California’s independent dining scene is losing another longtime favorite after a beloved 47-year-old restaurant recently closed. In Berkeley, Nabolom Bakery & Pizzeria will serve customers for the final time on Sunday, October 18, ending a 50-year run in the Elmwood neighborhood.
The bakery plans to open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., with hot pizza available beginning at 11:30 a.m. or until it sells out. The final weekend has already brought long lines: co-owner Sabra Stepak told SFGATE that Friday’s crowd stretched through the morning, emptied the pastry cases and produced roughly three times the bakery’s usual sales.
A Berkeley original since 1976
Nabolom began in 1976 as a worker-owned collective founded by Adele Kohl, Nora Chamberlin, Susan Talpers and Lynne McMasters. The little bakery soon earned a neighborhood following for multigrain breads, cakes, muffins and cheese bread. Its warm, unconventional spirit helped make it more than a place to pick up breakfast; customers treated it as a community gathering spot.
The business survived repeated financial scares. In 2004, when Nabolom was nearly $30,000 in debt and behind on rent, customers bought prepaid certificates for future baked goods to help keep it alive. The collective eventually closed in July 2015 after several members departed, but the story did not end there.
Six months later, Julia Elliott and Stepak purchased the business, paid down much of its debt and reopened it under private ownership. Elliott, a former Nabolom worker who had spent years with Cheese Board Collective Pizza, helped add vegetarian pizzas built on thin sourdough crusts. Rotating combinations featuring seasonal vegetables, cheeses and herbs joined longtime favorites such as fruit danishes, challah, cinnamon twists, focaccia, cookies and multigrain bread.
Why the bakery is closing
Stepak said rising ingredient and utility costs, frequent employee turnover and intense competition made the bakery increasingly difficult to sustain. Chocolate costs had multiplied, while the shop’s utility bill had risen sharply. Even the extraordinary rush of customers after the closing news could not erase the exhaustion of keeping a small bakery operating through years of pressure.
That strain was visible in the bakery’s recent schedule. Its website warned that hours could change with little notice, and staffing shortages sometimes forced closures or shorter days. The owners ultimately decided they could not continue after October 18.
A final rush for familiar favorites
The response to the closing showed how deeply Nabolom was woven into Berkeley life. Customers returned for final boxes of pastries, favorite loaves and one more slice of the day’s pizza. Some remembered first dates and family routines stretching back decades; others simply hoped to taste a cheese Danish or cinnamon twist one last time.
Stepak has said she and Elliott would consider selling the business, but no buyer or reopening plan has been announced. For now, Sunday’s final service marks the end of a half-century in which Nabolom repeatedly survived trouble, reinvented itself and gave Elmwood a bakery that felt unmistakably its own.
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