Bankrolling the Baker of the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks

A Quick Glimpse into an Origin Story

ALONG Interstate 880 a.k.a. the Nimitz, in Oakland, Calif., is this large sign:

Detail from screenshot of Google Street View of Colombo Baking Company sign along I-880 near 580 Julie Ann Way, in Oakland, Calif., May 2021. Source: Google Maps

Just beyond the stacks of pallets, at 580 Julie Ann Way, is the building that for many years was home to the Colombo Baking Company. The bakery was shuttered in 2012 — so, it’s a little surprising that the sign still stands.

Detail from screenshot of Google Street View of Colombo Baking Company sign along I-880 near 580 Julie Ann Way, in Oakland, Calif., January 2018. Source: Google Maps

But, for 30 years — from 1982 until 2012 — Colombo produced a treat known as the Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks.

For much of this period, the Colombo Baking Company, established in 1896, was under the umbrella of the San Francisco French Bread Company (SFFBC).

SFFBC had been created in 1984 to preserve both the artisanal traditions and the economic vitality of four of the Bay Area’s historic sourdough bread bakeries: Boudin (1849), Parisian (1856), Toscana’s (1895) and Colombo.

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THE EMPEROR NORTON snacks were crispy sourdough rounds with onion, garlic, cheddar and romano. Later on — as with every crunchy snack, it seems — there was a "ranch" version.

Front of bag of Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks. Source: Kit Artig / Rockit Studios

Of course, similar products are not hard to find now. But, these were quite the newfangled hit when they were introduced in 1982.

In fact, the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks were an early venture-capital success at a time when the whole idea of VC firms was relatively new.

This part of the story of the Emperor Norton snacks is less well-known. But, in an article published in Inc. magazine in July 1984 — less than two years after the snacks hit the market in 1982 — Bruce Posner sketched the outlines of how the snacks as a business concept got off the ground.

Over the course of 15–18 months between late 1979 and early 1981, Michael G. Berolzheimer and Bill Lanphear established a new venture-capital firm that they called Early Stages Co. At a time when most VC firms were investing in tech R&D, Early Stages would focus on consumer products and services.

Berolzheimer had good reason to be interested in the consumer retail approach.

Between 1968 and 1971, Berolzheimer had led the development of a new sawdust-and-wax firelog produced by his family’s wood-slat business, the California Cedar Products Company. The now-century-old Cal Cedar is one of the world’s leading suppliers of wooden slats for the wood-cased pencil manufacturing industry.

Initially marketed as the California Cedar Firelog, the log was rebranded and introduced to the market in 1972 as Duraflame.

It was at this time that Berolzheimer brought on Lanphear to help manage the next stage of growth of his new company.

In 1978, Duraflame was sold to the Kingsford Charcoal Division of Clorox for $9 million. Early Stages represented the effort of Berolzheimer and Lanphear to answer the question: What’s next?

An early part of the answer was the Emperor Norton snacks. Here’s how Bruce Posner explained it in his 1984 article for Inc. magazine (“Venture Capital Discovers the Mass Market”) [emphases mine]:

By February of 1981, Early Stages had promises of about $12.7 million in venture capital.

Having raised the money, the next challenge was to locate the deals. Berolzheimer and Lanphear were based in San Francisco, but they were prepared to respond to situations wherever they found them. As it happened, the first company Early Stages selected was one that Berolzheimer himself helped launch in 1979.

Homestead Provisions Inc., as the company was called, was in the business of creating a new type of snack food based on San Francisco sourdough bread. The product concept was one that a consultant had presented to Berolzheimer prior to the sale of Duraflame. Berolzheimer had liked the idea, in part, because it provided another opportunity to test his marketing skills. "It wasn't another potato chip; it really was a new product category," he explains. Because sourdough bread is a regional specialty, moreover, he thought it unlikely that a large food company would come out with a directly competitive product — until the idea caught on, that is. Nevertheless, he saw the potential for a national market and, as with Duraflame, he wanted to build a brand (in this case, Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks) before the competitors arrived. "The whole snackfood category was growing, and the product tasted damn good," Berolzheimer says. Once a brand was established, the goal would be to sell Homestead for many times the initial investment….

[In 1983], Berolzheimer personally took the reins of Homestead, the snack-food company, until he found a new chief executive officer who could rebuild the business. Homestead was suffering from major distribution problems, and it was losing money on slumping sales of about $500,000. After the distribution difficulties were identified, Berolzheimer and the new CEO, Jim Rueter, decided to try a different — and more expensive — system of direct stored delivery. Instead of relying on independent food brokers, Homestead signed a contract with a snack-food distributor. Rueter is appreciative of Berolzheimer's retailing acumen. "Michael knew a lot about distribution from his days with Duraflame. He knew that in order to sell a product, you had to get it on the shelf." Lately, sales have increased to a yearly rate of about $2 million.

I’ve pegged 1982 as the “birth year” of the Emperor Norton snacks, because the associated trademarks were registered in December 1982.

This is consistent with the account above, which suggests that venture capital didn’t arrive until after February 1981.

But, the trademark registration documents available via the United States Patent and Trademark Office website indicate that the “first use” of the textual and visual trademarks for the snacks — also the date from which the trademarks were “in commerce” — was 13 May 1980.

Perhaps this is when test marketing began?

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DETAILS about how the Colombo Baking Company got the gig to produce the Emperor Norton snacks remain elusive.

Happily, though, Dan Goldstein — a copywriter who worked on the original ad campaign for the snacks — has preserved some artifacts like the following 30-second television ad that appears to be from the 1982 launch, if one assumes that advertising would not have begun until the trademark applications were pretty far along. (Links to a 10-second teaser ad and to an image of a print ad are in the caption.)

Goldstein remembers:

I tapped out a few fun monologues of the Emperor, in the full exuberance of his psychosis, introducing his incredibly crunchy and flavorful creation. He feared the crunch factor was setting off earthquakes.

But that didn’t fly with focus groups. So I cooked up a tall tale that made Emperor Norton a sort of Paul Bunyan of the snack aisle.

“Things was mighty dull in Snacktown,” comes the narrator’s Western drawl. “‘Til one day this Emperor Norton fella rode in with some mighty different snack makin’s.”

This much is certain: Emperor Norton was never dull.

30-second television ad for Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, c. 1982. Source: Dan Goldstein. 10-second teaser ad here. More information here.

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