the sakura

standards

we value you. we appreciate your ethical principles.

we value people. we value everyone involved in the production of our baked goods.

we value our world as our collective living space. we are dedicated to maintain it a place and society worth living in.

last but not least, we love to make you smile :)

自然の美しさ

[ shizen no utsukushisa ] - “beauty of nature”

sakura (桜), the japanese cherry blossom, represents natural beauty & seasonality.
At sakura we create cakes & baked goods for you from mostly local, seasonal ingredients – celebrating their natural taste & beauty.

  • Organic agriculture is the predominant source of our ingredients, to ensure our environment is not exposed to unnecessary pesticides for our baked goods.

    Our ingredients are obtained as locally as possible from the Berlin-Brandenburg area (or from within Germany), to avoid unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions for transport, and to use the freshest produce available.

    Ingredients that are not grown within our region (cane sugar, cocoa, chocolate and vanilla for example), are sourced exclusively from certified fair production.

  • When building our café & bakery, we sourced part of the interior from second hand, in order not to use more resources than required.

    For the things we bought new, we invested a lot of time to research and find the most energy efficient machines.

    Our large oven (miwe condo) is one of the two the most energy efficient models on the market, and our Faema E71 espresso machine saves 40% of energy in comparison to similar machines. Both of these have an integrated “eco mode” to further optimize energy usage every day.

    The energy we’re using to prepare your coffee and bake your cake comes from regional, renewable sources (Bürgerwerke) since day 1. Together, we’ve saved more than 18 tons of unnecessary CO₂ emissions through renewable energy already.

勿体ない

[ mottainai ] - “to precious to waste”

From start to finish, we value our resources, and avoid waste wherever possible. 

  • Our recipes are optimized to avoid food waste. The ouside border of our pâte feuilletée, which is cut off when making our pain au chocolat, we use to make our danish shokupan. From the chickpeas that are leftover from aquafaba, we make our japanese-style hummus, that you can enjoy on our sandwiches. We are designing our recipes to make use of every single part, in order not to waste and respect the precious and beautiful ingredients.

    Our ingredient suppliers WeltPartner, Terra and Bode Naturkost are focusing on climate-friendly transport (DHL GoGreen, transportation by natural gas vehicles) and packaging (eg. bulk-size recycled paper bags, or reusable containers). That’s why we’ve been working with them gladly – Terra and WeltPartner already since our beginning in 2019.

    Inside our bakery, we’re using reusable jars for storage, only very limited amounts of clingfilm & gloves and no aluminium foil at all.

    At our café, we provide napkins (recyclable, from recycled sources) only after asking if required, and offer sustainable take-away packaging options. (see below)

    Cakes that we bake for other cafés are packed in re-usable Pfand containers only, no disposable packaging required.

    Same system for our coffee: the coffee beans come freshly roasted in re-usable containers, which go back to the roastery to be refilled.

    In case there is leftover baked goods, we have been gladly collaborating with TooGoodToGo since 2021, and we’re happy to have hardly any food waste this way!

  • Use ReBowls and ReCups as sustainable alternative for take away, or bring your own containers!

    When you bring your own coffee cup, or take your cake home in your own box - we reward your efforts with our sustainability discount :)

仲良し

[ nakayoshi ] - “a good friend”

People-friendliness (towards all of our guests and collaborators, as well as in our supply chain and within our team) is an integral part of sustainability. That’s why we commit to a people-centered team culture, and discriminating behaviour of any sorts is not welcome at our café and bakery.

We believe it would be a contradiction, claiming to “bake with lots of love” while using ingredients produced by people enduring unfair working conditions, or ingredients that were not grown in a way that is respectful of our collective environment. Therefore, we source ingredients from certified fair trade (cocoa, chocolate, vanilla, cane sugar) or specialty grade (coffee) with transparent sourcing.

Furthermore, is one of our core responsibilities to ensure that not only you, our lovely guests, but also the people baking your cake and preparing your coffee are able to enjoy their work, and feel welcome and comfortable at sakura.

幸せ

[ shiawase ] - “joy”

Happiness is what we aim to provide, in the form of delicious cake, a conscious moment of indulgence. 

Just a moment that you spend at sipping your matcha latte, just a moment to take for yourself, a moment of calm is what we believe everyone deserves in this world that we live in today. Such a moment may be gone so soon again, however this is why we place importance in making every single moment that you spend at sakura as enjoyable as we can. 

We are still optimizing fairstainability of sakura every day, as this is an ongoing process. However, already by now everything that goes into your baked goods is thought through and chosen by hand, to actually supply you with something baked with lots of love ♥︎