Gragger

Helmut and Karin Gragger founded their bakery in Ansfelden, near Linz, in 1997, built around what they describe as a return to the original way of baking: organic raw materials, hand-worked dough, proper fermentation time, and wood-fired stone ovens rather than industrial shortcuts. That approach has expanded, over nearly three decades, from a single Upper Austria bakery into locations across Vienna, Berlin, and even Senegal.

The company's most recent Vienna expansion came in March 2024, when it took over a Schweidlgasse location previously operating as Gragger & Chorherr, folding it into the wider Gragger network. Alongside its retail and wholesale baking, Gragger designs its own wood-fired ovens, engineered for sustainability and efficiency, and has built a secondary business around that equipment.

The bakery pairs its commercial operation with an explicit social mission: BackMa's and BackMa's International link the baking business to charitable projects, a structure the company presents as core to its identity rather than an add-on. Nearly thirty years after Helmut and Karin Gragger's first Ansfelden oven, that combination of organic wood-fired bread and stated social purpose remains the throughline across its now-international locations.