Ali Cohane

The Path

Since 2011, Ali Cohane has been co-founder and owner of Persephone Bakery; since 2015, co-founder and owner of Picnic; and since 2019, co-founder and owner of Persephone West Bank. Read together, those dates show a gradual expansion of the same bakery-minded approach: one wholesale operation broadening into a larger footprint in Jackson Hole, with each business carrying the same focus on quality and the everyday pace of café service. The progression is incremental, built by adding one viable room, one operating model, and one set of standards at a time.

The Work Today

He co-founded and owns Persephone Bakery in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The work there is anchored in ownership, but the craft sits in the details that make a bakery feel distinct: the timing of the day, the pace of the room, and the standards behind the bread and pastry case. Cohane’s role is tied to shaping that atmosphere without overcomplicating it, keeping the business organized around the kind of welcome and consistency that regulars notice first.

Signature

Ali's signature dishes include Truffle Prosciutto. As a signature, it points to a bakery and café sensibility that values familiar ingredients, handled with enough care to keep the plate balanced. That fits Cohane’s broader approach: straightforward, ingredient-led, and attentive to the small decisions that separate a routine offering from one that lands.

In Their Words “Everybody told us it was a terrible idea. The town already had five coffee shop/bakeries. But I thought what we were doing was a world apart.” “We wanted to get back to Jackson and open a bakery that carried quality French pastries and artisanal bread.” Those lines frame the business in practical terms: a crowded market, a clear point of view, and a decision to compete through standards rather than noise. For Cohane, the work has stayed close to that original premise—build a bakery that is specific, disciplined, and committed to bakery life as a trade, not a pose.