‘The king of pita’
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, March 11, 2007
EVERETT – In a warehouse-style bakery south of downtown Everett, automated machinery mixes, shapes and bakes a simple bread that’s been made for thousands of years.
Lumps of dough move back and forth on a serpentine conveyor system, resting for a number of minutes before they take a scorching nine-second trip through the oven, which bakes and inflates the pockets of bread.
“It’s dough to bread in 20 minutes,” said Hassan “Huss” Alaeddine, as he watched his employees place golden-brown, freshly baked pitas into bags.
At full tilt, Pita King Bakery’s assembly line can produce up to 6,000 pitas an hour. That’s enough to soak up vats of hummus and baba ghanouj.
Since the Alaeddine family established the Pita King operation in Everett six years ago, they’ve earned a fan base for their pita bread, which is available in stores and restaurants from the Canadian border through California.
They’re also gaining new customers as modern-day dietary concerns have smiled on what was once regarded as an exotic alternative to everyday bread.
With little more than flour, water, yeast, salt and sugar, Pita King’s pitas are free of cholesterol and low in carbohydrates and fat, with no trans fat. The company’s pita chips are much healthier than the traditional greasy potato chip.
Which may be why the Pita King’s deli and shop of Middle Eastern foods, located in the front of the bakery a couple of blocks east of Broadway, are attracting new customers.
“Day by day, we’re getting a lot of fresh new faces,” said 27-year-old Jason Alaeddine, the son of Huss and Jean Alaeddine. In all, five members of the family work in the Everett bakery.
Born in Lebanon, Huss Alaeddine has a picture on his shop’s wall that shows him, around age 10, standing near a Middle Eastern shelter, the kind where people would use wood-fired ovens to bake pitas and similar fare.
“This is where it all began,” he said.
He would later move to Canada, working in restaurants and then at a bakery in Edmonton, Alberta, which his family ran for a decade. While that business was successful, the Alaeddines saw an opportunity to capture the Northwest and even much of the West Coast market of the U.S. by setting up in this region. The family did a market survey to confirm their hunch.
The new bakery was ready by the first week of September 2001. Days later, the bright outlook for the new business was dimmed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“All our business plans and everything went upside down,” Huss Alaeddine said. “We had a really rough time, just like a lot of other businesses.”
As time wore on, however, taste won out and the bakery began turning a profit. Pita King is listed in the Best in the Northwest and is always working to expand its distribution around the West.
“We’re growing and we’re looking for a good 2007,” Huss Alaeddine said.
Pita King opened a deli two years ago, which draws lunchtime diners in search of meat and cheese pies, gyros and falafel. Tyson Schiessel of Issaquah popped in one afternoon last week after spotting the place while working in Everett.
“They’re good,” he said as he watched Jean Alaeddine prepare a gyro. “My sister runs a pita shop in Bellingham and gets her pitas from here, too.”
With a reputation for its taste and quality already built, Pita King also hopes to solidify sales to health-conscious eaters by offering a certified organic pita. Huss Alaeddine said he’s started the process with the Food and Drug Administration, which includes a 23-page application.
He and his family members credit each other’s cooperation for the business’ success. Jason Alaeddine, standing in the bakery space heated up to 90 degrees by the nearby oven, said they try to treat all their employees like they’re family, too. That’s helped keep down turnover.
As for the bakery’s name and crowned pita mascot on its label, Huss Alaeddine said it seemed like a natural.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’re the king of pita,” he said. “The name speaks for itself.”
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Pita King
Bakery Ltd.
Where: 2210 37th St., Everett
What: Pita bakery, deli and shop
Founded: 2001
Employees: 10
Web site:
