Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery keeps Minnesota celiac families fed

FARGO, N.D. — September 30, 2026 (Minnesota Nice News)

There’s a moment every celiac family knows. You walk into a grocery store, a restaurant or a bakery, see the cases full of cupcakes, pizza, pasta and fresh bread, and realize none of it is for you. It was made for everybody else. You settle for an overpriced, off-menu plate, or you smuggle in a loaf of your own gluten-free bread. Oof.

Then you walk into Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery in Fargo-Moorhead, and for once you don’t have to ask a single question. Everything on the shelf is safe. Some folks compare it to a first trip to Disneyland. Jodi, my wife, puts it in terms I understand: it’s her Bass Pro Shops. Her fireworks warehouse. Her version of me turned loose in Spencer’s at the Mall of America. Every aisle is a yes.

That’s the feeling at Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery, tucked into a strip mall at 1404 33rd Street South in Fargo. Jodi and I stopped in on a shopping trip recently and walked out with bags full of bread, pizza and sweets. Only one of us has celiac, but we both chow down on everything this place makes. We’d barely made it past the front door when a tall man in kitchen gear and a hairnet peeked around the corner from the back. It was right at opening time, and he seemed to be counting how many folks were already laughing and filling their baskets. Then he stepped out with a slightly humble but warm smile. That’s how we met Mark Mehl.

Mark is the youngest of five siblings who run the business, and the family connection to what they bake runs deep. When I asked why a family would go all-in on gluten-free, he didn’t hesitate.

“All of our siblings, and then we have probably 12 or 13 other relatives, aunts, uncles,” Mark said. “I think most of us have celiac. A couple of us have an intolerance.”

A Name That Means Flour

Here’s a fun bit of trivia: Mehl is the German word for flour. It turns out to be fitting, because the Mehl family business started with flour long before it had a storefront.

The story starts with Paul Mehl, the oldest sibling. Diagnosed with gluten intolerance while working a computer job that kept him on the road, he found his options at gas stations and convenience stores came down to potato chips. So he started developing his own recipes. Friends and family pushed him to sell them, and Paul quit his job to open Simply Savory Foods at 1910 1st Ave. S. in Fargo. The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead featured the shop on March 16, 2011, under the headline “Flour(less) power.”

At the heart of it was Paul’s flour, a blend of four non-wheat flours, sorghum, tapioca, garbanzo and fava bean, designed to swap one-to-one for regular wheat flour. According to a 2021 Fargo Monthly profile, the flour business dates to 2009. The brothers had grown tired of paying premium prices for gluten-free products that didn’t taste good, so they made their own. Simply Savory later became Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery, and both newspaper spreads now hang framed on the bakery wall, a reminder of how far the business has come.

Mark gives his big brother full credit.

“Paul is the one who came up with all of this,” he told me. “He’s the mastermind.”

The retail bakery followed in 2015, originally a few doors down in the same strip mall before moving into its current spot. Today everything made there is gluten-free and nut-free, and many items can be made dairy-free, soy-free or vegan on request. The menu runs from white bread, English muffins and cupcakes to pizza, sandwiches, soups and frozen meals to take home.

Weathering the Hard Years

Running a small specialty bakery isn’t easy, and Mark was honest about it.

“We don’t make a lot,” he said. “If an employee doesn’t show up, we’re doing something extra. But business is pretty good. We have a lot of loyal customers and a lot of people that like our stuff and that have stuck with us.”

When COVID hit, the bakery closed for just one week. Mark credits North Dakota’s lighter restrictions for small businesses with helping them survive when similar shops in Minnesota could not stay open.

“Our sales probably got cut in half for several months,” he said. “So that was definitely a hit.”

Even at $8 a loaf, you get your money’s worth, and then some. This bread is not going to crumble into a mess like storebought slices. This is simply great food, gluten-free or otherwise, and better than most regular fare. The cakes rank among the best I’ve ever had. The cookies are the best I’ve ever eaten, full stop. And the lasagna holds its own against Tutto Bene in Bemidji, only you get to bake it in your own oven, in your slippers. At these prices, it’s still a great deal

“We’ve Heard Lots of Stories Like That”

Eventually, Mark and I got around to the heart of it: why a place like this needs to exist at all, and what brought a family, a flour and a couple of shoppers from Cass Lake to the same counter. For both of our families, the answer starts the same way. Someone gets sick, and nobody can say why.

Jodi’s story is a big part of why we love places like Mehl’s. For about 30 years she got sick after meals and nobody could tell us why. Date nights got cancelled. Hospital visits piled up. At one point doctors assumed she was drinking. She wasn’t. She wasn’t diagnosed with celiac disease until she was 50, and by then the damage was serious. We’ve eaten gluten-free for about four years now, and she’s been healthy since.

When I shared that with Mark, he nodded like he’d heard it a hundred times. Because he has.

“We’re glad we can help,” he said. “We’ve heard lots of stories like that. The kids, you know, are malnourished to the point of death almost. You get a doctor that’s anti-gluten-free or anti-celiac, and they do 100 tests, but they don’t test for that. And then they get a second, or in some cases fifth opinion, and that’s the first thing they test.”

He knows the confusion firsthand, too. His own diagnosis came only after a brother and sister were diagnosed and told him the symptoms.

“When you’re first getting diagnosed and they don’t know what’s going on,” Mark said, “it’s just like a different class of suffering.”

