Bakeries have been a part of Torrance’s retail business culture since at least the early 1920s, when the first Torrance Bakery – no relation to the current one – opened at 1925 Carson St., just west of Cabrillo Ave.
Meinzer’s Pie Shop near the intersection of Post and Sartori avenues offered pies and other baked goods beginning later in the decade, but the local battle for baked goods sales really heated up in the 1930s.
Meinzer’s eventually was replaced by Whitney’s Bakery, which opened at 1323 Sartori in July 1934. Then, when the new Quality Market opened next door at 1325 Sartori in June 1935, it included a branch of the Van de Kamp’s bakery chain inside, in directly adjacent competition to Whitney’s.
The Torrance Bakery on Carson also still was in operation at the same time. In 1936, it changed owners and became the Clara Lewis Kitchen Bakery. Alma’s Pastry Shop replaced that business in the early 1940s and operated there into the 1950s.
The 1940s also saw the opening of the predecessors to the modern-day Torrance Bakery, in the same building built in 1924 at 1341 El Prado in downtown Torrance in which the current bakery operates.
Before bakeries occupied it, the building had housed its first tenant, the Torrance Bicycle & Sporting Good Co., from 1924 through the early 1940s. (The embryonic Torrance Rotary Club held its first meeting in an upstairs room in the building in 1924.) After the bike shop closed, a succession of businesses followed, including Sealtite Roofs and M&H Home Appliance Co.
After M&H closed in 1946, the first restaurant/bakery opened on the site, the Beverly Anne Malt & Donut Shop. After five years of operation, the Beverly Anne moved directly across the street, to 1340 El Prado in July 1951, as part of an expanded full restaurant, George’s Meat’N Place.
On Oct. 20, 1951, a new competitor entered the fray with the grand opening of Hafner’s Bakery in the old Beverly Anne location. Hafner’s would sell its baked goods there for the next ten years, until at least May 1961.
Some two decades later, Kirk Rossberg, then 27, decided to take a chance on the future of then-sleepy and somewhat shabby Old Torrance. The son of respected former Torrance City Councilman Mark Rossberg opened the all-new Torrance Bakery at 1341 El Prado on Oct. 18, 1984.
When his bakery first opened, Rossberg had 1200 square feet of space and six employees to work with. A few months after opening, he had to replace the decades-old original oven, an expense which nearly sunk the new bakery. Rossberg told the Los Angeles Times in 1988 that the low rent he initially was paying in the dilapidated downtown area helped save the business.
Positive word of mouth about the business quickly spread, however, helped by the introduction of a popular lunchtime sandwich business and such baking innovations as birthday cakes adorned with edible photographic images. Rossberg’s business ledgers also included an increasing amount of sales from corporate catering.
By the 1990s, Torrance Bakery had become a paradigm for the growing revitalization of the city’s downtown area. Progress on Old Torrance’s renewal came in incremental steps, but improvements had begun to make a positive impact in part due to success stories such as Rossberg’s.
In February 1997, Rossberg opened a second Torrance Bakery location at the Rolling HIlls Plaza shopping center in Torrance, which has since closed. But another satellite location, at 15934 S. Western Ave. in Gardena, would become a key part of the operation.
Opened in 2006, it became the bakery’s main production site, as well as a retail outlet. The El Prado store’s ovens could no longer handle the increased business, and most of its products now are made in Gardena.
The increasingly successful bakery began to receive many business and civic honors. These include regular wins as best bakery in the Daily Breeze’s annual “Best of the South Bay” reader poll since 1993, Modern Baking magazine’s 2007 National Retail Bakery of the Year, the California Small Business Award and the Torrance Chamber of Commerce’s Best Place to Work award.
In addition, the Torrance Chamber also named Rossberg as its Distinguished Citizen of the Year in 2016, an honor his father, Dick, received in 1988.
More than 75 employees now work at the bakery’s two locations, which encompass 14,000 square feet of space. This includes the two stores, the production area in Gardena and the Wedding Cake Showroom.
Rossberg told the Daily Breeze in 2003, “Hard work is important, but if you have a passion for something, it won’t be so hard. I couldn’t imagine working 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week if I didn’t have a passion for it. I can’t wait to get in. The key is the love for your work.”
That passion has helped to keep Torrance Bakery thriving for nearly 40 years.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
“Our Story,” Torrance Bakery website.
Torrance Press-Herald archives.
