SF's First Black-Owned Sourdough Bakery Rize Up Opens SoMa Cafe After Two Disasters

Rize Up Bakery, widely regarded as San Francisco's first Black-owned sourdough bakery, has opened its first café to the public inside its 5,000-square-foot SoMa production warehouse, a milestone that comes after the business survived a burglary and a flood, each costing more than $100,000 in lost labor, ingredients, and sales. The new 22-seat café at 1160 Howard St. lets customers watch bakers at work while they order tricked-out toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, and fresh pastries. Founder Azikiwee “Z” Anderson has run Rize Up without outside investors since he began baking sourdough in his backyard in 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

Anderson, who was born in New Orleans and arrived in San Francisco in 1980, eventually enrolled at SF Cooking School before turning his pandemic hobby into a business, according to The San Francisco Standard. Rize Up moved into a Fisherman's Wharf commissary kitchen in 2021 before relocating to its current SoMa warehouse in 2022, and the bakery now sells wholesale and at 10 farmers markets around the Bay. Its wholesale roster includes accounts with Bi-Rite, Rainbow, Berkeley Bowl, Palm City, Flour + Water, and Señor Sisig, among more than 70 wholesale accounts total, per the same report.

“I'm really proud of what we do,” Anderson said, according to the Standard's account of the opening. The bakery's identity leans heavily on the flavors of California's immigrant communities — its lineup of 10 sourdough loaf styles includes masala, K-pop, and ube versions, alongside limited editions like gumbo and chanterelle miso. That culinary approach traces back to Rize Up's early days, when its sourdough already carried Korean gochujang, Filipino ube, and Indian masala profiles stuffed with curry leaves, serranos, and roasted jalapeños, as KQED has reported.

A Half-Pipe-Inspired Space Built From Setbacks

The café itself was designed by Levy Art + Architecture, which carved a 1,000-square-foot space out of the larger warehouse using terra-cotta tiles, granite counters, and an upside-down curved wooden ceiling ramp modeled on a skateboard half-pipe, the Standard reports. The design nods to Anderson's earlier career: before culinary school, he spent years as a professional inline skater, X Games judge, and co-founder of the I Match Your Trick Association, according to KQED. The café will pour Ritual coffee and Song tea alongside baguette sandwiches for grab-and-go service and savory and sweet toast toppings, including a grilled cheese with spicy kimchi and apricot jam.

Getting to this opening wasn't easy. In November 2023, burglars broke into the Howard Street warehouse overnight and stole cash and equipment, forcing staff to discard open dough and inventory to protect public safety; SFGATE previously put that loss at more than $20,000. Then in July 2024, runoff water from firefighters battling a blaze at a neighboring Natoma Street property flooded Rize Up's kitchen and disabled its walk-in refrigerator, forcing the bakery to throw out 1,000 sourdough loaves in damage SFGATE estimated at nearly $60,000. The Standard's reporting places the true cost of each incident above $100,000 once lost labor and sales are factored in, and notes that community donations helped the bakery resume construction on its café buildout after the setbacks.

Giving Back Beyond the Storefront

Rize Up has a history of supplying other independent food businesses around the city, including custom activated-charcoal sourdough loaves for Portola's Hey Neighbor Cafe and hoagie rolls for Eastern European deli Iggy's Place, according to Tablehopper. The bakery also donates bread to GLIDE Memorial Church and other organizations, and Anderson plans to host pop-ups at the new café focused on BIPOC-owned businesses, per the Standard. Rize Up's Howard Street block has become something of a small artisan-food corridor; Enterprise Brewing Co. opened its taproom next door in July 2023, Tablehopper has noted, and just a few blocks away, Saltwater Bakeshop recently opened its own first permanent SoMa storefront.

Anderson also teaches free artisan bread-making classes for youth at the Bayview Makers Kitchen, extending his investment in San Francisco's food community beyond his own storefront, KQED reports. That community focus sits against a difficult backdrop: San Francisco has been identified as one of the major U.S. metro areas losing Black-owned employer businesses in recent years, despite city programs like the Dream Keeper Initiative and the African American Small Business Revolving Loan Fund, according to the Brookings Institution. Long before Rize Up, Anderson spent nearly a decade as co-owner of D-Structure, a Lower Haight retail shop, art gallery, and screen-printing business that operated on Haight Street from 2006 until its retail closure in 2016, as Hoodline reported at the time.