The owner of UpRising Bakery and Cafe is speaking out about how “extremely hard” it was to announce a potential closure of her business by the end of the month as she now weighs all options and what is best for not only her, but her team.
“It’s been my baby,” Corinna Sac, owner of the Lake in the Hills-based establishment, told the Tribune. “It’s important for me, for my staff. I have seven families working here, so that weighs heavily on me, but then also the community needs me.”
Sac announced late last week an impending forced closure at the end of the month after an eight-month period of financial hardship and targeted negativity stemming from harassment that began in July, when the bakery was vandalized ahead of a “Starry Night Brunch Drag,” a highly anticipated, family-friendly drag show event that was sold out.
“We don’t have the amount of local support on a daily basis to make ends meet because so many of the local people have been impacted and influenced by the negativity and hatred that was surrounding us,” she said. “That’s why we were forced to close. It’s slow season for restaurants in the first place, and then to be faced with additional hardship like we have been, it is nearly impossible, and then for an establishment to find success throughout it all. That’s what we were being faced with.”
Since July, the business and Sac herself have been targeted profusely online, so much so that Sac has been subjected to doxing and wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday: “My personal information regarding the payments on my home, property tax, etc. is private. Our property taxes and home have always been paid up either directly or in escrow by our mortgage carrier. Please keep my family’s business out of your mouths. My husband and children do not deserve your lies and it has real consequences for them. Please stop.”
Sac, 32, testified before a state House of Representatives hearing for a bill that would create civil liability for doxing in Illinois. The bill was passed in the House on Wednesday, according to a news release from the Midwest chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.
After Sac announced the bakery’s closure, a GoFundMe was started for UpRising Bakery and Cafe, which garnered over $30,000 in a matter of days. Sac said Wednesday the money gives her the opportunity to keep the doors open longer, if she and her team decide that’s what’s best.
“We have to decide collectively whether we’re going to continue forward or we’re going to try to find a new location or something else,” Sac said. “We need to make sure that we are able to sustain not only ourselves and my staff, but what we offer to the community long term, and set ourselves up for success.”
David Goldenberg, regional director for ADL’s Midwest chapter, started the online fundraiser for UpRising and said the organization began working with Sac last summer to offer support to her and the business. Goldenberg also testified at the same House of Representatives hearing as Sac.
“I wanted to do something and show we’re not willing to sit idly by and allow haters and bigots to take a victory lap,” Golderberg said. “She’s tried to do right by the communities she serves, and this is just one small thing we could do in return.”
He said he hopes Sac can come to the decision that “is in the best interest of her and her business,” but hopes other businesses will see her work as “courageous just like her” and that “being an ally is not a passive activity but requires activeness.”
Sac, who currently lives in Crystal Lake with her husband and their two children, said she lived in Lake in the Hills for two years “long ago” but grew up in neighboring towns.
She got an associate’s degree from Kendall College in baking and pastry and said she has been in the industry almost her whole life since getting a job at a local bakery in high school. Her passion for baking developed during summer breaks when her grandmother would teach her, Sac said.
“I found baking to be a stress relief and coping skill as I struggled with mental and emotional health during high school,” Sac said.
UpRising is known for being an inclusive bakery and cafe that has an offering for whoever walks through the door with plenty of gluten-free and vegan options and a pro-LGBTQ+ environment.
“We service the community in general,” Sac said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or not. It doesn’t matter if you vote blue or red. We’re a bakery. That’s it. On top of that, we provide food to people who don’t have many other options of places to eat.”
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The positive impact she feels she has made on the community is visible, she said, despite any noise suggesting otherwise.
“I see the homeless at our doors every day getting food,” she said. “That’s making a difference right there. Every day I receive letters or hugs of people coming in to feel safe and welcome here. Every day we are greeted with people who are so grateful that they can come in and have treats they can’t get anywhere else. I feel every single day that we have a very important and positive role in the community, and even though we have had a little bit of a negative light on us right now, overall, there’s a very big, long-lasting positive impact that we’re leaving, and I don’t want that to be diminished by any negativity.”
She said another one of the “pillars at UpRising” is being able to give back to the community in other ways, such as hosting fundraising and charity events.
Sac said she has been working on her business and growing it since 2017, and UpRising was opened in 2021. She said seeing “six years of building it torn down in eight months was heartbreaking and very tough.”
Even amid the hate speech and harassment, Sac said there has been a “great influx of support,” but it wasn’t enough to keep the lights on and the staff paid until the GoFundMe was started. Sac said she and her team will decide “in the next couple of weeks” what their next steps are and make another announcement.
Best-case scenario would be to stay open in their current location, Sac said, but she doesn’t believe it’s feasible. The next best option would be to find a new location for her business in an environment that is maybe “a little more affordable, more inclusive or accepting, and tolerant.”
“Fortunately, and amazingly, people banded behind us, and now it’s our decision,” she said. “I’m very grateful to see how everyone’s come together to keep our doors open, and now we have hope and there’s still a future for us. We just have to figure out what it looks like and where it will be.”
