How Dave Dahl Overcame Addiction And Turned Dave’s Killer Bread Into A Symbol Of Second Chances After Leaving Prison

Addiction is cruel. It can destroy lives and futures and tear families apart. Sometimes, out of tragedy, beauty can emerge. The story of Dave Dahl and Dave’s Killer Bread is one of the best examples of how healing and redemption can come out of something as painful as addiction. Dave Dahl’s life wasn’t exactly easy. He grew up in a family of bakers, but that didn’t stop him from making some very bad choices in his life. Battling depression and addiction, Dave was sent to prison for a total of 15 years on drug charges and burglary. For most of those years, he was in self-destruction mode and didn’t do anything to get out of that cycle.

On his last prison sentence, he finally had a revelation. Combining antidepressant medication, therapy, and a class he took on computer-aided drafting while incarcerated, Dave saw a new light. He became sober and decided that he wanted to turn his life around and build something positive. He wanted to create, not destroy. After getting out of prison, Dave’s older brother Glenn allowed him to come back to the family bakery (then called NatureBake). Dave used the passion and energy he’d been keeping bottled up during those last few years to focus on creating breads that were hearty, organic, packed with seeds and grains, and more nutrient dense than anything on the market at the time. Dave did multiple iterations, wrote down notes, and obsessed over getting just the right flavor and texture.

In 2005, Dave showed up at the Portland Farmers Market with his loaves of Dave’s Killer Bread. The result? His bread sold out, his story made the headlines, and the new brand took off like wildfire. He put his conviction on the front of the packaging and didn’t try to hide it. He was a convicted felon who used to do drugs who had gotten a second chance. And people loved him for it. Consumers believed in Dave’s redemption and they believed in his bread. In the years that followed, Dave’s Killer Bread quickly became the country’s number-one organic bread. By 2015, Dave’s Killer Bread was sold to Flowers Foods for $275 million.

Dave’s belief in redemption is something that the brand is still built on today. Dave’s Killer Bread has a long-running initiative called Second Chance Employment at its Oregon bakery and other locations around the country. The baker hires people who have criminal records and gives them a second chance in the same way that the company gave Dave one. The brand has a campaign on its website called “Real Chances. Real Change. Real Talk.” where it interviews these people and shows videos of their “real” stories and what it means to them to have had a second chance. All of these people show similar traits to Dave, strength, determination, gratitude, and a belief in the restorative power of work.

The people they hire, known as “partners,” make bread and baking mix in their bakeries in Seattle, Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, and Minnesota. They are people like Kurtis, who spent 12 years in prison for bank robbery and now has three different part-time jobs at Dave’s Killer Bread. There’s Diego, a current inmate at a California prison who has learned the art of baking from Dave’s Killer Bread through the prison work program. Or Conroy, who spent four years in prison and has now been with Dave’s Killer Bread for seven years, because he loves the product and the feeling of helping out.

Dave’s own story doesn’t end at the bakery. Today, in his sixties, he lives a more relaxed life than he used to. He owns a 33-acre farm on the Clackamas River with his wife, Michelle. He still has a creative mind and a little bit of that ADD still inside of him. But he’s still writing and drawing, and still reflective about his own addiction and mental illness. In 2013, after an episode that landed him in a police chase, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has been open and honest about it. He admits that recovery and healing is not a linear path and we can all fall off track sometimes. Healing, much like baking, is an ongoing process that requires work, consistency, and patience.

You can look at the package of Dave’s Killer Bread on the grocery store shelves and think it’s just another organic, nutritious bread. Yet for others, it’s a reminder of the power of community, support, and believing that even broken things can be fixed.