Now 55, he was behind bars for more than a quarter of his life. Dave wanted to go home. Transformations are funny things. Turns out he also had a gift for making bread. “It wasn’t like we were thinking, Oh this is a felon-friendly program, or anything like that,” Dave says. When I did bread, I had to sell bread,” he laughs. "I was a four-time loser before I realized I was in the wrong game," Dave writes on the back of each loaf of Dave's Killer Bread… Commenters say that they want to support a company giving chances to other people like them, especially when the bread tastes so damn good. By 22, he was a full-fledged criminal. Nevertheless, the antidepressant worked. The morning of his junior-year finals he woke up in a jail cell bloody, covered in cuts. Dave Dahl (born January 12, 1963) is an American entrepreneur, known for co-founding Dave's Killer Bread. “I was as bummed as most anyone when Chris was found dead,” Dave says. “When I did drugs, I had to sell drugs. In the comment section under a link to the Willamette article, Barbara posted a long, all-caps comment about her husband. But whatever the slang term’s origin, in prison these scraps of paper can change lives. … He’s having, like, a breakdown. Dave’s Killer Bread has become a cult favorite across the nation, drawing in both health-conscious consumers and those who root for second chances in life. has been told many times: A bad turn, drugs, assault, robbery and 15 years in and out of prison before breaking clean. Michelle was trying to keep him there until someone arrived. The Dahls stressed they are not selling out, quality won't be compromised and no one will be laid off. Sometimes people just change. If the Dave on the package represented the qualities in himself he idealized, the masks present a much fuller, realer spectrum. … He went into the store and he smashed a cutout, a life-size cutout of himself, because he’s a symbol of the brand, and he’s intimidating employees that are watching him. "We're bakers," as Shobi Dahl said. She was furious with him, but made it clear in comment sections that she never accused Dave of killing Chris, just of being negligent — a fatally bad friend. The officer didn’t follow him. Better yet, Dave himself is a success story only Portland would embrace and love. Then it all came together. “But still, there was an unreal sort of ego.” Dave is telling me this story in a dim office, reclined three-quarters of the way in a massage chair. But there’s a part of him that wants people to know the real Dave, the one who’s just trying to keep himself in one piece. One of the friends secretly made three calls to mental health professionals that evening. This drawing was always a bit of fiction, depicting the baking rockstar Dave the way he wanted to be. That’s when he had his “great epiphany”: He had no choice but to somehow make his life worth living. Dave let him drive his Escalade, “which was, you know, insane,” he says. “I’m so excited to be developing a feature-length documentary with Joe Coppoletta, Catherine Blanksby and Blue Chalk Media about the epic life story of Dave Dahl. "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere because Portland has acquired a discerning taste.". "This wasn't about selling out and getting top dollar, it was about finding the right fit and maintaining the culture," Bonoff said. Then the real Dave disappeared from public life while his caricature appeared in more and more aisles across the country. Glenn offered Dave a job at the bakery immediately after picking him up from the bus station after his release. “I started playing guitar and learning quicker.” Maybe it was the medication that changed everything; maybe it was nothing more than finally asking for help. Even if it does, it will just become one more chapter in his story — available for anyone to take or leave. Dave Dahl of Dave's Killer Bread fame arrested for ramming patrol cars, which injured deputies. Posted by. “Killer bread or just killer?” read one comment. A deputy rapped on Dave’s passenger window with their metal baton. "When you couple the product with Dave's story -- the powerful message of redemption -- it's exciting. But from the beginning, it seemed, Dave was the bad seed. “There has been a recent softening of attitudes toward hiring ex-felons,” he notes, and “some prisons are now more about positive reinforcement and accountability-based growth. Glenn is still mistaken for his brother at business conferences. Dave’s evasion led him into a cul-de-sac, where one deputy positioned their car in the middle of the road as a barricade. Hey Everyone, it's Kellie P-B_FAM and Husband Eric an Guest at time here, saying Hi! On the back of the bread you'll find his life story. “I thought I’d made a difference and all of the sudden it’s like, did all that shit just go up in smoke?”