We’re celebrating Best of the Bay 2026 with a multitude of Editors’ Picks of things we love. Please join us at our 13th Annual Gala on October 27 to celebrate even more!
SoMa’s Howard Street is looking a lot brighter these days — just look for the brilliant yellow Aaron De La Cruz mural and you’ll be at Rize Up Sourdough’s new Test Kitchen Café (1160 Howard Street, SF).
Black-owned, SF-based bakery Rize Up was launched by Azikiwee Anderson in his own backyard in 2020—it was such a lifeline to purchase bread from his doorstep in the early pandemic, and the business’s provenance was especially poignant after George Floyd’s murder. Anderson’s operation gave an outlet to converse about what was happening in the fresh air, grieving behind our flimsy masks.
While Rize Up loaves and boules are now available in a number of stores and farmers’ markets in the Bay Area, it’s not always easy to find more than a few of the many varieties, which may be reason in itself to visit the Test Kitchen Café. (My personal favorite flavors are the gochujang-spiked K-Pop and the pleasingly purple ube boule.)
The cafe is located in the warehouse space that’s been home to the production kitchen for four years—a burglary in 2023 and a flood from a fire next door in 2024 contributed to how long it took to open it up as a place to linger over coffee, tea, toast, and pastries made in-house. A comfy communal table and some delicate outdoor seating encourage customers to interact, which is how I found out from a departing fellow that I messed up my first visit by not getting the smoked trout toast (but I did not regret ordering a kimchi grilled cheese).
Rize Up itself offers one of San Francisco’s few online pay it forward programs, where they’ll bake a loaf of bread and donate it to one of their nonprofit partners in the customer’s name for $10.
“Stepping off a dirty greyhound bus was a single mother with 3 small children in tow. Searching for a new life and a roof for her family for the night with nothing in her wallet. This was my arrival to San Francisco,” Anderson wrote on the company website. It was 1980, and his family had left their home in New Orleans. He was five-years old.
“Finally a battered women’s shelter in San Francisco provided us that roof and support we so desperately needed,” he continued. “After several more months they helped us find our footing and more permanent housing. The kindness we experienced during this time really helped to shape me into the person, father, brother, husband, and business owner I am today.”
Rize Up is truly a tale of rising up with the community to success.
