Plans for a Porto’s Bakery & Cafe in Northridge are moving along. The former Sears Auto Center, at 19467 W. Nordhoff St., is currently undergoing very extensive renovations to contain the iconic bakery and cafe, Raul Porto Jr. — son of Raul Porto Sr. and the late Rosa Porto, the face and founder behind Porto’s Bakery & Cafe — confirmed this week with What Now Los Angeles. According to Porto, things have slowed down a bit. “As you can imagine changing that to a bakery…”
“We’ve been around for a long time. It was started by my mother. She started making cakes out of the house for the family. It started growing and growing,” Porto said. “One thing that is kinda fun is that we started in the city of LA. We started our first real bakery. Then we moved to Glendale. We never owned another location in LA for 40 years. So it’s kind of fun to be back in the city.”
Porto’s Bakery & Cafe moved further and further south with each new location, but Porto said he’s more excited than ever to be moving back into the Valley. Right now, the family is looking at different locations to open up future bakeries. Even then, the opening of Porto’s Northridge bakery has no finite timeline and Porto cites COVID-19 as the main culprit for this slowdown. But the pandemic is not the only thing slowing them down, as opening up a bakery like Porto’s takes time.
“Because of the vast amount of products we make, we make them all from scratch,” Porto said. “It’s difficult because there’s a huge market for restaurant employees, but when you look at bakeries, it’s harder to find teams.” Onboarding employees for Porto’s Bakery & Cafe is a long process, as it doesn’t need fry-cooks or sandwich makers — it needs decorators, bakers with experience, and those with the knowledge of such operations — with that said, training is harder and could take months. “The most we could open is one a year and that’s a push.”
Rosa passed away last year at the age of 89, passing down to her children the different locations and a huge family legacy.
(Edited to include official renderings)
