The Standard
What Nothing Artificial Actually Means.
Nothing Artificial is a list of refusals before it is a slogan. Here is the whole list, what each line costs us in the kitchen, and the places the standard does not reach.
The Whole List.
ThoroughFare is a bakery, café, deli and market in Mueller, Austin, and the rule the whole company was built on is easier to state as a list of refusals than as a promise. This is that list, in full and unedited — the same eight lines we publish on our own About page, with nothing held back for a footnote.
The last line is the one that decides the other seven. It is also the only one that is a judgment rather than a rule, which is deliberate: a list of banned molecules can always be gamed by a new molecule, and a kitchen standard cannot.
- No seed oils
- No artificial preservatives
- No artificial colors or flavors
- No gums or fillers
- No GMOs in grains, oils, or sweeteners
- No ultra-processed ingredients
- No "natural flavors"
- Nothing we wouldn't use at home
Organic, regenerative, and local where possible, in BPA-free packaging. The rule behind all of it: if we wouldn't use it in our own kitchen, we don't use it here.
Why It Reads as a List of No.
Nothing Artificial is our own standard. It is not a certification, we do not present it as one, and there is no body that audits it. That is exactly why it is written as exclusions: the only way to make a self-declared standard checkable by somebody outside the company is to say precisely what it rules out, in words that can be held against a label.
The alternative is the vocabulary the rest of the aisle uses — natural, clean, artisan, wholesome — none of which has an agreed definition, and all of which survive contact with an ingredient list nobody publishes. We would rather be quotable. What we believe about it, in the sentence we use ourselves: “We tell you what is in your food: every ingredient, where it was made, and by whom.”
What Each Refusal Rules Out.
A refusal only means something once it has changed a recipe. These are the ones that change the most.
No seed oils is the one with the longest reach. It rules out the default fat in most commercial kitchens, so the substitutions run all the way down the menu: our oat milk is made with olive oil (it steams like dairy), and the chips beside a sandwich are fried in beef tallow. Both are stated on the product pages themselves, next to the item you would be buying.
No “natural flavors” is the least obvious one. The phrase is a labeling category rather than an ingredient — it can stand in for a proprietary blend that never gets itemized for the person eating it. Refusing it means we never have a line on a label doing that job.
No gums, no fillers, no stabilizers rules out most of the alternative-milk market outright, which is why the oat and almond milks on the bar had to be chosen rather than ordered. No artificial preservatives shows up as a shelf life: nothing in a loaf keeps it soft on day four, which is why the advice we print for it is about a board and an oven rather than a bag. And no GMOs is scoped to grains, oils and sweeteners — the three categories where it is a real decision — rather than written as a blanket non-GMO claim, because scoped is what the line says.
How a Standard Survives a Kitchen.
The reason the list can be this strict is vertical integration, and the dates are worth having. ThoroughFare began in 2018 as ThoroughBread, a small Austin bakery. In May 2024 founders Nick Vukmaravich and Ryan Goebel bought a 40,000-square-foot production facility in Palestine, Texas — FareGrounds — and the shop in Mueller followed. More than 200 products are made in house every day: breads, pastries, soups, dressings, sauces, granola, and most of what goes on a sandwich.
Made in house has a specific meaning here. It means we make it ourselves, from scratch, at our own facility, rather than buying it pre-made — at FareGrounds and fresh in our store kitchens each day. The meats are cured, smoked and grilled in house and sliced fresh in store daily; every condiment, aioli and dressing is made by us. Those are the parts of a sandwich most places buy in, and they are the parts where an ingredient list stops being ours to control.
Where we do not make something, we name who does, which is the other half of an auditable standard. The flours are organic, from Central Milling, milled from grain grown by farmers we know. The dairy is grass-fed milk from Mill-King in Waco, about an hour up the road. The coffee is our own beans, roasted in Austin. The matcha is certified organic, grown at Hattori Tea Farm in Shizuoka.
The market shelves are held to the same list, and there the standard is a buying decision rather than a recipe: what we stock is defined as much by what we refuse to carry as by what we choose. It is a short, deliberate list instead of a grocery aisle for that reason.
Where the Standard Stops.
A standards page that only lists strengths is advertising. These are the limits, and they are the part we would most like quoted alongside the rest.
We state a dietary claim definitively only when the recipe behind it has been verified. Anything unverified is labeled as unverified rather than rounded up. Our kitchen handles wheat, dairy, eggs and nuts every single day, so we cannot guarantee any item against cross-contact — if you have a severe allergy, please talk to us at the counter before you order.
For anything we buy in rather than make, the manufacturer can change their formulation at any time, without notice; that is true of every retailer and we are not exempt from it. And all of the ingredient, allergen and nutrition information we publish is for general information: it is not guaranteed, it is not medical advice, and the confirmed items on your order at checkout are what control. The full disclaimer is worth reading if any of this matters to you medically.
Ask Us the Harder Version.
The counter-level questions — the flour, the coffee, the milk, the matcha, the bread under the sandwiches, whether everything in the shop can be ordered online — are answered one by one on our FAQ. Anything not answered there, ask a team member in Mueller. The standard is only worth having if it holds up when somebody checks it.
Where to See It