. Dave's Killer Bread is run by Dave Dahl who served 15 years in prison. The tale of Good Seed has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into Dave’s Killer Bread culture that, even today, the employees I’ve talked to and Dave tell the story nearly verbatim. A New York-based company. Behind those hundreds of faces — time-weathered, intricate, strong — that’s where you’ll find the real Dave. “It was a very dark time.” Today, the two brothers would rather put the past behind them. In most prisons, written requests are commonly known as kites, though no one seems to know where the term came from. He says that if he aims for the trash and misses, he’ll walk over and pick it up. When Dave’s Killer Bread was sold to Flowers Foods for $275 million in 2015, the reach of this once-local bakery expanded considerably. The other deputy drove their vehicle up to pin Dave between the two sheriff’s department cars. In prison, plenty of people around him were trying to die. When the new company launched in 2005, Dave’s Killer Bread offered four varieties: Blues Bread, Nuts & Grains, Good Seed, and Rockin’ Rye. For someone who still holds onto remnants of a self-destructive streak, Dave goes to painstaking lengths to keep it self-contained. When the fog cleared, a thought flashed through him: His actions may have led to the death of Dave’s Killer Bread. He’s sitting in his car, but he’s been in and out. The Dahl family's Milwaukie company, home-grown as NatureBake, was growing 40 to 100 percent per year, with sales pushing past $50 million in 2012. Equity firms look for opportunities that will return three times the initial investment, and analysis indicates Dave's Killer Bread could reach that just by greater penetration of California. Solution/Project. During Q&A sessions he’d turn to his assistant and say, “I think that question deserves a loaf of bread,” and they’d toss a loaf to the inquirer. Dave seized the opportunity and worked tirelessly to develop a killer new recipe for organic and Non-GMO bread, which was debuted at the Portland Farmers Market in 2005. The bread was a hit and Dave’s Killer Bread was born. When Dave was born, the Dahls lived in a small, shabby house that he called a shanty. Often Dave would get into fights, bad ones that left physical evidence all over his body. This glutenous ice-breaker was successful; a sea of hands would raise after the first gift was tossed, each person hoping they’d be the next to receive nourishment from the stage. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to talk to me or any other writers. In the comments on the Willamette piece she described posting missing-persons flyers for 53 days before she got the news that police had found Chris’s body. He met his then-girlfriend, Michelle Bain, when he was still that caricature, Dave of Dave’s Killer Bread. Two blocks away from the house, Dave ran into one of the deputy’s cars. “I do not look down on Dave, only hope that he finds peace,” said one Facebook comment. In 1987, he was addicted to drugs and incarcerated for home burglary. “But it wasn’t my fault.”, The Cult of Dave was no longer such an easy sell to many of Dave’s Killer Bread’s fans on social media. Or go for it, and risk losing who they are? “I have to say that bothers me more than anything.”. The company's hiring practices -- about 30 percent of employees are ex-cons -- will not change. But he thinks it’s time to get his story out. He filled out what essentially amounted to an SOS, and dropped it in the kite box. Where addiction once dominated much of Dave’s life, what consumes him these days is art. As Dave continued down the road while following the speed limit, one deputy repeatedly rammed into Dave’s car in an attempt to get him to pull over. One of his four prison sentences came after he was caught stealing a $12.99 cellphone accessory. The first deputy on the scene radioed others. Dave’s Killer Bread® is powerfully different with killer taste and killer texture. The cofounder of Dave’s Killer Bread was on sabbatical from the multimillion-dollar Milwaukie, Oregon–based company, but his time away from work had done more harm than good. Dave worked hard and brought a line of products to a local farmers market in Portland,” Watson explains. He’s had to live up to his own fictionalized image ever since 2005 and even though the company isn’t his anymore, his face hasn’t gone anywhere. He told the cartoonist to make the muscles in his arms a little bigger, his face less rough. “Everything started working better,” Dave says of the end of his time in prison, shortly after he filled out that kite. "This is a little more than we can handle," Shobi Dahl describes the family consensus. Subscribe to OregonLive. “I could see it in him that not having control over what was happening with the bakery and the eventual selling of it was just taking a toll on him.”