Mystery of the disappearing Armenian cracker company. What happened to Sanger’s Ak-mak?
By Bethany Clough
Fresno Bee
Ak-mak whole wheat sesame crackers. (Ak-Mak Bakeries/Instagram)
Ak-mak Bakeries What happens when Ak-mak, a beloved Armenian cracker baked in a Central California factory for 72 years, suddenly stops showing up on grocery store shelves around the country?
The tire shop next door gets daily phone calls and amateur private detectives stop by the Sanger plant trying to find out what happened to their favorite whole wheat cracker.
It’s the same at the Sanger Chamber of Commerce, said CEO Karen Pearson.
“We’ve gotten probably over 50 phone calls from around the country and numerous emails from people asking what has been happening because obviously people … not being able to have their product has been very detrimental,” she said.
Ak-mak’s Yelp.com page has several people bemoaning how they can’t find the crackers anymore, or reach the company.
Said Nooshin M. from Vista, CA: “trying to call for last couple of weeks, no-one answering the phone, mail box is full. … are they out of business?”
What happened to Ak-mak?
So The Bee went to the source to solve the mystery of what happened to this cracker with a national following.
Tanny Soojian is the most recent owner and president of Ak-mak Bakeries and a third-generation member of the Armenian family that ran the business (his kids worked there too, so technically it was a fourth-generation business). His grandfather started the company in Massachusetts in 1893.
What happened to the company?
“I got old and I closed it,” he said.
Soojian, 75, didn’t say much more than that. He declined to go into specifics about why the family-run company closed.
But changing times — and tastes — may have played a role.
People in the Fresno area seem to have never heard of the crackers in the blue and yellow box — or they absolutely adore them. The rectangular, organic whole wheat crackers sprinkled with sesame seeds stood up to spreadable cheese and jam. Sturdy and brown, one Amazon reviewer said they learned to love “the sesame-cardboard flavor” of their perpetually dieting grammy’s crackers.
Niel Moeller of Seattle alerted The Bee to the mystery of the disappearing crackers after searching four or five stores in his area.
“I can’t remember when I haven’t had them in the house,” he said. “It’s a snack, but it’s healthy. It’s a staple.”
The crackers are normally sold at Vons, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Raley’s, Alberstons, Kroger and other large grocery stores in the United States and recently, Canada.
“They just quietly disappeared,” Moeller said.
Indeed, the factory with its dated brown wood paneling on Academy Avenue — Sanger’s main drag — went dark about three or four months ago.
The Ak-mak sign is gone. The several dozen employees no longer show up to bake. A lone big rig smothered in graffiti is still parked behind the chain-link fence as though the driver were backing up to pick up a load of crackers and somebody told him there were none left.
At Sanger Tire next door, the workers are used to fielding questions about the factory and its crackers.
“Every day, somebody drives in there looking for them,” said mechanic Terry Large.
Working next door to a bakery is just like one would imagine. Employees would bring samples to the mechanics occasionally, he said.
The bakery would start baking, “at 10 o’clock every day — oh, the smell of it,” Large reminisced.
He remembers the family who owned it fondly, saying they were great people. They tried, he said, but “they just couldn’t make a go of it.”
131 years of Armenian baking
The Soojian family started the company 131 years ago in Lowell, Massachusetts, under the name Ararat Bakeries to serve an influx of Armenian immigrants in the area. The bakery made pita bread and Armenian cracker bread.
It moved to California in 1936. It created the Ak-mak cracker as we know it today in 1952. The company was renamed to Ak-mak Bakeries two years later.
It also made large round cracker bread and square roll-up cracker bread. But the Ak-mak cracker was its bread and butter.
The cracker didn’t change much over the years and neither did the company. It never did much advertising.
The plain brown crackers were competing on grocery store shelves with international companies selling more than 30 kinds of Cheez-Its, and flashy packages such as the Flavor Blasted Xtra Cheesy Pizza Goldfish crackers.
One grocery store worker in Fresno said most of Ak-mak’s customers were over 60 and that he never saw a teen asking for them.
Ak-mak was right on trend with its healthy ingredients, including being whole grain and sugar free (it used honey instead of sugar), according to the latest Crackers Market Trends in the U.S. and Canada.
But the market is also moving swiftly into something Ak-mak wasn’t doing: Experimenting with new flavors, such as cheddar cheese, rosemary and garlic, with chili and pepper flavors emerging as the next popular trends.
In the meantime, Ak-mak fans are looking for a suitable substitute for their favorite cracker.
Pearson, at the Chamber of Commerce, is recommending Wasa Crispbread, a thick Swedish cracker. Valley Lahvosh Baking Co. is another longtime Armenian bakery making crackers. Based in Fresno and more than a century old, it makes crispy crackers in heart and other shapes, but most are not whole wheat or sugar free.
There may be no perfect substitute for the Ak-mak that fans have loved for so long.
As JD from San Francisco said on Yelp.com: “It would seem ak-mak sesame crackers are no more. I’ve enjoyed these wonderful sesame crackers for over 50 years. … A sad end to a wonderful cracker.”
