Vital Vittles started as a flour mill in 1976, then became a bakery in 1979, working out of Virginia Bakery on Shattuck Avenue. It later moved to its own facility on Heinz Street, and finally opened a bakery on San Pablo Avenue in West Berkeley, where it still stands today. Photo: Amalya Dubrovsky
2810 San Pablo Ave. (near Grayson Street), Berkeley
Owners Binh and Huong Tran, along with three other employees, get up in the early morning hours to go to Vital Vittles, a West Berkeley bakery on San Pablo Avenue, where they prepare the organic, whole wheat bread, muffins and cakes that have fortified countless meals at Berkeley cafes, school cafeterias and homes for decades.