cpartners,\u201d make bread and baking mix in their bakeries in Seattle, Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, and Minnesota. They are people like Kurtis, who spent 12 years in prison for bank robbery and now has three different part-time jobs at Dave\u2019s Killer Bread. There\u2019s Diego, a current inmate at a California prison who has learned the art of baking from Dave\u2019s Killer Bread through the prison work program. Or Conroy, who spent four years in prison and has now been with Dave\u2019s Killer Bread for seven years, because he loves the product and the feeling of helping out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave\u2019s own story doesn\u2019t end at the bakery. Today, in his sixties, he lives a more relaxed life than he used to. He owns a 33-acre farm on the Clackamas River with his wife, Michelle. He still has a creative mind and a little bit of that ADD still inside of him. But he\u2019s still writing and drawing, and still reflective about his own addiction and mental illness. In 2013, after an episode that landed him in a police chase, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has been open and honest about it. He admits that recovery and healing is not a linear path and we can all fall off track sometimes. Healing, much like baking, is an ongoing process that requires work, consistency, and patience.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can look at the package of Dave\u2019s Killer Bread on the grocery store shelves and think it\u2019s just another organic, nutritious bread. Yet for others, it\u2019s a reminder of the power of community, support, and believing that even broken things can be fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Addiction is cruel. It can destroy lives and futures and tear families apart. 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