Baia Pasta was started in 2011 by Renato Sardo (left) & Dario Barbone (right).
For 8 years, Renato was the Director of Slow Food International, an organization that promotes local, sustainable and fair food worldwide. Upon moving to CA, Renato helped organizing national and local Slow Food events for the San Francisco chapter, where he met and eventually partnered with Dario. Baia Pasta is their life-project to convert Slow Food theory into practice : to make delicious food that is also good for the people who grow/produce it, and good for the Earth.
Baia Pasta was born when Renato learned that most of the wheat used by Italian pasta makers is grown in North America, and it was nearly impossible to find quality dry pasta made here.
Baia Pasta combines the art of traditional Italian pasta making with great American-grown grains: its traditional short cuts of pasta are available in 5 different organic flours (durum, whole durum, spelt, whole spelt, and whole khorasan wheat).
Renato and Dario are inspired by their roots in Piemonte (Northern Italy), where food is a passion, a language, an emotion. They are also inspired by the Bay Area food scene and the many local artisans/chefs/retailers/farmers who are doing their part to make good, real food accessible and by doing so, inspiring a transformation in production practices and the way we eat.
Baia Pasta is a true artisanal company: all our pastas are manufactured in our own facility on the beautiful Oakland waterfront, in Jack London Square, located right next to the San Francisco Bay. The Bay creates the perfect weather conditions (a great fresh ocean moisture and stable temperatures) for our artisanal and old-fashioned drying process, hence it is a key component of the texture and flavor of our pasta (Baia means "bay" in Italian).
We are a small-scale operation that we think of as a small family: it's the two of us and three amazing employees (Matteo, Gerardo and Jamal). The five of us make it all happen in our space in Oakland: production, packaging, deliveries, sales, marketing, accounting, and distribution. Go team!