Officially opened on Sept. 3, 2014, West Palm Beach’s wildly popular Aioli bakery and café just marked its 10th anniversary.
Owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Michael and Melanie Hackman , the pair took over the space along South Dixie Highway once occupied by a Blockbuster video store in 2012 and, after a long buildout, opened their new café.
Starting out on a shoestring budget, Melanie said they acquired almost everything for the restaurant second hand at auction. “The entire menu was run off of one oven, two panini presses and a slicer,” she said. In addition to opening and working at the new café, Michael at the time was still working as a private chef. He would work all day at Aioli, then keep going into the night as a private chef. Despite the hard work and long hours their passion prevailed and “we made it happen, ” Melanie said.
Aioli’s evolution from café to ‘bakery and café’ in West Palm Beach
When they first opened, Michael said that they made everything from scratch… except bread. Though he attended the Florida Culinary Institute and was already an accomplished chef with a resume that included working at The Breakers, Palm Beach, Cafe L’Europe and The Four Seasons, Hackman said that when they first started Aioli he wasn’t a baker.