California Cereal Products

California Cereal Products, West Oakland

You may have seen this building in West Oakland and wondered what it was. I didn't see a sign, and I must say, it looks more than a little scary from the outside. I was granted entry on the Tour of Oakland's Food Industry with the Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. We weren't allowed to take photos so I can't share what it looked like inside. The building opened in 1917 as a Shredded Wheat factory. It was sold to the National Biscuit Company (later renamed Nabisco) in 1928. In 1994 California Cereal Products took over the plant. CCP produces organic breakfast cereals and rice flour, much of which is exported to Japan. It smells nice inside, like cooking rice and toasting rice. They have a giant sugar coating machine for the cereal. Walking through the factory in my hair net and earplugs I realized that this was the first working factory I'd been in. The factory has gorgeous huge windows that I'm more used to seeing in converted loft living spaces. It's striking that organic food can be produced in West Oakland in a building nearly a century old surrounded by barbed wire.