About Uprising Breads Bakery

Uprising Breads Bakery has been baking great tasting breads and baked goods for over 40 years. We look for every opportunity to offer healthy choices without compromising those small indulgences that a terrific bakery can offer. At Uprising Breads we never have, and never will, use preservatives or artificial anything in our baking. And we always sweeten with honey, molasses or nothing at all. We offer seven signature breads, and some specialty breads that we make only occasionally – find out when you can get them on our bread event calendar! You can find our popular bakery cafe in the heart of East Vancouver, but many of our products are also available at retailers throughout the Lower Mainland.

Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?

Answer: We are committed to local purchasing. Not all of our product and services purchases are from B.C., but 100% of them are Canadian. We work with about 25 vendors for our inventory products, and all of them are based in Canada. We also use local banks, accountants, construction companies, media/advertising companies, waste management and repair companies. We buy locally roasted coffee from Salt Spring Coffee, bank with Vancity and have recently started working with Crisp Media for digital strategy.

Question: What social practices are you proud of?

Answer: We’re proud to provide good, steady jobs to about 40 people – most of them City of Vancouver residents. We provide our employees with benefits and offer a profit sharing program. We also provide in-kind (product) donations to many groups. We regularly donate to The Vancouver Food Bank and Quest Food Exchange, both working to serve those without proper access to food. We also have a daily donations program called “Donation at Close” that provides bread (some baked goods occasionally) to a group chosen for that day. Applicants apply each month and that way we include as many groups in our donations program as we can.

Question: What environmental practices are you proud of?

With the help of Climate Smart we measure our carbon footprint, offset our greenhouse gas emissions and put in place practices to reduce our emissions. When deciding to replace old equipment, we always consider the energy consumption/efficiency of our new equipment options and chose those with the lowest impact on our planet’s atmosphere. We have a Free Grounds For Your Garden providing neighbours with coffee grounds to fertilize gardens or add to compost piles. We use approximately 1000 KG of coffee beans per year in our small café. By diverting the majority of these grinds to local community gardens like the Strathcona Community Garden Society we are keeping this valuable resource out of our waste stream. Over time we’ve gotten better and sorting our trash to keep out all our paper, plastic glass and metal. Every year our amount of recycled materials grows and garbage destined for the landfill shrinks, especially now that we are separating out organic materials for composting. Another interesting way we’ve found to recycle is with our bread. Since 2015 all unsold bread is now collected by Entrerra, a Vancouver-based company that uses a common beneficial insect to rapidly recover complex nutrients from surplus food scraps. The nutrients contained in this unwanted food is up-cycled at a facility in Langley into sustainable feed ingredients for aquaculture, animal feed and pet food, as well as a natural organic fertilizer product for use in agriculture.