When?


Where?



Atascadero

Our cafe is located in the historic Carlton Hotel in Atascadero, CA.

San Luis Obispo

Our wholesale facility is located in San Luis Obispo, CA.

Our Story

Raising the flag since 2011

Dan and Caroline Berkeland met while working in the kitchen of a guesthouse outside of Florence, Italy. They brought their passion for feeding friends, family, and neighbors with them upon moving to San Luis Obispo, CA in 2009. In 2011, Dan created a Facebook page as a means of communicating with friends and family that bread would soon be coming out of the oven and that there would be plenty extra if anyone wanted to come over and grab some.

Dan called the Facebook page Back Porch Bakery.



It didn't take long for word to spread. Facebook made it easy to attract new friends. And as the "likes" grew, more and more strangers appeared on Dan and Caroline's back porch looking for bread. So Dan got a flag and started using it as the indicator for when the porch was open for "business". Fresh breads and pastries appeared every morning. A tin coffee can sat next to them for donations. And the back porch door was unlocked and usually wide open for a steady stream of friends, neighbors, and strangers to come right in, take what they wanted, and leave what they chose.

Soon local cafe and restaurant owners were showing up at the house asking if it would be possible to bake for them.



Flash forward to today. The Back Porch Bakery currently provides breads and pastries to over 120 local restaurants, cafes, hotels, and markets on the California Central Coast. The bakery team has grown to around 20 members including bakers, drivers, baristas, and office administrators. The bakery has grown up but the spirit of community building and of feeding our neighbors has remained the same.



In 2016, the Back Porch Bakery moved a part of its wholesale operation into the Carlton Hotel in Atascadero. The Carlton asked if we might be interested in running the hotel cafe and without hesitation we said we'd love to give it a shot. The cafe has given us the chance we were looking for to get back in direct contact with all those local friends and neighbors who helped build the bakery back when it was still run off of Dan and Caroline's back porch years before. Not to mention the ton of guests who have come from all over the country and all over the world to have a bite at our place while taking in the magic of the California Central Coast.



Our cafe is open daily from 7 AM until 2 PM. We can't wait to see you!