ACE Bakery
ACE Bakery makes European-style, artisan breads and baked goods. Based in Toronto, it offers about 35 varieties of bread that are preservative-free and made with natural starters. The company also sells granola and artisan crisps, and distributes across Canada and parts of the United States. It produces par-baked, flash-frozen dough as well.
The bakery was founded in Caledon, Ontario by Martin Connell and Linda Haynes. They opened ACE Bakery in downtown Toronto in March 1993 at 548 King Street West, in a former handbag factory. From the start, they pledged that a portion of after-tax profits would go to Calmeadow, their micro-financing charity. By 1996, sales were about $4 million. In 1997 the business moved to a larger 23,000-square-foot facility in North York, which was later doubled in size.
In 2001 ACE Bakery introduced a frozen dough line, where bread is 85% baked and then flash frozen. The product was sold to in-store bakeries and restaurants in Ontario, parts of New York and Michigan, and Bahamas resorts. Linda Haynes published The ACE Bakery Cookbook: Recipes for and with Bread in 2003, which became a bestseller, followed by More from ACE Bakery in 2006.
By 2008, annual sales neared $50 million. Connell, Haynes, and Canadian investors Birch Hill Equity Partners sold ACE Bakery to Glencoe Capital. Three years later, ACE was acquired by Weston Foods Canada Inc., a unit of George Weston Limited, for $110 million.
In 2012, the company announced plans to build a bakery in the United States: a facility in Cherokee County, South Carolina, costing about $18.4 million. Five years later, ACE invested about $31.9 million to expand that operation.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 13:05 (CET).