Super Bowl champion Laurent Duvernay-Tardif acquires Montreal bakery

NFL football player Laurent Duvernay-Tardif announces his retirement from professional football as his agent Sasha Ghavami looks on, in Montreal, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. Duvernay-Tardif played six NFL seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs from 2014 to 2019, and then parts of two seasons, in 2021 and 2022, with the New York Jets. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

Doctor, entrepreneur and Super Bowl champion Laurent Duvernay-Tardif has acquired Boulangerie Arhoma, a bakery in Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough.

The bakery took to social media to announce that the former Kansas City Chiefs guard and founder of Le Pain dans les Voiles, along with his agent Sasha Ghavami, would be taking the helm at Arhoma.

“Sometimes a business is a bit like sourdough: Growing, changing... and one day, it passes,” the business wrote on its social media. “After 19 years of making Arhoma live and grow, the time has come for us, Ariane, Jerome and Marie, founders and co-owners, to pass the torch.”

Jérôme Couture and Ariane Beaumont opened Arhoma on Ontario Street East in the heart of Hochelaga in 2007.

Duvernay-Tardif’s parents founded their own bakery in 2009 in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que. and expanded to Montreal in 2012.

The Arhoma owners said they made the choice to sell “very carefully.”

“Above all, we wanted what we have built to continue with the same attention to detail, the same requirement and the same humanity,” Arhoma said. “A new chapter opens for Arhoma, and it’s incredibly exhilarating.”

The bakery adds that the operation, recipes and mindset are expected to remain the same.