We are beyond thankful for the cooler fall weather and we’re stoked on all the new additions it brings with it.
In honor of our 1 year anniversary, we offered $1 Old Skool rolls for 4 hours on Sunday, August 7th as a thank you to our customers. We hired DJ Noodles to spin some old skool hip-hop beats, set up a monitor in the store where you could display your tweets and gave away a $100 gift certificate to one lucky newsletter subscriber. Our oven was non-stop all day and we had a line out the door for up to 40 minutes! For those loyal customers who waited in line, this is the greatest compliment you could give us. We are beyond thankful for your patience, your loyalty and your business. We love you!

Picture: VegNews Magazine

With that said, we’ve taken a look back on all of our progress over the last year as well as some areas that need to be improved upon. As of November 1st, we will be adjusting some of our prices to match the costs of what we pay our vendors. Some companies raise their prices without telling you, but we’re not shady like that. We felt it was right to put everything out in the open. Here’s why…

First, we believe that a happy employee makes a happy customer. We know that surviving on minimum wage is nearly impossible these days which is why we make it a point to pay our employees a fair, liveable wage. We consider our employees family and not only do we care about what’s best for the company, but what’s best for our employees as well.

Second, we make sure that all of our vendors use vegan ingredients which unfortunately aren’t as easily available (or affordable) as non-vegan ingredients. Often times, we end up driving for hours to pick up these ingredients to assure that our product meets certain standards. Since our purchasing options are limited to such a small amount of vendors, we have no choice but to pay up when they increase their prices. Sadly, this has been the case with more than one vendor over the last year. We’ve done our best to buffer you from those cost increases, but feel that we are no longer able to meet the financial demands without compromising the product. In order to continue offering an exceptional product with a variety of options, we’ve decided to slightly increase our prices . Nothing drastic folks. We’re talking cents. Not dollars. We just thought it best to give you a heads up and thank you for your understanding in advance.

In more exciting news, we’ve teamed up with Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary this year to celebrate a “Toast to the Turkeys!” For the entire month of November, we’ll be donating 50% of all Baby Bun sales to help out with feeding, housing, and general care for the animals. That holiday spirit is creepin’ up on us!

Speaking of, be sure to keep an eye out for some of our favorite holiday specials! Pumpkin spice frosting with gingersnaps and holiday spices, peppermint hot cocoa with marshmallows, candy cane pieces, peppermint ‘Oreos’, ‘egg’ nog frosting…*drool*

Thanks again for your continued support and positive comments in the shop and on Yelp.com. We are eternally grateful for your feedback.

We look forward to spending another amazing holiday season with you!

Shannon Michelle

Can you believe it’s been one year since Cinnaholic opened it’s doors?! Through all the trial and errors, blood, sweat and tears, we made it! This last year has been one of the most rewarding yet challenging times of our lives. Over the course of a year we’ve proudly served over 25,000 people just in the store alone! Of course, we haven’t forgotten about our online customers. It’s been so exciting to see all the different states that our rolls are being sent to and know that we’re reaching people thousands of miles across the country.

Members of our small bakery family have come and gone as time has passed and some still remain from the very beginning. Each of them have played an integral role in the shaping of what Cinnaholic is today. We’ve survived equipment breakdowns, dough failures, insane rushes, and dreadfully slow days. We’ve put everything we have into making sure that our customers leave our store with an amazing, unique, handmade product and a great experience. As a result, we’ve met some incredible people along the way and have shared some very interesting stories.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with some fantastic organizations such as Farm Sanctuary, PETA and several other animal rights related organizations to help provide care for animals in need which has been extremely rewarding. We are so thankful to have been given the opportunity to reach out to so many people and offer educational literature and talk with our customers about the benefits of following a vegan diet. We’re even more thankful for all the positive feedback we’ve received! Speaking of feedback, THANK YOU to everyone who has left us a positive review on our Yelp! page. Sure, there have been days when we weren’t on top of our game but we’re HUMAN! We appreciate each of the 276 glowing reviews that put us at a 4.5 star rating. You rock!

