Don’t call them hobbyists. They’re known as makers, in a salute to people who love to invent with their own minds and create with their own hands. While hobbyists generally dally in their spare time, makers usually take their passions full-time with an eye on artistry as much as industry.
Hayward is carving its own niche in the burgeoning Northern California makers landscape. From small craft businesses to established, growing companies, the city is attracting a community interested in making everything from plant-based cheeses to environmentally friendly packaging.
Through it all is a unifying message of innovation, local ties and cooperation within their neighborhoods.
“Close your eyes and imagine being at a backyard party at a neighbor’s house,” said Michael LeBlanc, describing his own plans to open a creative, casual Southern-inspired restaurant in downtown Hayward later this year. “And the neighbor has a combination of friends that encompasses all ethnic groups. This restaurant will be part of what I see happening in Hayward, through balanced, planned development that is uplifting an entire population.”
The maker of artisanal plant-based food products is enjoying such success that it’s already bursting at the seams in its 20,000-square-foot space in a Hayward corporate park overlooking the bay.
“We are growing dramatically and will need to expand in the near future,” said Kite Hill CEO Matthew Sade. He founded the nut milk company in 2012, along with partners Tal Ronnen, Jean Prevot, Monte Casino and Patrick Brown, and the enterprise now produces a line of dairy-free yogurts, desserts, fresh ricotta and tangy cream cheese-style spreads.
Sold at shops like Whole Foods Market nationwide, the line-up includes chèvre-like almond milk cheese studded with truffle, dill and chive, a “Soft Ripened” Brie-like cheese with a bloomy rind and almond milk yogurt made with Madagascar vanilla beans, local peaches, strawberries or wild Maine blueberries. More recently, Kite chefs introduced entrées like ravioli stuffed with whipped ricotta, fresh garlic and sautéed mushrooms or spinach, folded into handmade locally produced dough.
It took a long time to perfect the recipes, Sade acknowledges, but the talent pulled it off with Ronnen as a longtime plant-focused chef and owner of Los Angeles’s Crossroads Kitchen, Casino as a former cheese-making instructor at Le Cordon Bleu in Boston and Jean Prevot as a former cheese-maker for Laura Chenel Chèvre. Brown is a Stanford biochemist, and Sade calls himself a “serial entrepreneur.”
Together, they came up with a plan to craft their wares from pure nut milk, instead of the nut paste that most plant-based cheeses on the market use. The result is an authentic, dairy-like flavor and texture that’s become Kite Hill’s signature.
Wherever success takes the company, Sade has no plans to leave the city.
“Hayward is moving in the right direction and promotes business growth,” he said. “It’s centrally located, too, making it very helpful in recruiting strong talent as we expand.”
All natural pâtés, mousses, duck confit, magret, duck rillettes, boudins, sausages, truffle butter, macarons, cornichons ... the list of traditional French delicacies spans more than 150 different products, still made by-hand, as they have been since 1985.
Established in San Mateo as the U.S. subsidiary of the 1920 French charcuterie company Sapar, Fabrique relocated to a new, larger 20,000-square-foot facility in Hayward in 2002. Co-owners Antonio Pinheiro and Marc Poinsignon now sell their specialties throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Central America, Indonesia and Asia.
Making each item requires methodical steps, many steeped in tradition. For mousse, meats, fats and spice are ground into a mixture, which is then cut and turned through a blade to achieve perfect consistency. The mousse is then divided into individual molds and baked. After cooling in the refrigerator overnight, the rounds are trimmed, garnished, layered in gelatin, packaged and labeled.
The results are impressive, with Fabrique Delices supplying the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, the White House and his holiness John Paul II during his U.S. visit in 1999.
A manufacturer of corrugated boxes, foam inserts and wood crating might seem purely industrial. But Creative Packaging makes its boxes custom to-order, die cuts its foams in custom shapes, and custom cuts its wood crates. All materials, including inks for printing, are recyclable.
Originally established in 1959 as Industrial Boxboard Corporation, the company’s name was changed in 2012 to better reflect its out-of-the-box approach to boxes. Set in an industrial center just south of Hayward Executive Airport, the 100,000-square-foot factory operates as direct manufacturer — not a distributor — meaning products such as logo printed wine totes and complex, custom-cut foam cushion inserts are created on-site, start-to-finish.
While many similar plants rely on suppliers with limited inventory, this company maintains its own large cache of materials, from 200-pound single wall grade stock sheets, to military/weatherized grade sheets or plastic corrugated Coroplast sheets.
Casa Sanchez is currently hiring employees for its relocation from Millbrae to Hayward, as they put the finishing touches on their new plant and headquarters in the Winton Industrial Center. It’s a significant change for the company that has been making authentic Mexican food products since 1924, when founders Roberto and Isabel Sanchez opened a restaurant in San Francisco.
The family also is credited with establishing the first mechanized tortilla factory in northern California.
Still family owned and relying on the same recipes that originated in the Sanchez home state of Zacatecas, Mexico, the company now produces gourmet salsas, guacamole, tortilla chips, pupusas, gorditas and tamales in multiple flavors.
Products are available at retailers like Albertson’s, Sunshine Foods, Woodlands Market and Safeway.
Kite Hill: 3180 Corporate Place, Hayward, (510) 784-0955, kite-hill.com.
Fabrique Delices: 1610 Delta Court, Hayward, (510) 441-9500, fabriquedelices.com.
Creative Packaging: 2249 Davis Court, Hayward, (510) 785-6500, cpccreativepackaging.com.
Casa Sanchez Foods: Coming to 2898 W. Winton Ave., Hayward, casasanchezfoods.com.
With more than two decades of writing about food, culinary travel, restaurants and the chefs that make them happen, Carey Sweet contributes to numerous publications on a weekly and monthly basis, including The San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Republic, Phoenix Magazine, Sunset, Alaska Airlines, AZ Golf Insider, Virtual Gourmet and Inside Sonoma. She has won national restaurant criticism and food writing awards, including first place in the nation from the Society of Professional Food Journalists.
She also handles coverage for Michelin Guide, Gayot and City Eats-Food Network Channel. When not eating, interviewing, traveling or chained to a computer writing, she shares her home, a farm in Sonoma, with a menagerie of horses, goats, dogs, chickens and various visiting wildlife.