New Video: Mission Pie, San Francisco

Mission Pie is an organic bakery and neighborhood café in the Mission District of San Francisco. They make savory and sweet pies all year round using fresh, seasonal ingredients. By forming strategic partnerships with local farms like Pie Ranch, they can source large quantities of produce and even organic wheat!

Co-owners Karen Heisler and Krystin Rubin believe that "businesses should operate from a values position" and have made it their mission to bring sustainable food to a broader population. As Krystin mentions in the video,

"There is something humble about pie and very accessible. A lot of what we're talking about when we're talking about engaging in local agriculture and the food system and all of that are some rarefied concepts to a lot of people, but pie isn't. It's a very gentle way to open up those conversations."

Mission Pie also collaborates with local youth advocacy organizations to provide a positive work environment to disadvantaged teenagers in the San Francisco area. As a thriving, progressive, for-profit business, they are a great example of a company that reinvests productively and creatively not just in the quality of their ingredients and equipment, but in the lives of the people and communities around them.

PHOTOS: Mission Pie in San Francisco

While visiting the Bay Area last week, we stopped by Mission Pie in San Francisco to shoot a new video. Mission Pie gets its name from the street and the neighborhood where it's located, but the cafe also has a mission of sustainability that's pretty extraordinary. Not only are the ingredients in the pies organic, and wherever possible, local, but Mission Pie also forms partnerships with local farms and nonprofit organizations.

We got to go back in the kitchen and watch them make some pies, and then we tested some delicious apple-cranberry and pear-blueberry pies. (It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.) We haven't finished editing the video yet, but feast your eyes on these photos, and check out the rest at our Flickr page.

-Mark