We’d like to thank all the organizations who’ve interviewed us or mentioned us in the press. Thanks to SF Weekly, VegNews, Entrepreneur Magazine, NBC’s ‘The Feast’, The Oakland Tribune, The Contra Costa Times and many more. Without press, we’d still be the Bay Areas best kept secret! We’ve also been super blessed with the opportunity to gain some great exposure by serving some major celebrities such as Rise Against, Milo Ventimiglia, Ed Templeton, members of Marilyn Manson, Anti-Flag, John Feldman of Gold Finger, Davey Havok of AFI & Ricky Rockett of Poison just to mention a few. Who could have guessed Hollywood would end up in our store?! Thanks guys!

As if all this positivity wasn’t enough to have us beaming from ear to ear, we were just recently informed that Cinnaholic won the East Bay Express Editors Picks award for ‘Best Remixed Comfort Food’! What an amazing anniversary present! This definitely merits a celebration!

Celebrate with us!

In honor of our 1 year anniversary, we will be offering $1 Old Skool rolls from 12-4 pm on Sunday, August 7th as a thank you to our customers.

Don’t forget! We also have brand new reusable travel mugs for sale too! Not only can you represent in style with these classy lookin’ mugs but your cup of coffee is FREE every time you bring it in and purchase a regular priced roll!*

See you all Sunday, August 7th!

* Terms & Conditions for the Cinnaholic free coffee deal:

• Only valid with purchase of a Cinnaholic anniversary travel mug (limited supply).
• Valid for one free coffee per person per day with purchase of regular priced roll.
• Offer available only while supplies last.
• May not be combined with other offers.

Hey everybody! It’s been a while since we’ve updated our blog but I promise it’s not because we don’t love you. We’ve been crazy busy!

In February, we teamed up with PETA and launched our big Valentines Day promotion. We received an incredible response! Almost 70 dozen orders were sent out to your sweetie pies all over the country. Some of which included a ridiculously adorable gift card option with a personalized message. Each $5 donation went directly to PETA, then Cinnaholic matched that donation so that a total of $10 per order helped support PETA’s ground-breaking work for animals. By the way, every card was hand-written and I have to admit, there were semi-awkward moments when we were complimenting your sweeties buns.

In the beginning of March, we teamed up with a new start-up company called Daily Gourmet. Daily Gourmet is designed to find the most decadent companies in the country and share great products from unique producers with their consumers at a reduced price. In other words, they offer super bomb gourmet goods at awesome discount prices. We were stoked to be chosen as the very first deal to be featured on their website! After 2 full days of baking around the clock (I know some of you saw us dancing around deliriously in the store at 2am) we managed to ship out 90 dozen orders! It was an exhausting week for our entire staff but well worth all the positive responses that came rolling in the following week.

Speaking of positive responses, we’d like to thank the following companies for their kind words as of recent. Entrepreneur Magazine published an article titled ‘10 Business Investments to Make Now‘ featuring you guessed it, yours truly.

We were also the first company featured on Baking.net‘s new monthly write up ‘The Faces of Vegan Baking‘ and just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, we ran across this mention when we were standing in line at the grocery store. Cinnaholic made #16 of ’99 things you must do’ on the VegNews ‘Vegan Bucket List‘! Holy flattered Batman!

With a new month right around the corner, you can bet we’ve been tossing around a few ideas. Here’s a sneak peek at what we have in store…

Beginning in just a few weeks, we’ll be offering 100% vegan, all organic ice cream by Rocket Ship Ice Cream run by Sarah Smart! You may recognize Sarah’s ice cream from Millennium Restaurant, The Beehive Market and most recently, Whole Foods. Regardless what you may have already tried, she’s concocted three new tasty custom flavors specifically designed for Cinnaholic that will be exclusive to the shop! And you thought cinnamon rolls with toppings couldn’t get any better.

Happy Spring everyone! See you soon!

There were so many exciting things to be thankful for in November. Mainly, the “fame train” that ran through our store this month!

We were given the opportunity to present the movie premier of Bold Native when it came to town which was SUPER exciting. The movie captured Charlie Cranehill, an animal liberator wanted for domestic terrorism, who emerges from the underground to coordinate a nationwide action as his estranged CEO father tries to find him before the FBI does. Cool, right?

