If there’s one thing people had plenty of in 2020, it was time.
Time to reflect and reimagine, and in Tucson baker Hannah Houlden’s case, time to reinvent herself.
The COVID-19 pandemic cost Houlden, who has been baking in Tucson for eight years, a steady job as a morning chef at a University of Arizona sorority.
While she was working at the sorority house, she was also building a baking business, Rise Above, but it was definitely not ready for primetime.
After being furloughed, she decided to reinvent her young business into a vegan bakery.
“I took the extra time and went fully vegan,” the 28-year-old baker said.
She converted her operation to fully vegan to coincide with her vegan lifestyle; she has been vegan for about five years.
The result has been nothing shy of impressive. Within months, she was able to grow her business from one wholesale account to six: Presta Coffee Roasters, Woops! Bakeshop, Coffee Times Drive-Thru, The Korean Rose, Westover Farm and Pivot Produce. She has more than 2,000 people following her Instagram @houldens.riseabove.
She also does a monthly visit to downtown Mesa’s Vegan Drive-Thru at The Nile Theatre and sells her baked goods through her website, houldensriseabove.com.
Coffee Times Drive-Thru on East Speedway has carried Houlden’s pastries since last August.
Almond Bear Claws are one of the vegan pastries made by Hannah Houlden of Houlden’s Rise Above.
Michael Cripps, who owns Coffee Times Drive-Thru with his brother and uncle, said Rise Above’s pastries are consistently delicious and buttery and pair well with his coffees. On most days, he sells out of her turnovers, pop tarts, cookies and other pastries.
Rise Above is the latest move for Houlden, who got her start baking for the popular Tucson sandwich chain Beyond Bread. She also ran the kitchen at Epic Café downtown before joining Prep and Pastry as its youngest pastry chef when she was just 22.
“I can’t sing, I can’t draw,” Houlden said, but she can bake.
Houlden, who grew up in Tucson, starts baking at 2 or 3 a.m. most days from the home she shares with her husband, Meanderthal Chocolate owner Michael Houlden.
Houlden describes her pastries as rustic and classic with some modern influence. One of her bestsellers is her vegan strawberry pop tart, which, like most of her pastries, is inspired by foods she likes or those she sees on TV.
“I have this new turnover. It’s a jalapeño popper turnover, and it’s really just because I was like, man, I miss jalapeño poppers, and then I was like what can I do that tastes like that?” she asked excitedly.
Before going full-on vegan with her bakery, Houlden spent years making traditional baked goods. The transition to vegan tested her baking skills and took time, but it has paid off.
“Seeing her take what she was doing and transferring it to being plant-based without compromising on texture and flavor was… brilliant,” Michael Houlden said.
So far, Rise Above isn’t making Hannah Houlden a millionaire; she invests much of what she makes back into the business, she said.
But it has never really been about the money, she is quick to note. It’s about doing something “that I wholeheartedly believe in,” she said.
“As my following started growing and more and more people were eating my treats, I really did get a lot of messages from people about it being like a source of catharsis for them, that it was just like something to look forward to or to treat themselves to while everything else seemed kind of upside down,” Houlden said.
