Borracchini’s Bakery, a Seattle vacation spot for nearly a century, is closed for good

After nearly 100 years of business selling spectacular, vividly decorated cakes for weddings and office parties, the popular Remo Borracchini Bakery and Mediterranean Market on Rainier Avenue South announced on Saturday that it was permanently closed.

The pandemic has brought another business to a standstill, and the news of this shutdown is particularly hitting many Seattle residents particularly hard. The old core of this city keeps disappearing.

The bakery is a classic immigrant-made story that began in 1923 in the basement of a South End home owned by Mario Borracchini, a baker who came here from Tuscany. It became the go-to place for bread straight out of the oven, for take-away spaghetti, for pastries that could only be bought a few.

“… We are in the party business. The problem with this is that over the past year no one has gathered to have these parties. It was of course devastating for our business, ”said the family on the bakery’s Facebook page.

Remo Borracchini, 90, told the Seattle Times story on Aug. 22, 1993 that he was born eight blocks from the bakery.

Business then went well.

“We make up to 150 birthday cakes a day. And around 110 wedding cakes every weekend. Last Saturday we made 125 wedding cakes and I found that 13,780 people ate our wedding cakes in Seattle that day, ”he told Times restaurant critic John Hinterberger.

In this interview, he bragged about the 50+ types of bread in the bakery and the family’s refusal to go into debt.

“Italians don’t believe in debt,” said Borracchini. “We have never had debts in this building in 85 years.”

The company has been run by his three daughters Lisa Desimone, Mimi Norris and Nannette Heye in recent years.

On Friday, Heye said they were still undecided about their options. “We have the best customers in the world.”

The closure was announced on the bakery’s Facebook page on Saturday.

Within five hours of this posting, over 1,000 comments were posted by people with fond memories.

Frank Coluccio from Burien was one of these posts:

“Borracchini grew up on Beacon Hill and is Italian. It was a staple in our home. Birthdays, first communions, baptisms … every celebration with Borracchini cakes was the right place.

“But they just weren’t cakes, they went down there to get products from Italy. I watched my father speak Italian to the people there.

“Borracchini’s, you are missed, not just for your baked goods, but also for the cultural hub you provided.”

Remo Borracchini spoke to a couple who were picking up their wedding cake in 2019 and gave them advice. (Traci LeCount)

When contacted, Coluccio said he understood how hard the business had been hit.

“I belong to Sons of Italy and we had monthly meetings. We went there and got Italian rolls and mostly sheet cakes for dessert, cookies with coffee, ”he says.

But these meetings sCrowned during the pandemic, Coluccio is now joining other locals who remember the fast-disappearing Seattle of the old days.

According to the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, the 1910 census found that approximately 45% of Seattowners of Italian descent lived in southern downtown and the northern Rainier Valley, an area known as the “Garlic Gorge”. The early Italian immigrants moved here to work in the coal mines at Renton, Newcastle and Black Diamond. They started running and building farms.

“I don’t think there are any Italian companies left,” says Coluccio of Rainier Valley.

On Sunday the original is Oh Boy! The Oberto headquarters on Rainier Ave. S. 1715, just half a mile north of Borracchini, closes.

It goes back to 1918. Constantino Oberto, an Italian immigrant, sold handmade Italian sausages and other meats to small delis and grocery stores.

The family business was sold to a Canadian conglomerate, Premium Brand Holdings, in 2018. Local management stated that few changes would be made.

In 2019, the Rainier Avenue building was sold to the Hamlin Robinson School for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disparities. The school is planning a four-story building on the site.

According to Oberto, the Renton store will remain open.

A few blocks from Remo Borracchini’s bakery, customers wait for one last purchase and say goodbye to another favorite old Seattle Saturday. Oberto’s store on Rainier Avenue South is slated to close on Sunday. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)

In 1939 Mario Borracchini’s sons, Remo, Angelo, and Dino moved the business from the house on 20th Avenue South to its current location on Rainier Ave. arched windows.

The brothers were proud of the bakery. Its oven could bake 576 loaves of bread and the blender could handle 700 pounds of dough at a time, they told the Seattle Times in 1962.

Remo said at the time: “We have been in wholesale for so long that we know how to proceed economically. We have family size packages or biscuits and we also have family size breads specials. “

Remo Borracchini is the only brother still alive.

The three Borracchini daughters did not reply to messages they received on Saturday.

Traci LeCount, manager of the bakery, worked there for 28 years. She started out as a counter clerk when she was a junior at Franklin High and learned more about the business over the years.

She said on Saturday that Remo Borracchini showed her how to bake cakes, write on a cake with icing, put flowers on a cake, even spaghetti.

“We are closed on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. They told us not to go back to work. It will be closed for good, ”said LeCount.

That would have been November 21st. LeCount is now unemployed. She says the bakery had around 40 employees before the pandemic.

She says the bakery closed due to the pandemic in March 2020 and then opened in late June.

“We had masks, hand sanitizer, and plastic barriers,” LeCount said. “But people just didn’t come. Nobody buys a full sheet cake. Nobody buys wedding cakes. Nobody has office parties. People who went to work didn’t stop in the morning to buy donuts. Children don’t go to school. Customers complain that we didn’t have a lot of regular products in the supermarket. We got the stuff from Italy and Italy was closed. “

She misses the place. Good pay, a nice 401 (k), medical, dental, says LeCount.

And the customers.

There was the group of elderly Ethiopian men who gathered for coffee every morning.

There were the customers she knew by name: “They watched when they had babies, and the babies had grown up. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. “

The goodbyes are now on social media.

They remembered a non-Hoity Toity bakery where the price was reasonable for budget conscious people.

Laura Armes from Seattle: “When my husband and I first met in 2002, neither of us had a lot of money. We came in for $ 2 grilled sandwiches, a bag of fries to share, and some cookies. It was a cheap lunch to bring to the park! “

They remembered their weddings.

“This is heartbreaking! Remo sat down with my husband and I when we were there to choose our wedding cake. We talked about cake and marriage. At the wedding everyone raved about the fact that this was the best cake they ever had. ♡ and that really was it. “

They remembered childhood.

Keri DeTore, Seattle: “I grew up in Holly Park, and when my mother could afford it, Borracchini received a special visit for a treat or a birthday cake. I can still taste the frosting – light as air; I always asked about the heap of flowers in the corner. I think you served me my first eclair. I can’t imagine Rainier Avenue without you. “

There isn’t much else to say, is there?