About
The Baker
—From the Founder
I’m not the guy who was supposed to do this.
Let’s just start there.
I don’t have a headshot.
I don’t have a boardroom.
I have flour in my beard and stories under my skin and a ten-year-old dog named Chuck who, to be honest, has more fans than I do.
Hi, I’m Zachary Bonneyson, though that is just a pen name. My real name is Zachary Scott though if you’ve ever heard of me it was probably as Chef Nubbs. If you’re from the neighborhood or spent enough early mornings looking for a hot bagel, you might’ve seen me through a window—covered in flour, rolling the next tray, thinking about something bigger than what was in front of me.
I’ve spent most of my life working behind ovens, under heat lamps, and across countless counters in kitchens feeding people throughout the Philly region. Nonprofits and their volunteers have, for reasons I’ll save for another blog, always been at the core of my passion. The underfunded and the overworked who continue to willfully sacrifice, these are the people I admire.
Live CarePhilly exists because of them … and because I rolled bagels, because I cooked meals, because I took catering jobs that went all night and straight into the next day – feeding nonprofits, feeding shelters, feeding programs that barely had time to think about food, let alone fund it. I was the guy they’d call when they needed 300 lunches and an only $3 per meal budget.
And most of the time, I said yes.
Not because I’m a saint. Because I couldn’t help it.
Because every job I ever took, every shift I worked, every moment I spent alone in a kitchen—those were the moments that kept this idea forming.
I was the overnight baker at The Bagel Place for six years. The money that paid for this startup? It came from dough—actual, yeasted, hand-rolled dough.
And the work that prepared me? That came from the decades prior of catering jobs across the city, prepping meals overnight, showing up in the morning to make hundreds of orders with no sleep and none in sight. Some nights, I’d start at 11pm and finish at 6pm the next day. There were even some shifts that lasted more than a day.
And always, during the overnights, I’d be by myself. Just me, the food, and the hum of something I didn’t know how to name yet. But the dream was in there. I’d fail. I’d fix it. I’d try again. The dream kept evolving. And then finally, it knew how to be built.
And that is why this started.
I didn’t build this company because I was qualified to.
I built it because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And sure, on paper, I’m not “qualified” to start a publishing nonprofit.
I didn’t apprentice at a press.
I didn’t intern at a foundation.
I don’t have a blue checkmark next to my name.
But I do have two degrees—one in humanities with a focus on English and business (graduated with honors), and another from the Art Institute of Philadelphia, where I studied culinary arts. I graduated with distinction there too, and was honored with the Brillat-Savarin Young Professional Award for outstanding dedication to the industry by Master Chef, Frank Tillinghast.
So no, I didn’t come from nowhere. I came from every kitchen I ever found family in. Every food pantry I dropped not enough off to.
Every friend who told me another idea worth incorporating one day. Everyone that came before me who reminded me that trying, failing, and trying again was still progress.
So here I am.
I know what I’m not.
But I also know what I’ve lived.
And this—whatever this is becoming—I know it’s mine to build.
