Helms Bakery was a legendary fixture for generations of Angelenos, but after just 13 months back in operation — and after more than a decade of planning to restore it to life — the historic bakery will close on Sunday.
Father’s Office restaurateur Sang Yoon reprised the 1931-founded bakery in late 2024, building upon the Helms family’s legacy with new, bountiful pastry cases, ready-made food stations, bouquets of baguettes, freshly roasted coffee and an ample marketplace in the original Culver City complex still bearing the Helms name. But late last week he took to social media to announce the surprising closure, and thousands of responses poured in.
The closure follows a year of dozens of notable restaurant shutterings, including some of the city’s most famous: Guerrilla Tacos, Here’s Looking at You, Papa Cristo’s and more.
Despite days when the 14,000-square-foot Helms Bakery would see hundreds of customers, Yoon said the sales were not enough, nor consistent enough, to continue the operation.
“It’s like playing poker: Do you think you’re holding a winning hand and you’re gonna survive, or do you think you’re gonna get taken out?” Yoon said by phone. “You’re trying to weigh everything, and it certainly was not an easy decision. It’s awful. We have a small but really great staff, and we’re really horrified that this has to happen now, but you get to a place where you’re not able to go further.”
Yoon’s stalwart gastropub, Father’s Office, will remain open in the complex, though he closed a sibling location in the Arts District this year.
Like most restaurateurs, he expected to lose money in the first year of business, but “2025 just happened to be way worse than anticipated.”
He cites a difficult start for the entire city: The January Palisades and Eaton fires, which destroyed more than 9,000 structures, left Los Angeles on edge, and even restaurants located far from the devastation were hurt financially as thousands of families became displaced and consumer spending generally decreased.
For a bakery located near a slew of studios or their offices — Apple TV, Amazon, Warner Bros. and Sony among them — the sustained downturn in the entertainment industry also contributed to less-than-expected business. More immediately adjacent, he said the shuttering of fellow Helms-complex businesses such as furniture store HD Buttercup caused a downturn in foot traffic.
Inflation and tariffs at times caused Yoon’s operating costs to skyrocket, with items like coffee costing roughly 30% higher than budgeted. Chocolate and butter — necessary ingredients for a bakery — also increased. The price, he said, increased “double digits” for flour, eggs and chocolate.
“Unless you’re made of money, no business can tolerate price and cost increases across such a wide spectrum,” Yoon said. ”If one thing goes up, it’s one thing, but if it’s everything … .”
Yoon said for all his budgeting and planning analysis, the year’s pitfalls made Helms Bakery untenable, and multiple plans for the bakery never became reality: the opening of the attached full-service “dinette” restaurant, for one, and an expansion to daily operating hours.
The project was more than a decade in the making. After multiple false starts, then the pandemic and then two years of construction, Yoon finally staged the historic bakery’s return Nov. 1, 2024.
The original bakery was founded by Paul Helms in 1931 and quickly became an emblem of the door-to-door service of a bygone age. Helms delivery drivers, clad in a uniform of white shirts and blue bow ties, would deliver fresh bread and other wares to households around the city — some of which hung large “H” signs in the window, signifying a stop request along the route.
Helms died in 1957 at the age of 67, and the family continued to operate the bakery until its closure in 1969. Its Art Deco industrial complex became a mix of shops, restaurants and offices.
Drawn to its heritage of feeding generations of Angelenos, Yoon worked with the Helms family to reprise some of the original bakery’s recipes while providing his own new items. In the course of the return, he met countless fans, some of whom remembered the little white trucks delivering bread to their home as children, others who said they drove the trucks themselves.
“I really wanted the Helms sign to mean something again,” Yoon said. “Just to feel that there’s a history and there’s real people alive who remember it, and then to try to connect that to kids today, that was really my chief motivator.”
Now guests are swarming the bakery for a final taste, some buying baguettes and saying they’re bringing them home to freeze.
On Sunday, three days after Yoon’s announcement of the closure, staff told The Times that the bakery had been consistently busy, with lines for the pastry case snaking through the retail aisles and down the center of the long building. Items will continue to be sold in limited amounts through this coming Sunday.
Yoon had a number of plans for the bakery’s future, including “a full-circle moment” of the beloved bread being sold during the 2028 Olympics set to play out across the city. During the 1932 Olympics, Helms Bakery’s bread became the official bread of the Games, marketing itself as “Olympic Games Bakers — Choice of Olympic Champions.” The distinctive Helms Bakery sign atop the Culver City complex still includes the words “Olympic Bread.”
Maybe, Yoon said, Los Angeles could see the return of Helms, in time for the Olympics or otherwise.
“There’s a possibility — no guarantee, no promise — but we may take another stab at it in another way, another place, down the road,” he said. “We may give it another go because I really like it, and maybe under some different, hopefully better circumstances, maybe we can make it stick this time.”
The post Iconic Helms Bakery to close this weekend. ‘I really wanted the Helms sign to mean something again’ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
