2025 SCALE-DOWN

Starting March 2nd, 2025, we will cease delivering to stores, all except our teff bread, which we hope to continue to sell in the freezer sections of larger stores.   

We will continue to sell all our other types of bread at local farmers markets and to certain restaurants.   We may also partner with one or two stores for seasonal winter sales only, starting December 2025 (to March 1st 2026).

Also, we are offering a bread subscription program for 12-20 customers in total who agree purchase 6-10 loaves a month, and we’ll drop those once a month at the customer’s house.  This program requires a year of membership and we ask for a credit card on file for the monthly payments.  Customers need a fair amount of freezer space as well.  If you are interested in this option let us know on our contact page and we can send you more details.

We feel grateful for all our devoted customers over the years and realize that this scale-down may be a challenging change for some.  We feel you deserve to know the reasons for this decision in full.

For a few years now, we have begun to burn out on the level of production and staff necessary to keep baking 3200-4200 loaves per week.  Stocking even one store year-round requires us to have enough employees trained in every shift (mixing, baking, packing, delivering, markets, pastry prep) to enable people to go on vacation and have enough subs to cover while they are gone.  We started baking bread because we loved the art and science of it.  However, the current scale and grind is wearing us down, along with spending too much time managing people.   AND we are bagging, slicing and labeling more than we ever imagined.  We do almost everything by hand and it takes a lot of staff and constant training.  Some positions require 6 months of training before an employee can successfully work a shift on their own, because of the skill and pace required for this amount of bread, mostly in our mixing process and our wood-fired oven loading.

Scaling down will result in the following for us:

-Less stress, less employee turnover, less training and interpersonal conflict.

-Our late night baker will end at 12 or 1 am instead of 4 or 5am.

-Mixers will not have to lift as much dough, flour, water during their shift (we aren't getting any younger!)  resulting in less muscle fatigue and injuries.  

-We have higher profit margins at farmers markets. Stores give us 65-75% of shelf price and we have to slice, bag and label store bread, and often buy it back when it doesn’t sell.

-We will be able to close the bakery entirely for 4 different weeks per year.  Which will allow us to take actual vacations where we don’t have to check in everyday with the staff.

-We will save A LOT of time and money not bagging into compostable cellulose bags (32 cents per bag! And extremely fragile).

-We will get to be more creative in the bakery.  Baking less amounts will make it easier to experiment a bit and will ensure our bread quality will remain incredible.

For all these reasons and more, we have made this decision final.  We hope you understand.  Thank you all again for supporting our bakery for all these years!  We hope to see you soon at our farmers market stall.   And if you cant make it, see if a friend can pick up some bread there for you.  Click on the links below for more info on the farmers markets. Thanks!

Sincerely, Rosie and Jo

About our Values and our Sourdough

When we chose to name our business Rise Up! Artisan Bread, it was with the vision and dream of creating a company that not only baked great, wholesome bread for the people but also engaged in positive action that would benefit the community around us, including people, flora and fauna.

GOOD WAGES FOR OUR EMPLOYEES

In 2025, we are raising our prices, for the first time in 3 years. With the rise in ingredients and our scale-down, we need to make more money per loaf to maintain a good wage for our staff. Our employees are highly skilled and work diligently to make a high-quality, consistent product for you, and we believe they deserve more than a living wage. Our employees make between $17 and $25 per hour, which is up there with the highest-paying bakeries in the country, we are proud to say.

THE HEALTH OF SOURDOUGH

We value creating healthy recipes that contribute to the health of our customers. Our sourdough culture makes bread that is more easy to digest, and is a pre-biotic, which means it feeds the probiotics in your gut. We use a little commercial yeast in our Little Applegate and Sesame sourdoughs (less than 0.4 grams per loaf) just to increase the volume slightly. For our non-sourdough breads, the sprouted multigrain, ciabattas and focaccias, we use pre-fermented doughs to decrease the amount of commercial yeast we need to use. Our preferments also help make these breads more digestible and flavorful. Also, we always use UNenriched flour, because we have learned that some people are allergic to the potato starch that vitamins are processed with.  

Supporting Local Non-Profits

For the past 5 years, we have donated over $8000 per year in bread and money to local non-profits.  This is because we want to give back to the community in as many ways as possible.

Rise Up! is located at Full Bloom, an intentional community committed to radical care and deep connection, furthering the social experiment of what it takes for people to thrive while living closely together.   Some of our employees also live here at Full Bloom with us.