Delite Bakery circa 1950s photo courtesy Janice (Putnam) Reichert.
Janice (Putnam) Reichert recently wrote in to share her photo and memories of Delite Bakery.
My mother worked there for many, many years. As a matter of fact she came up with the name for the bakery and the unique spelling.
I was just a baby when she started to work there and I practically grew up in the back of the bakery watching all the goodies being made. I also worked there my self while in high school ( I graduated SLO High in 1964).
The photo was taken probably in the early to mid-1950′s. The owners at that time were Tom and Peg Buchan and they are the second and third person to the right of the cash register. My Mother is the first person directly to the left of the register, her name was Elizabeth Heidorn, but everyone knew her as "Jimmy". She worked there for about 20 years.
I use to like to go there and help my Mother after school or during summer vacation. She would let me fold cake and pie boxes and of course I always got samples. I remember when I got older I would go into work with her very early in the morning right before Thanksgiving and Christmas and help package up the orders. Richard Chong, wearing his trademark striped coveralls would always pop in the back door and visit on his way to work.
I was thinking the other day when I was looking at the picture of my grammar school years at Fremont Elementary. I would take my lunch to school every day in a lunch box but I was always envious of the other kids that had sandwiches made with Weber's bread, you see my sandwiches were always made with bakery bread. I would ask my Mother to please buy some Weber's bread, but she never did. What I would give now for a sandwich made of bread from the Delite Bakery.
You don't see bakeries like that anymore. Everything is mass produced and sent to the grocery store bakeries frozen ready to be thawed and baked at a later date. One thing about the Delite Bakery, everything was baked fresh and they used all fresh ingredients like real whipping cream for the cream puffs and cream pies. Yes, it was that place to go in San Luis many years ago.
Post a comment if you have a favorite local bakery of today or yesterday. I often stop at Carlock's in Los Osos or Utopia in San Luis Obispo.
Thanks for sharing your story Janice, though our automated watermark is stamped on the photo, the image belongs to Janice. If you see something that brings back a memory, please post a comment. If you have a photo you are willing to share and want to write a little story email them to me dmiddlecamp(at)thetribunenews.com, [replace (at) with the usual symbol, I'm trying to keep spambots off the trail.]