. "The company has just scratched the surface in California," said Daniel Bonoff, a partner at Goode Partners, the equity firm. Finally, he was functioning the way he’d always wanted to. “Mr. He was a literal poster child for breaking through a sordid past and finding success. They knew they had something killer and unique, but little did they know how much these products would shake up the bread aisle. The legend of Dave lives on in a multimillion-dollar company he no longer runs, though he has invested some of the $33 million he received in the sale back into the enterprise. In the end, it’s either going to be you or me,” Shobi wrote. The company specializes in $10 million to $30 million investments in consumer-oriented companies with high growth potential, and liked what it saw. Today, every time Dahl walks into a grocery store near his home he sees his face in the bread aisle. Brooklyn. Prior to it, he had served a total of over 15 years in prison for multiple offenses including drug distribution, burglary, armed robbery, and assault. He had goals,” Glenn says. Dave put a down payment on a house in 2009; Michelle moved in with him. Rather than build new bakeries, the company will look to grow through co-manufacturing agreements, in which existing bakeries produce bread to Dave's Killer Bread specifications. Seeing his bread in stores is like looking into a fun-house mirror. "The objective of bringing in a partner is not to rock the boat: You've got something great, how do you make it better?". Michelle knew something was off before the drive — he’d been acting erratically for a few days. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission. It’s a term we don’t take lightly, considering it comes from our legions of fans. Dave’s Killer Bread has become a cult favorite across the nation, drawing in both health-conscious consumers and those who root for an unlikely success story. In some ways he’s profiting from keeping quiet about his story. … Nobody’s hurt. “It wasn’t necessarily going to work, but it could work,” Glenn recalls, “so I couldn’t not give it a chance.”. “And mmm this bread still tastes great!”. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Eventually she convinced him to turn back and stop at the home of a friend who Michelle hoped could help Dave. Chris was a “loose-cannon buddy,” as Dave tells it. He had to fight to retain control of his own narrative. "The chemistry was exceptional," said Bonoff, of Goode Partners. Justesen says that it was Dave’s diminished role in the company that brought on his eventual self-described breakdown. Good Seed is the loaf that put Dave’s transformation in perspective, but no longer being a part of the company has changed his relationship to it — like losing custody of the child who looks just like you. Even a cynical New Yorker gets won over by what he's doing.". He was supposed to drive the three or so hours to Seattle that night with Michelle. I didn’t know any better,” he says. Despite Dave’s divergence from the brand, the cult of Dave’s Killer Bread has continued to expand. Still, he kept drinking. “Dave Dahl. They readily paid more than $5 a loaf for such brands as Blues Bread, Good Seed and Nuts & Grains. Dave has spent the past few chapters struggling to be a better person, to put some good back in the world to make up for what he’s taken out of it. He could talk to people and felt confident; life didn’t feel quite so heavy. Dave remembers serving his final sentence, before the transformation that would change his life. Bread With the Highest and Lowest Calories on the Dave’s Killer Bread Menu. Dahl sat frozen, gripping the steering wheel, unresponsive to the commands to exit the vehicle,” according to the defendant’s memorandum submitted during the criminal trial after Dave’s arrest. When Dave Dahl looks at those bread packages, what he sees is what we all see: a freshly transformed ex-con ready to leave the past behind him and has created a product that people don’t just like but adore. Dave was prescribed an antidepressant by a physician’s assistant, though he isn’t sure whether he was ever diagnosed with depression. After a few hours, Dave drove off on his own and was greeted by Washington County Sheriff’s deputies, who had also been requested in addition to the mental health professionals they’d called for. If it hadn’t been for the night spent with Dave and the drinking — Chris, she said, had been sober — he would still be alive. Find us at your local bakery aisle. When the board found out, the members forced him to take a sabbatical. Available at grocery stores in 11 states. I let the company down. For someone who once smashed a cardboard cutout of himself, it’s odd that today Dave spends most of his days surrounded by masks. It took weeks for him to work up the courage to ask for help. He kept driving. From one angle, Dave’s childhood appears idyllic: a hardworking, all-American family living and toiling together in a bakery just a half mile from their home.