Five San Francisco 49ers players swapped their cleats for aprons this week, joining mentor-and-mentee pairs from Big Brothers Big Sisters for a cake-decorating bake-off at Cultivate Kitchen in San Jose. Brandin Cooks, Osa Odighizuwa, Siran Neal, Jon Weeks and Carver Willis helped middle and high school students customize their own cakes, which were judged on creativity, presentation and taste.
As reported by KRON4, the event paired players with real mentor-mentee duos from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program rather than staging a generic team outing. Cultivate Kitchen, the San Jose culinary venue near Diridon Station that hosted the competition, supplied the ingredients and recipe for the contest. Founded in 2012 by sommelier Colleen Mahoney under the name Savory Kitchen, the business, according to Cultivate Kitchen, regularly hosts private events and corporate workshops, including its own structured Great Bake-Off Challenge, a 90-minute timed competition in which teams work from partial recipes before presenting their creations to judges, per the venue's event listing.
Players Dig In Alongside Their Young Counterparts
Jon Weeks, the 49ers long snapper who turned 40 in February and signed a one-year extension with the team in March after his second career Pro Bowl selection, according to Sactown Sports, said the players enjoyed getting to know the participants and seeing their excitement about the competition. He added that the group had fun making cakes and simply talking with the kids throughout the event, per the same KRON4 report. Siran Neal ultimately tasted all of the finished cakes before selecting a winner, and every bake-off participant walked away with tickets to a 49ers game later this season.
For Odighizuwa, the afternoon carried personal resonance. He was once a Little himself in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, enrolled as a child in Portland before going on to play at UCLA and reach the NFL, according to background from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which inducted him into its Alumni Hall of Fame in June 2024 at the organization's national conference in Dallas. He told KRON4 that mentorship can have a meaningful impact on a young person, a sentiment rooted in his own path through the program.
A Pattern of Recognition and Regional Investment
Odighizuwa's community work has drawn league-wide attention beyond this single appearance. In September 2025, the NFL Players Association named him its Week 2 Community MVP, a league-wide honor for active players who demonstrate exceptional local service, which came with a $10,000 grant for his charitable foundation, according to the NFL Players Association.
The bake-off also lands within a broader local mentorship push. Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area served over 500 youth in 2025; 94% of participating youth reported increased educational expectations. Nationally, Big Brothers Big Sisters research shows youth matched with adult mentors are 52% less likely to skip school and 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs than unmatched peers, according to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
The bake-off brought 49ers players and local youth together for hands-on culinary learning.