After the show, guest speaker John Robbins and Jake Conroy (one of the SHAC 7) dropped some crazy inspiration on us that left us all feeling enlightened and empowered. Finally, after months of emailing back and forth, we got to chat with director Denis Hennelly and producer Casey Suchan after the Q&A segment of the show. They’ve definitely made our list of top ten raddest people!  We ended the night with a round of hugs from friends we hadn’t seen in a while with hopes to catch up with them more at the Saturn Cafe Space Lounge later in the week. Turns out Joaquin Pastor, the main character in Bold Native, was playing a show with his band Masks. Amazing people, amazing music, amazing vegan peanut butter milkshake. That pretty much summed up the night.

Speaking of shows, we attended another event later in the month at the Regency Ballroom in SF that we thought was worth mentioning. One of our good friends who runs the sound board for Bad Religion was in town so we decided to trudge out in the rain to deliver some rolls and say hello. After briefly being hassled by security with our somewhat soggy box of cinnamon rolls in hand, we finally made it backstage in time to watch the end of the Bouncing Souls set and bump fists with Fat Mike and the Bad Religion guys before the main event. Needless to say, an incredible night for us, our friend, and our cinnamon rolls.

At the beginning of the month, a good friend of ours, Cello Dias, popped his head in to try out our rolls and drop off a demo cd for his new band Against All Will. If you live in LA, definitely check these guys out!

We were also blessed with a surprise visit from pro skater and artist extraordinaire, Ed Templeton and his wife who popped in to buy a few rolls! Staffer Justin, managed to snag a quick pic before they headed out.

By the end of the month we were beaming with excitement from everything that had happened. This was about the point where I logged into our Twitter account and saw a post that said…

“MV” meaning, Milo Ventimiglia. As in the star of the TV show ‘Heroes‘. You might also recognize him as Rocky’s son in Rocky 6, or the hot tattooed guy in Fergie’s ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry‘ video. You know exactly who I’m talking about ladies! Somewhere between being flattered and stoked, I noticed that he had almost 32,000 followers! Flattered just went out the window and turned into GRATEFUL. Thanks for the Cinnaholic mention Milo!

Ok, so all these crazy awesome things had been happening throughout the month. I was worried that I was about to have a stroke from all the excitement so we decided it was time to schedule a mellow night with our friends to celebrate and give thanks. We ended our perfect month with a perfect meal. A ridiculous all vegan Thanksgiving dinner with homemade Seitan and all the fixin’s!

Somehow we’ve managed to digest a weeks worth of Thanksgiving leftovers and now… we’re hungry for more action!

We’re gearing up to help you redeem your gift certificate purchases that you all generously purchased back in September when we needed a helping hand. We’ll be offering our tasty seasonal specials (Candy Cane topping, Peppermint Hot Chocolate anyone?) as well as organizing some fancy surprises and other exciting store announcements for the month of Decemer. Be sure to keep an eye out!

BRING IT December!

Shannon Michelle

Looking for a smaller version of our gourmet cinnamon rolls? Now, you can have it!

We are now offering bite-sized buns that are just as tasty and a million times cuter than our original rolls! Our light, fluffy dough is rolled in a sweet cinnamon sugar mixture then formed into tiny buns. We place them in adorable little liners then bake them to perfection in our mini tins. Once they’ve come out of the oven, we top them with one of our 27 frosting flavors and sprinkle them with a variety of different toppings.

So what’s up with the turkey’s you ask? For the entire month of November, we will donate a portion of all Baby Bun sales to Farm Sanctuary’s Adopt a Turkey program!

Have a special event coming up? Our Baby Buns are sure to impress all your friends, family and co-workers! Feel free to contact us for more info on catering and large orders.

Many of you have already heard about the new animal rights movie coming out called Bold Native. When the trailer for this masterpiece hit the web months ago, we jumped at the chance to get in touch with the producers. After a few emails back and forth and after a stop at our store, we were finally able to meet (and feed) the faces behind the movie. Our love for them, and their love for our rolls, have officially come together to proudly present the Bold Native SF screening!

