Just off Interstate 84 in inner Northeast Portland, a giant spinning loaf of bread sits atop one of the largest family-owned bakeries on the West Coast.

“We knew we were getting close when we could smell the bread,” laughed Kathleen Draper.

She was one of the many people at Portland’s Franz Bakery this week, celebrating the iconic bakery’s 120th anniversary with a block party.

Draper, who was born and raised in Portland, came with her 3-year-old grandson Crosby, “I can remember coming to Franz Bakery on field trips from school and just always enjoyed it, so we just thought it’d be really fun to bring him down here and let him experience this.”

As the smell of baking bread wafted over the crowds, people munched on gooey grilled cheese sandwiches, spun a prize wheel for some carb-themed merchandise and got tours of the iconic local bakery from Madeline Brockmyre.

“It is really cool to see how many adults are interested in the Franz history,” said Brockmyre, who is the tour guide and coordinator at Franz. “People who have been on tours when they were 7-years-old and now they’re 70-years-old.”

She said she’s even given tours to people whose parents’ or grandparents’ names are engraved in plaques inside the Franz bakery. “It’s just really heartfelt to see them be able to connect to that side of their family [and] have that experience.”

Many people at the birthday block party have memories of the bakery, including Ethan Webb: “My aunt had worked here since ’87, [so] my memory of Franz is the company picnics and just the smell and the nostalgia of baking bread everyday.”

Webb is the production manager at the Portland Franz Bakery, working his way up over the last 20 years.

“I started as a general laborer, I was in the wrapping and packaging department. After about a year, I learned the ovens, then I learned to mix,” he said. From there, he trained to be a supervisor, became a certified baker through the American Institute of Baking and, he said “the rest is history.”

Also in attendance was a foursome of millennial women, snapping selfies while in red hairnets donned before heading inside for a factory tour.

“We’re calling it mom’s field trip,” laughed Veronica Neely. “I think we all grew up on ‘I Love Lucy’ and the chocolate factory [scene] or the Sesame Street episode on how crayons are made, but no idea really what to expect.”

The Portland Franz location bakes up to a million hamburger buns per day, shipped out to grocery stores, restaurants and fast food chains like Wendy’s and Red Robin. But Lauren Rosenthal was most surprised by the journey that the buns make while still inside the facility.

“I was surprised to realize how many miles a bun travels in those machines, the amount of turns and ups and downs it goes,” she said. “And it’s not really in that much space.”

At any given point, nearly 17,000 buns can be traveling on the three-tiered “bun highway” that snakes throughout the facility, cooling hot-out-of-the-oven buns before they are packaged.

Tours of the bakery are full for the remainder of the season, but will start again in September.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/17/franz-bakery-120-anniversary-block-party/