“Gluten-free” gets used as one big umbrella, but it covers three different conditions, and the differences matter.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder. Gluten, a protein in wheat, barley and rye, sets off an immune attack on the small intestine. It affects about 1% of people, and the only treatment is avoiding gluten for life.

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity brings many of the same symptoms, such as bloating, belly pain, brain fog, headaches and fatigue, but tests for celiac and wheat allergy come back negative. The Celiac Disease Foundation says it may affect as many people as celiac or more, and researchers are still sorting out exactly what triggers it.

Wheat allergy is a classic food allergy, most common in young children. Mayo Clinic notes the most serious reaction is anaphylaxis, with throat swelling and trouble breathing, which is a medical emergency. For some people, even breathing in wheat flour can set off a reaction.

Why a Dedicated Kitchen Matters

For people with celiac, “a little” is still too much. Gluten is a protein, so heat and sanitizer don’t destroy it; it has to be physically kept away. That’s called cross-contact, and it happens more easily than most people think. The Beyond Celiac advocacy group lists the usual culprits:

• A shared toaster or deep fryer
• Scratched cutting boards and shared colanders
• Flour in the air, which can hang around for 12 to 24 hours in a busy kitchen

The FDA sets the bar for a packaged “gluten-free” label at less than 20 parts per million. That’s a speck. For someone with celiac, a crumb from a shared knife can restart the intestinal damage they’ve worked for months to heal. For someone with a wheat allergy, a trace can trigger a reaction that can be deadly.

That’s why separate prep areas, separate utensils and a trained staff matter so much, whether you run a bakery, a supper club or a church kitchen. It’s also why a place like Mehl’s is such a relief. Nothing with gluten ever comes through the door, so there’s nothing to keep separate. Everything on the shelf is gluten-free and nut-free.

If you’re cooking for someone with celiac or a wheat allergy, the Minnesota Nice rules apply: ask before you assume, wash before you prep, and give the gluten-free food its own spoon.

What to Order at Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery

I asked Mark the question every customer really wants answered: what can’t you keep your hands off?

“For me, it’s the bread,” he said. “The white bread. And then I also like the pizza and the sausages.”

For sweets, he points to the chocolate chip cookie or the frosted sugar cookie. Online reviewers agree with him. Travelers from as far as Canada call the white bread the best gluten-free bread they’ve ever had, and plenty of first-time visitors mention getting a free cookie on the house.

The bakery case reads like a chalkboard menu of good decisions: red velvet, carrot, dairy-free chocolate and vegan vanilla cupcakes, frosted sugar cookies and whoopie pies in chocolate chip, caramel sea salt and sugar maple. Items marked “DF” are dairy-free.

Around the corner, a freezer holds breads, pies and dairy-free caramel rolls to take home. When we visited, a sign on the door offered a standing deal: buy two frozen cookies, get one free, vegan products excluded.

If you’re feeding a crew, look for the family lunch deals. When we visited, $32 got you either an 18-piece boneless wing combo or a chicken strip combo, with three orders of fries.

We did not exercise restraint. By the time we got home, the kitchen table held a loaf of Premium White Bread, a bag of sandwich buns, a four-pack of sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches, a carrot cake, a $16 pan of lasagna and a 5-pound bag of chicken strips. For the cookie drawer: half a dozen snickerdoodles, half a dozen gingersnaps (dairy-free and soy-free, too) and a bag of chocolate chip cookie mix so we can play baker at home. In Minnesota this type of shopping can be classified as provisioning for winter.

A Message to Customers

When I asked Mark what he’d want readers to know, his answer was simple and very Midwestern.

“We’re very thankful,” he said. “We do our best, and if you have any questions, let us know. Any suggestions, questions. Just thanks to all the customers.”

Thanks to you, Mark, and to Paul and the whole Mehl family. For a lot of families in the Red River Valley and Lakes Country, your shop isn’t just a bakery. It’s the one place where nobody has to worry.

Know a local business with a story worth telling? Send it to Minnesota Nice News.

Writing By: Gregory Moyer | Editing by Jodi Moyer

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EDITOR’S NOTE:

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SOURCES:

The bakery

• Interview with Mark Mehl at Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery, Fargo, September 2026. Photos by Greg Moyer.
• “Fargo man’s gluten intolerance leads to specialty bakery,” The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, March 16, 2011
• “Business Spotlight: Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery,” Fargo Monthly, Feb. 17, 2021
• “Fargo bakery arose out of family’s food allergy struggle,” The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, March 11, 2025
• Mehl’s Gluten-Free Bakery, official website
• Find Me Gluten Free and Tripadvisor customer reviews

Celiac disease, gluten sensitivity and wheat allergy

• “Celiac disease: Symptoms and causes,” Mayo Clinic
• “Wheat allergy: Symptoms and causes,” Mayo Clinic
• “Non-Celiac Wheat/Gluten Sensitivity,” Celiac Disease Foundation
• “Wheat Allergy, Celiac Disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity: What’s the Difference?” Oklahoma State University Extension, 2020
• “Celiac Disease: Fast Facts,” Beyond Celiac
• “Celiac Disease: Still Vastly Under-Diagnosed,” Canadian Digestive Health Foundation, on the Canadian Celiac Health Survey
• “Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency Is Common in Celiac Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 2023
• “Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency and Pancreatitis Associated with Celiac Disease,” Pancreapedia

Cross-contact and labeling

• “Cross-Contact,” Beyond Celiac
• “Questions and Answers on the Gluten-Free Food Labeling Final Rule,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration

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