For nearly 40 years, Crumbs Bakery kneaded its way into the fabric of Athens by supplying local favorites like Donkey Coffee, Seaman’s Cardinal Super Market and Kindred Market with breads, cookies, crackers and more.
All products are made from scratch out of the ACEnet facility on Columbus Road. Donkey sells Crumbs cookies and rolls for $3.95 a piece, with Kindred’s 8 oz bags of Crumbs rye and salted spelt crackers costing $6.79 and 21 oz sourdough rye costing $7.89.
Jeremy Bowman, manager and legal treasurer of Crumbs, started with the business in 1996, marking 2026 as his 30th year with the company.
Bowman described what kept Crumbs alive by borrowing a line from an old colleague.
"One of the old bakers I worked with had an analogy that it was more like a ‘stubborn mule,’" Bowman said. "Just pure stubbornness. But I think the quality of the product, the fact that it's handmade … people have just always supported that. We're trying to make products with a clean label. We're not just trying to sell sugar."
Crumbs was founded in the late 1970s before workers formed a corporation and bought the business in 1986, making it one of Athens' longest-standing worker-owned cooperatives, a model shared by neighbors like Casa Nueva.
Bowman sources ingredients with the same intention.
Crumbs works directly with Frankferd Farms Foods in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, for organic whole wheat, rye flour, cornmeal and rolled grains, and with Dutch Valley Food Distributors in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, for additional bakery supplies.
Locally, Crumbs collaborates with Shagbark Seed & Mill for spelt and corn flours used in its flatbread crackers.
"We source what we can organic,” Bowman said. “We're not labeled organic, but we try to keep it as clean as possible. Pretty much everything's going to be from scratch with basic ingredients like flour and honey."
Among the bakery’s most beloved products, Bowman said he is particularly proud of a newer sourdough process he developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a cold-fermented method that can take nearly a week from start to finish.
"Something that I'm basically starting on a Friday isn't going to come out of the oven until Wednesday," Bowman said. "But all that extra time gives the bread a more natural process of rising. It's just flour, water and salt; it develops those sugars through that time allotment.”
Crumb’s dedication to craft does not go unnoticed by Athens shoppers. Belle Lormeau, a junior studying integrated health sciences, said she picks up Crumbs bread at Kindred Market almost every weekend.
"It just makes you feel better," Lormeau said. "It's a lot more fresh, and you can definitely taste the fact that it's not processed. The ingredients are so much better, it's just an all around better bread experience."
For Lormeau, places like Kindred and the local producers they carry represent something bigger than just grocery shopping.
"We've kind of lost the sense of trust and knowing what's in our food," Lormeau said. "So many bigger corporations have such sneaky ways of advertising things to make you feel like you're eating healthier than you are. It's just good to have small local businesses that have better intentions and just want to provide healthy food for the community."
Being woven into the local food economy is something Bowman said he does not take for granted.
"I'm grateful that I get to wake up in the morning and believe in the product that I'm serving," Bowman said. "It just makes me love Athens. I'm thankful that people were willing to support us."
Looking ahead, Bowman has his sights set on relaunching the bakery's website, re-establishing a presence at the Athens Farmers Market, where Crumbs sold for roughly 25 years before stepping back during the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuilding wholesale relationships.
At the heart of it, Bowman’s pitch for Crumbs is simple: in a world of ultra-processed food, the bakery is providing something different.
"There's so much food out there that is ultra-processed," Bowman said. "Making food from scratch, in small batches, handmade, you can see and taste the quality difference."
