12/25/2025
He spent fifteen years in prison for violent crimes.
Then he put his mugshot on bread bags and built a $275 million empire.
Then bipolar disorder nearly took everything away.
Dave Dahl’s story isn’t about redemption.
It’s about something harder.
His childhood collapsed early. Drugs arrived before adulthood had a chance. Crime followed fast. By his twenties, prison cells were more familiar than stability. By his thirties, he’d cycled through Oregon’s corrections system so many times guards greeted him by name.
Four sentences.
Fifteen cumulative years.
Possession. Burglary. Assault. Isolation.
Each release came with the same arc: hope, relapse, return.
His brother Glenn watched it hollow out their family. Eventually, hope itself felt cruel. Society doesn’t write comeback stories for men with violent felonies. It erases them.
But something shifted during Dave’s final stretch inside.
Maybe it was exhaustion.
Maybe it was counselors who refused to give up.
Maybe it was staring at forty from behind bars and realizing half his life was already gone.
When Dave walked out in 2004 at age 43, the math was grim: parole check-ins, minimum wage, and near-certain recidivism.
Glenn owned a tiny organic bakery in Milwaukie, Oregon. He offered Dave a job. Not charity. Family. One last refusal to give up.
Dave started at the bottom, hands buried in flour, learning dough.
And something clicked.
Not just competence—creativity. Dense whole-grain loaves packed with seeds. Bread with weight and texture. Bread that felt earned.
In 2005, they launched Dave’s Killer Bread.
Most brands hide messy pasts. Invent cozy origin myths. Dave did the opposite.
They printed his prison mugshot on every bag.
Right next to the organic seal: his booking photo and his story. Ex-con. Four prison terms. Fifteen years inside. Second chance.
It looked like commercial su***de.
It became a movement.
People didn’t just buy bread. They bought the idea that your worst chapter doesn’t have to be the last. That people with violent pasts can still create value. Feed families. Matter.
The bread was genuinely good.
The story made it unforgettable.
Within a year: Oregon shelves.
Within five: nationwide.
Within ten: the fastest-growing bread brand in America.
Dave didn’t just build a company. He built a system.
Dave’s Killer Bread actively hired people with criminal records—people rejected everywhere else. Ex-cons became bakers, drivers, managers. Hundreds rebuilt lives with real wages and dignity.
Dave became proof the prison system doesn’t have to be a life sentence.
Then life interrupted the narrative.
November 2013—two years before the sale.
Dave had a manic episode.
He has bipolar disorder, managed imperfectly while building the business. The pressure of rapid growth, public symbolism, and carrying the hopes of thousands collided.
During the episode, Dave led police on a high-speed chase through Portland. Over 100 mph. A crash. An arrest.
Not drugs.
Not crime.
Mental illness.
He was hospitalized. Treated. Stabilized.
And removed from operations.
The brand kept his face.
But the company moved on without him.
Some framed it as failure.
They missed the point.
Dave didn’t return to crime. He had a psychiatric break—something that can happen to anyone. Bipolar disorder doesn’t wait for tidy endings.
What mattered was this:
Dave didn’t disappear.
He got help.
He wrote Life Worth Living.
He spoke openly about prison, success, collapse, and recovery.
He told the truth most stories skip: recovery isn’t linear. Second chances aren’t one-time events.
Dave’s Killer Bread kept thriving. The Second Chance program continued. Hundreds more people with records got hired. The mission outgrew the man.
That’s the real victory.
Because the story was never about one flawless redemption.
It was about building something that lasts beyond you.
Today, Dave’s Killer Bread still fills grocery shelves. Still hires people with records. Still tells the truth about where it came from.
Dave keeps speaking. Advocating. Living.
Not perfectly. Honestly.
His life isn’t a fairy tale.
It’s better.
Because fairy tales end.
Dave’s story continues.
Fifteen years in prison didn’t define him.
A $275 million exit didn’t complete him.
A breakdown didn’t erase him.
He’s all of it.
Prisoner. Baker. Builder. Advocate.
Human.
And that may be the hardest lesson of all:
Redemption isn’t a destination.
It’s a direction.