Check out a preview of the Bold Native trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB0ITQfWjfk

John Robbins, best-selling author, activist and former heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, will host the San Francisco premier of the independent feature film Bold Native, the first fiction film about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a non-centralized group of animal liberators and economic saboteurs that the FBI calls their top domestic terrorist priority. The San Francisco screening concludes an independently booked summer tour by Bold Native which brought the film to capacity audiences in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Washington DC, Des Moines, and New York City.

This special press event and screening will be  held on Thursday, November 18th at 7:00 p.m. at the Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight Street, San Francisco. Doors will open to members of the press at 6pm and the film will begin at 7pm. John Robbins will be available for interview & photos at 6:15 p.m. and will introduce the film at 7:00 p.m. A second screening will begin at 9:30 p.m. Following each screening, animal liberation activist Jake Conroy, who served three years for nonviolent activism that targeted an animal research lab, will say a few words followed by a Q&A with Suchan, Hennelly, and stars Joaquin Pastor and Nik Tyler.

The film reflects a growing cultural debate about the use of animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research. It introduces viewers to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006, a law which enables the prosecution of activists as terrorists if their actions result in economic damage to corporations in animal industries like factory farms, slaughterhouses, research labs or fur farms. In addition to narrative storytelling, the film incorporates undercover footage from labs, farms, and real-life animal liberations for stunning realism.

If all that awesomeness isn’t enough to convince you to get off your booty and come see it, how about this?

Anyone that stops by the Cinnaholic store this weekend has a chance to win 2 pairs of tickets to the SF screening! Just leave us your contact info and cross your fingers! SO. EXCITED. Are YOU?!

Have a special event coming up? We got yo’ back!

That’s right folks… the Cinnacake has been born! Thanks to one curious customer and 2 of our uber creative employees, we are now offering Cinnacakes! What the heck is a Cinnacake, you ask? Imagine the best cinnamon roll you ever had, smothered in the best frosting you ever had, then topped with your favorite toppings… times 12! AND… it’s ALL VEGAN!

Perfect for any event! Celebrating a birthday? Need to get that raise at work? Is it your parents anniversary? Did you piss someone off? Whatever the reason, Cinnacakes are perfect for all occasions!

• Thinking of you gift for family, neighbors & friends

• Business meetings, office treats

• BBQ’s and house parties

• Holiday themed cakes

• Thank you gifts

• Christmas gifts

• Birthdays

• Moving/ Housewarming treat

• Anniversaries

• Bachelor/ette parties, bridal showers, baby showers

• Afternoon tea, brunch, picnics, social clubs, study meetings

• College care package

  The possibilities are endless! Oh yeah, and don’t forget, we have GIFT CERTIFICATES in ANY AMOUNT too!

*We offer Cinnacakes in a variety of sizes. Small (6 rolls), Medium (8 rolls) and Large (12 rolls). Please give us a minimum of 24 hours advance notice. Call us at 1-510-647-8684 for complete pricing options. Prices may vary depending on quantity of frostings and toppings you choose.*

Trust us, this could very well be the best thing that’s ever happened to you!

This summer has been incredible for us! We kicked off or grand opening in July with a TON support from our fellow veg friends (thanks guys!) We met all kinds of new, interesting people in August (including the drunk, wandering man who repeatedly knocked on our window at 7 am asking if we had any beer); and we were introduced to a whole new crowd of students and Cal gamers in September. GO BEARS!?!

Sadly, it’s time to tuck our flip-flops away. BUT we’re gearing up for what’s sure to be an awesome Autumn! Our friends Alex Eaves (Stay Vocal) and singer/songwriter Roger Harvey (Dandelion Snow), are helping us break in the fall season with some kick ass music, crazy cool reuse apparel, and of course, some super sweet cinnamon rolls and piping hot De La Paz coffee!

So who’s this Alex guy and what’s Stay Vocal you say? Stay Vocal’s mission is to encourage people to reuse whenever and wherever possible.  They provide a variety of ReUse Apparel that embraces different fashions, styles, and humor. By reusing, we help to preserve and protect our planet’s precious resources. Stay Vocal was also recently nominated for Top 10 Finalist for Green America’s Green Business Of The Year! Woot woot! “Go Alex, it’s your birthday!”

