When it comes to the quality of baked goods, the proof is in the pudding—or in Atome Bakery’s case, the bread.
The Vancouver-based startup company kicked off in 2022 after co-founders Alice Couderc and Lucas Navilloz reached a unified decision that B.C. lacked easily accessible, fresh, artisan bread.
A ‘breadful’ struggle
“We arrived in Vancouver about seven years ago from France, and as French people, especially me, I guess, I was really used to eating one baguette a day,” Navilloz told The Squamish Chief.
“So when I arrived, it was a bit of a shock to not be able to do the same. It's hard to find a good artisan bakery, and when you find it, it's often not next to you, so you have to rely on supermarket bread.”
Navilloz said it was this frustration that led to the concept of Atome Bakery.
“I started making my own bread but if I wanted to have it fresh, then I needed to do it every day. After doing that for a couple of years, I tried to experiment on how I could have my bread fresh, but not make it every day,” he said.
“That's when I was able to come up with the concept of ready-to-bake frozen sourdough bread.”
The products
Atome Bakery offers its 100% sourdough bread and pastries via a subscription box service. Customers can build their own boxes or choose one of their preset options.
Bread boxes start at $75 and include six traditional and six multigrain baguettes.
Pastry boxes start at $95 and come with three frozen-proofed brioche pastries, six Liege waffles and two La Viennoise pastries.
“It's delivered to people frozen and proofed, so it's completely unbaked,” Couderc said.
First orders also come with an Atome Pan—a dish which the duo says is guaranteed to give “bakery results”.
“We made [the pan] specifically so it can recreate the conditions of a baker’s oven and bake the frozen-proofed dough at home, in any oven,” Couderc said.
“So customers receive the dough and the pan, they put the dough in the freezer, and whenever they're ready for some bread, they just take the dough from the freezer, put it in the pan and in their oven for 30 minutes, and they get bakery worthy results.”
But the pièce de résistance (the most remarkable feature) of the service is that shipping is free!
Atome Bakery ships across two Canadian provinces; B.C. and Alberta- so no matter where you live, extortionate shipping fees aren’t a worry.
“We built in the [shipping] price in the products so shipping is free for everyone,” Couderc said.
“That's in line with our goal to make fresh artisanal bread available to all people that don't have access to artisan bakeries; so we're basically making people in Vancouver pay the same price as the people living in Squamish.”
“As French people, we think bread should be a general right—everyone should have bread!” Navilloz said jokingly.
Deliveries to Squamish and Whistler come every Thursday, so Couderc encourages locals to have their orders in before Tuesdays to ensure they get their weekly delivery.
To place an order or to get more information on the Vancouver-based startup, visit the Atome Bakery website.
