Hye Quality Bakery was established in 1957 by Yervant and Grace Ganimian (parents of the firm’s current president, Sammy Ganimian) shortly after the family moved from Boston to California’s San Joaquin Valley. Both parents had held demanding jobs in Boston, he as head baker at Beth Israel Hospital and she as manager of the family-owned pharmacy. Their original plans called for Yervant to pursue his trade as a master baker, freeing his wife to raise their children at home.
The plan did not come to fruition, and instead the Ganimians established their own business, Hye Quality Bakery, because they perceived a strong market in the Fresno area’s large Armenian population for high-quality, home-style Armenian baked goods.
Yervant Ganimian took the challenge, remembering the cracker bread he enjoyed as a child in Armenia. He was determined to recreate that same bread. With his baking background he developed, tested and perfected his exclusive recipe for Armenian Cracker Bread. The bread is called Parag-Hatz the pure Armenian name for thin bread.
By 1978, having outgrown the 1,200-square-foot rental space it had occupied from the beginning, Hye Quality decided to construct a much larger facility equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. In the process it created a production line that both duplicated the handmade quality for which the firm was known and also produced sufficient volume to make national distribution a reality.
Today the heritage that surrounds the Hye Quality baking process lives on, with owners Sammy and Paula Ganimian along with their daughter, Joy Ganimian Aller. The bread is still shaped, not dye-cut and much of the baking process remains “hands-on” to maintain the level of quality the bakery’s reputation demands.
The family recipe, still followed to this day, clearly has withstood the test of time, and Sammy Ganimian has pledged to continue the father-to-son tradition of providing customers with the finest baked goods possible. We invite you to enjoy the tradition.