Roger Harvey (Dandelion Snow), is a rad vegan singer/songwriter who just happens to be produced by one of Cinnaholic’s favorite dudes, Chris (aka #2) from Anti-Flag. Remember those Rocky Road rolls they took on tour last winter? We’re super stoked to have the opportunity to feature Dandelion Snow as OUR FIRST EVER live acoustic performance in the shop!

Dandelion Snow – The Grand Scheme of Things

So when is all this going down and how can you be a part of all this ridiculously awesome action?! Come down to the store between 3-7 pm THIS THURSDAY (Sep. 23rd)! Grab some coffee and a roll, listen to some sweet tunes, check out some badass apparel… oh did we mention Stay Vocal will be slangin’ limited edition Cinnaholic shirts?! There are only 25 of these bad boys left so get em’ while they’re here! Thanks to last months t-shirt design contest winner, Suzy Tolen. Total cuteness!

If all that wasn’t enough to convince you, we’ll be offering a very special roll that day AND if you purchase a limited edition shirt, a free cup a joe is on us!

It’s lookin’ like it’s going to be a fun evening. See you there!

Last week was INSANE for us! Especially this last Saturday!

We decided to offer samples for our grand opening day so that everyone could get a taste of a few different flavors. The best part? It was only $3.50 to fill up a box of 4! We had a steady line of people waiting outside from 12-4pm which our friend Karine Brighten helped to organize. By 4:00pm, we were SOLD OUT! Covered in frosting and toppings, we all beamed with excitement. Despite the crowd, everything went pretty smoothly. The Cinnaholic staff joined the Veg News crew next door at Saturn Cafe for lunch afterward. It was also their opening day. A quick burger and some fries later, it was back to the shop for clean up. We decided to take a breather on Sunday to replenish our stock and soak our feet.

Rested and rejuvenated, we were up bright and early on Monday morning. 4:30 am to be exact! Throughout the week we seemed to have a pretty steady flow of people. We had our rushes, our slower times, and of course our dead times. Our staff did an amazing job managing everything and everyone.

Because this is our first business, of course we made some mistakes which resulted in learning… a lot. There was a point in time where during a rush, we might have forgotten to add the “butter” to the recipe, maybe we ran out of a few ingredients a few times and maybe our POS system was acting up. Despite the difficulty we had with some of our suppliers, our deliveries, our equipment and… eh hem…operator error, we are really proud of our staff and ourselves for managing to get through everything without pulling our hair out.

We know that every business that’s starting up has some kinks to work out. We took a lot of notes and listened to a lot of suggestions this week. We hope that everyone who stopped by was satisfied and for those who may not have had a life changing experience, we hope you were forgiving. We are so thankful for our staff, our investors, our vendors, our friends, family, and most of all, for YOU! Our customers.

We REALLY appreciate all the positive Yelp reviews and we’ve taken all of your suggestions into consideration. We’d love to hear anymore feedback that you might have. Please send us a message or leave us a comment here on the website.

Thanks again for all your support. We look forward to seeing you in the shop!

Love,

Shannon & Florian

Cinnaholic is proud to announce our grand opening!

Assuming our final inspections pass next week, we plan to officially open up shop on Saturday, July 17^th!!! Please stop by from 12pm – 4pm and check out all the delicious treats we have in store for you.

We bake everything on-site and allow you to customize your own cinnamon roll! Feel like a Pina Colada or a Rootbeer roll? Perhaps a Rocky Road or a Banana Nut are more your style? Whatever you like, you got it!  And you know what the best part is? As a thank you for celebrating with us for our grand opening, we’ve decided to offer you any roll for just $3.50!!!

We couldn’t have fulfilled our dream of serving you tasty treats without the help of friends and family. We are so grateful for our investors who made this all possible, to our grand opening organizer Karine Brighten of Karine Brighten Events, to our new staff, to the press for spreading the word, to those who have supported us by attending local bakesales and events, and to YOU for your kind words and business.  We are honored to be the Bay Area’s first gourmet cinnamon roll shop (and vegan ta’boot)!

For the latest updates on our offerings and specials, please sign up for our newsletter! You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

We look forward to meeting you on Saturday, July 17^th!