Exclusive | Olympic gold to golden pies: 1984 track champ preps South LA bakery for 2028 Olympics

The LA28 Olympic Summer Games are set to deliver a massive economic boost to small businesses across Los Angeles — bringing international visitors to famous neighborhood spots like the historic South LA bakery owned by 1984 Olympic track champion Jeanette Bolden-Pickens.

“Being a small business, this is the best time in the world to be right here in LA,” she told the California Post. “We have a tremendous opportunity with LA28.”

On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Games could generate between $20.5 and $40.6 billion in economic output in the Greater LA area while supporting between 126,000 and 224,000 jobs, according to a new analysis.

The report also highlights that the LA28 Organizing Committee has pledged to spend 75 percent of its contract dollars locally within Greater LA, with 25 percent specifically earmarked for small businesses.

Bolden-Pickens — whose third-generation, family-owned pie shop 27th Street Bakery has been in business since 1956 — remains optimistic that those targets will translate into real opportunity.

“The thing that all of us have to understand is that, why not us? Why can’t we be featured in the Olympic Games? Why can’t my products be right there in the Olympic Village?”

Last week, LA28 opened applications for small businesses in the food industry to set up at both competition venue zones and non-competition venues to serve visitors. Hundreds of vendors will be selected.

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Bolden-Pickens urged local business owners to apply, convinced that small enterprises have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

“I think the best thing that LA 28 can do is to make small businesses feel worthy and that they can apply and be vendors. Just give us an opportunity, and I believe all small businesses have to understand that all you need is that opportunity.”

To make sure 27th Street Bakery is fully prepared, Bolden-Pickens is putting her kitchen through its own rigorous training.

“Understanding as an athlete that the Olympics comes around every four years, you do your best, you put all your energy into making sure you’re the best athlete… and now I’m trying to put my products into a position where it’s the best that it could possibly be for 2028,” she said.

When the 66-year-old steps onto the floor of 27th Street Bakery, she approaches the kitchen with the same focus that she brought to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics as a sprinter.

Winning an Olympic gold medal on home turf in 1984 remains a defining moment that Bolden-Pickens remembers vividly. She stepped out for her very first 100-meter heat as the first American runner, walking through the tunnel as the stadium erupted into chants of “USA! USA!”.

Caught up in a wave of national pride, she briefly lost her focus until the familiar voice of her coach, Bob Kersee, snapped her back to reality. “I’m here for a job,” she told herself.

She went on to win the gold medal alongside her teammates in the 4×100-meter relay, crossing the finish line in front of a hometown crowd that included her mother, sister and husband.

More than four decades later, her journey has come full circle. “I wish I was younger so I can compete or at least try to compete,” she laughed.

Growing up in Compton, Bolden-Pickens attended Fullerton College and then California State University, Northridge before eventually landing at UCLA, where she graduated in 1983.

Bolden-Pickens spent 27 years coaching at UCLA and the University of Central Florida, but the family business remained her true anchor.

“The bakery’s always been a part of my life and my whole family’s life,” she said.

The story of 27th Street Bakery goes back more than six decades, when her grandparents, Harry and Sadie Patterson, moved west from Louisiana carrying 10 tin cans packed with cherished family recipes.

They opened a small restaurant on Central Avenue, where their homemade pies and cakes instantly became a hit.

While working in the bakery, her granhfdfather taught all his grandchildren that nothing in life replaces honest hard work and believing in yourself.

“And I took that into my track and field,” Bolden-Pickens said.

As a teenager, getting the keys to the family car meant making deliveries first. Whenever she asked her mother for the car, she was told to drop off a batch of pies on her way out.

“I’d pick up some of my friends, and we would have pies rolling around in the backseat of the car on the way to track practice,” she said.

The bakery expanded in a big way in 1980 under her mother and brother. When pitching Ralphs grocery store to carry its products, Bolden-Pickens’ husband brought a formal slide deck and presentation, while her mother simply handed fresh, warm pies around the table to the executives.

“After that, it was over. We were in Ralphs,” Bolden-Pickens said.

Today, the bakery supplies its pies to over 120 mom-and-pop shops, chicken shacks, barbecue spots and 7-Elevens stretching from the Inland Empire to Victorville.

“We are a homemade business. We put the home back in homemade. We’re not that microwaveable bakery. We are a homemade bakery, and that’s what I’m proud of,” she said.

If an Olympic athlete steps through the doors of 27th Street Bakery during the Summer Games, Bolden-Pickens already knows she will serve them the bakery’s signature: a freshly baked slice of sweet potato pecan pie.

“When they finally light the Olympic torch, I am going to be torn between having that Olympic feeling, understanding what the athletes are going through and having a butterfly. But at the end of the day, it’s all about my pies right now. I’m about 27th Street Bakery and the legacy,” she said.