Name: Sunrise Bakery
Type of Business: Bakery
Location: 1561 Geer Road
Hours of Operation: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday
Contact Info: (209) 632-9400
History of Business: Offering a wide variety of multicultural baked goods, Sunrise Bakery has been one of Turlock’s longest running bakeries since opening their doors in 1991. While the bakery specializes in Assyrian pastries, the owners have expanded their range of delicious products over the years, making Sunrise Bakery a Turlock favorite.
Filameh and Ebrahim Givargis first opened the bakery alongside Filameh’s parents Sam and Jenia Makoor in the shopping center located at the corner of Minnesota Avenue and Geer Road.
“Filameh always had a passion for baking,” said Sargon Eddy, son-in-law and operations manager of the bakery. “She could not stop baking and so it was her passion for it that led to opening the bakery, which was at first based on her recipe for nazook and lavash bread.”
After five years the business became successful and moved to the old Polly Ann bakery location in downtown Turlock in 1996.
“When we moved to the old Polly Ann bakery site, we increased the line of what we carried to include Danishes, coffee cakes, a slew of different types of cookies and pastries,” said Eddy.
Then in 2006, the bakery moved to the current Geer Road location while continuing to bake lavash and other specialty breads in their downtown building.
“The business has grown at this current location with more foot traffic,” said Eddy. “We do all of our pastry baking here and keep the old site for baking our lavash and different types of breads that we distribute all over the nation.”
With three distributors in California, the bakery’s lavash bread and pastries are delivered to San Jose, Los Angeles, parts of Northern California and Silicon Valley. The bakery also ships and sells their products to businesses and homes across the country.
Business Specialty: The bakery’s signature product, nazook, comes in two flavors – vanilla, and a cinnamon flavor with walnuts and sugar. Other popular baked goods include pirough, a moist cake with either apricot or cranberry jam; kada, one of the oldest traditional Assyrian pastries for breakfast or afternoon tea with a salty filling; and tabagha, a layered cake with homemade European custard inside.
The bakery also offers a full line of sugar cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, red velvet cake, marble cake, coconut macadamia cookies and much more. Custom decorated wedding and birthday cakes are also available for purchase.
“We pretty much sell anything to do with afternoon tea, which is really big in our culture,” said Eddy. “Anything from Turkish coffee, to different types of teas, seeds and nuts, cookies and different types of desserts. We offer it all.”
