Our Story of Minuteman Press
Minuteman Press of Berkeley was founded on September 21st 1972 under the name Captain Copy. The new company took advantage of revolutionary equipment, developed by the Xerox Corporation, which could produce a then astounding 2400 photocopies in one hour. The busy location at 2375 Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley was open long hours, seven days a week, and served primarily University of California students and teachers. The business soon added lithographic offset printing equipment and the supporting direct imaging photographic plate making systems, which came to be known as “Instant Printing”.
By the early 1980’s the company was serving a much larger East Bay business community in addition to its UC constituency. The name was changed to General Printing and the location moved to west Berkeley on Fifth Street where the business evolved into a one stop printing service center offering a much broader range of printed products to a wider audience.
With the severe business downturns of the 1990’s and the Dot Com bust of 2001 the company again changed it business plan to outsourcing its production work to five larger printing plants within the greater Bay Area.
The business grew and prospered, and, when the opportunity presented itself, purchased the Minuteman Press franchise that has existed in Berkeley since the 1980’s. The new, much larger merged entity functions under the name Minuteman Press, with a subsidiary called General Printing Books, which handles the book printing and publishing end of the business. Minuteman Press is the world’s largest printing franchise organization with nearly 1000 locations.
Fred Fassett heads Minuteman Press. Fred was trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence Rhode Island and started his printing career with a neighborhood newspaper he wrote, printed and distributed in his Pennsylvania hometown. Fred worked as a technical writer, photographer and businessman before starting Captain Copy in 1972.
Current Production Manager, Debbie Dovala came to work for the firm over 25 years ago as a press operator. Other team members include: Doug Williamson, Graphic Designer and Prepress Manager; Jon Naraja, Prepress Services; Prizal Arquelada and Janice Cohn, Customer Service; Matthew Carpenter, Manager of Mailing Operations & Marketing; Denny Cardenis, Offset Printing Services Manager; Omar Esquivias, Offset Printing Services; Armando Foster, Shipping and Delivery Services; Eduardo Paez, Bindery and Finishing Services.
