Eegee's Announces All Bread to be Made in Phoenix. Day Old Bread For Tucson?

All bread will be made in Arizona...though not in Tucson.Photo byNadya SpetnitskayaonUnsplash

Once upon a time, eegee’s made everything fresh in house. Part of what helped build the local brand here in Tucson was that the restaurants each individually baked their own bread. There was just something about the fresh-baked bread and the smell that came with it that helped distance eegee’s from the rest of the pack. However, if you’ve popped into one of late you’ve probably tasted the difference. The bread was no longer baked fresh each day, and often times the bread was shipped to restaurants wrapped in plastic. New ownership of the brand is attempting to improve upon the brand, and that now includes a new bakery.

As anyone who has lived in Tucson for more than a few years and they’ll probably tell you just how far downhill eegee’s has gone. Sure, it’s possible to now pull into a Phoenix shop and snack on a sandwich and an eegee, but that doesn’t do much good when the quality has rapidly deteriorated. Most long-term residents were raised on the sandwich and can remember walking into the restaurants and smelling the bread (especially early in the morning). The daily fresh-baked bread has been a thing of the past, though now at least the bread will be baked within the state.

In an announcement emailed out to followers of the brand, eegee’s is letting customers know that it has partnered with Capistrano’s Bakery, a “local, family-owned business.” As eegee’s itself is no longer family-owned, the fact that it is partnering with a “local” family-owned bakery probably isn’t a major selling point.

In fact, the announcement might actually draw more attention to the fact that local eegee’s haven’t been making their own bread, a fact not customers likely knew. The brand had long prided itself on producing in-house bread daily (it was a major selling point), so making a former announcement of moving all bread-baking operations to a solo bakery is only going to draw more attention to this fact.

The process of making bread in-house hasn’t been a thing at eegee’s for some time now, although at least when all locations were in Tucson the brand partnered with a local commissary. That also has no longer been the case, and bread had been coming in from out of state.

Additionally, Capistrano’s Bakery is located at 2635 South 24th Street in Phoenix. This means the former Tucson sandwich shop will receive its bread behind the expansion Valley locations. It also means that either daily bread shipments will be made to every single one of the 30 restaurants before opening time, or many of the restaurants will be serving day-old (at least) bread.

Is this a good move for beloved eegee’s? Or is it another step in the wrong direction for a chain that continues to his every pot hole in its path?