Grateful Bread changes name -- sort of

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By the Lincoln Journal Star

Don’t be fooled by the sign.

Grateful Bread, the vegetarian soup restaurant at 1625 S. 17th St., is still called Grateful Bread.

Ownership hasn’t changed. Neither has the menu or the locally famous Moroccan tomato soup.

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Cate Flotree of Grateful Bread said she is superstitious of her kitchen tools, including her mixing fork, which she is wearing out after 10 years of use. The building has a new sign, but Grateful Bread's yummy offerings are still inside. (File photo)

Cate Flotree of Grateful Bread said she is superstitious of her kitchen tools, including her mixing fork, which she is wearing out after 10 years of use. The building has a new sign, but Grateful Bread's yummy offerings are still inside. (File photo)

But the sign has.

Last week, owners Cate and Mark Flotree replaced the decade-old sign that read simply “Bakery” with a new sign reading “Freakbeat Vegetarian.”

It was time for a new sign, Cate said, mostly because the old one wasn’t accurate anymore.

When the Flotrees started the business a decade ago, they were indeed a bakery, she said. But five years into their business venture, the Atkins diet craze hit, and no one wanted to eat bread.

So she started making soup, which proved popular, she said. The line sometimes stretched out the door.

“People just went crazy,” she said.

Over time, she added more soups and phased out the breads (though she still sells cookies).

But the sign led people astray, she said. Customers would drop by in search of doughnuts.

So last week, she and Mark took the bakery sign down and put up Freakbeat Vegetarian (named after a style of music from the ’60s).

The Grateful Bread sign painted on one of the building’s window will stay up, and the Flotrees still answer the phone, “Grateful Bread.”

But they needed something to let Lincoln know Grateful Bread is no longer a bakery.

“Over the 10 years, we’ve evolved into something else.”