Chabaso Bakery pays it forward, supports budding businesses

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Chabaso Bakery pays it forward, supports budding businesses

23 Jan 2026

Annie Hollon

Annie Hollon is a journalist, copywriter and social media strategist from the Dallas, Texas area. She found a love for magazine writing during her time at the University of Alabama where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in public relations and English. Beyond writing, you can find her expanding her library, attempting to teach herself the guitar and trying new hobbies.

Commercial Baking is proud to present the 2025 Social Impactor of the Year. This annual recognition highlights one company’s dedication to philanthropy, education and social change with the goal of making a positive impact on its workforce and the communities it serves.

KANSAS CITY, MO — Philanthropically, New Haven, CT-based Chabaso Bakery has a long history of giving back to the community. This includes its Random Acts of Bread program, which celebrates organizations doing the work to uplift the lives of local residents.

“Although ongoing donations have been a long part of Chabaso’s initiatives, we saw an opportunity to align some of those donations with the seasonal and holiday brand campaigns we’ve been running,” said Reed Immer, director of sales and marketing for Chabaso.“Our thinking was that since we’re already assembling collections of fun recipes and signage for holiday and special occasions throughout the year, why not leverage those to put some extra smiles on the faces of our neighborhood heroes?”

The company boasts a long history of donating bread in the community. In 2024, Chabaso donated nearly 300,000 loaves and rolls to regional non-profits and hunger relief organizations, and it’s on track to surpass that figure this year. The bakery’s contributions also extend beyond its facility and the immediate New Haven community to other businesses, particularly up-and-comers in the Connecticut food scene.

Scaling a business is no small task, and the leaders at Chabaso know this well. Relying on business acumen gleaned from the two Atticus New Haven retail locations and Chabaso, the team saw an opportunity to lend its insights to emerging brands as well as create connection opportunities. As a result, Chabaso CEO Charles “Charlie” Negaro Jr. and Immer co-founded the CT Food Launchpad, an accelerator designed to support early-stage food and beverage businesses based in the Constitution State.

“We saw there were a lot of resources for people who were going from zero to one, but there weren’t a lot of people who were helping folks get market-ready products onto shelves,” Negaro Jr. said.

While the project started lowkey with the two hosting business-to-business outings connecting local entrepreneurs, the formalization into CT Food Launchpad extended the concept beyond guidance. In addition to giving away more than $100,000 to Connecticut-based emerging brands, Chabaso, in partnership with the School of Management at Yale University, hosts The Big Connecticut Food Event, an annual conference that unites local companies with wholesale decision makers from various retailers. Creating an intimate environment for organic connections establishes a space for productive conversations.

“We think of the B Corp framework as a compass. It plays a large role as we try to update and optimize our supply chain and consider which ingredient or packaging producers to partner with.” — Reed Immer | director of sales and marketing | Chabaso Bakery

“There’s a lot more we can be doing, but starting with the annual event has been really exciting,” Immer said, sharing that the company is working toward deepening the launchpad’s partnership with Yale and other regional universities and potentially expanding to other regions.

Chabaso’s impact is vast, much of which can be affirmed within the framework of B Corp certification, a rigorous process identifying companies with responsible business practices. With key impact areas including workers, community and customers, doing the work to earn the recognition was a no-brainer given Chabaso’s support of its team members, community and consumers.

“I was introduced to B Corp around 2010, and that became something I zeroed in on to help us hold onto that culture [my dad] started,” Negaro Jr. said, noting that the guidelines of the certification helped the company better identify and concentrate efforts on making the biggest impact possible.

The certification offers a tangible emblem to identify all the good work Chabaso does, along with serving as a reminder to keep these practices at the core of the bakery operations.

“We think of the B Corp framework as a compass,” Immer said. “It plays a large role as we try to update and optimize our supply chain and consider which ingredient or packaging producers to partner with. Similar to our passion for helping regional food businesses, we want to make sure that we’re making smart choices.”

From the first flicker of people- and community-centered business under Negaro Sr.’s foundation to the fully-fueled hearth under Negaro Jr.’s leadership, Chabaso Bakery is making lasting change and stoking that original flame three decades later.

This story has been adapted from the 2025 Innovations Annual of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.

Annie Hollon

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