Bi-Rite Creamery

At Bi-Rite Creamery we make ice cream, soft serve and baked goods by hand in small batches, to taste like the stuff we grew up with. We strive to create unique and delicious flavors with local, handmade and organic ingredients in a responsible and sustainable way. Bi-Rite Creamery is part of the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, which began with the opening of Bi-Rite Market in 1940. As two longtime San Francisco pastry chefs, we started baking for Bi-Rite Market in 2002 in a rented kitchen, packing up our goods and driving them to Bi-Rite every day. When an empty space across the street from the Market opened up, we jumped on it! When Bi-Rite Creamery opened in 2006, the goal was to provide something for the neighborhood that didn’t already exist; so in addition to baked goods, we began creating ice cream recipes from scratch. We were proud to be the first ice cream shop in San Francisco to use Straus Family Creamery organic dairy, the first certified organic dairy west of the Mississippi; only 45 miles away, they supply all of the organic milk and cream for our ice cream and soft serve. Our flavors rarely contain more than five ingredients, the majority of which are organic and locally-sourced.

Early on, we became obsessed with making the most intensely-flavored ice cream possible; we felt that all too often, ice cream didn’t live up to its promise. We believed that lemon ice cream should be really lemony, butter pecan should taste like toasty pecans and rich brown butter, and chocolate should taste like real chocolate.

In the bakery next to our ice cream kitchen, we make everything that goes into our ice cream, whether it's brownies, peanut brittle, or the snickerdoodles for our Ricanelas flavor. Our Coffee Toffee ice cream is made with coffee from Ritual Coffee Roasters a few blocks away, and with almond toffee that we make here in our shop. Our Honey Lavender is created with organic dried lavender and Bobby Winston’s Sonoma, California honey. Our Rocky Road is made with house-made marshmallows and house-made TCHO Chocolate-covered almonds. Our Roasted Banana is created by roasting organic bananas with brown sugar until tender and caramelized.

We also support local farms and respect the seasons. Balsamic Strawberry is one of our most popular flavors, but we only make it in spring and summer, when organic local strawberries from Swanton Berry Farm and others are at their juicy, fragrant peak. All of the granitas, sorbets and popsicles we make are from fruit sourced from local farms and orchards. Our Concord Grape popsicles are made from grapes grown on the Bi-Rite Farm in Sonoma. We use fair-trade Madécasse vanilla beans and extract in our ice cream and most of our baked goods. Come winter, we switch over to ice cream flavors like Earl Grey, Eggnog, Peppermint Stick with Seely Family Farm organic mint oil, along with organic Orange Cardamom to take advantage of the California citrus harvests. We look forward to using Mead and Mead’s Maple Syrup in our comforting Maple Walnut ice cream. The holidays bring in baked goods such as pumpkin, pecan, and organic apple pies, holiday cookies, Stollen, and Bûche de Noël for Christmas, and traditional Challah, Chocolate Babka, and Macaroons for Hanukkah. 

We make cakes, pies, puddings, pastries, granola, and breads year-round with organic flour and sugar; our changing menu reflects the bounty of each season as well as holiday traditions. Many of these baked goods are available for purchase at the Creamery, and can also be found at both Bi-Rite Market locations. Other items can be ordered from the Bi-Rite Catering menu. 

Not only do we care deeply about our ingredients—we also care about the impact we have on our environment. Our sugar cones are made from organic ingredients, and we source our ingredients locally whenever possible. We use compostable serving cups, spoons, napkins, and pint and quart containers. Our tastes are sampled on metal spoons that don’t create waste. In doing so, we prevent more than 700,000 plastic spoons from filling our landfill each year. Because of these and other sustainable practices, we’re a Certified San Francisco Green Business.