Sourdough Sophia opens fifth bakery in Primrose Hill

Sourdough Sophia has turned a lockdown side hustle into a five-bakery business, and Primrose Hill is the clearest sign yet that north London still has room for premium sourdough done at scale. What began in Sophia Handschuh and Jesse Sutton-Jones’s Crouch End flat has become a brand with enough pull to keep opening in some of the capital’s most desirable food neighborhoods.

The arc is hard to miss. A neighbour first asked Handschuh to bake bread during lockdown, the couple set up a micro-bakery from their dining room, and demand climbed fast. By October 2020, the business was baking close to 100 loaves a day at its busiest, and it had already pushed past its £25,000 Kickstarter target to help fund a permanent bakery. Nearly 600 backers helped get the first high-street shop in Crouch End over the line.

Since then, the model has been repeated with discipline. The company says it opened its second bakery on Essex Road in Islington in March 2024, then added Liverpool Street and Highgate, giving the brand a footprint that now runs across north London and into the City. Primrose Hill fits that pattern perfectly: affluent, café-heavy, full of residents who treat good bread as a weekly habit rather than a novelty.

The growth is not just about more storefronts. Sourdough Sophia has built a production system that can feed them. Jesse Sutton-Jones has said the Essex Road production site was being expanded to supply the newer branches, and a separate profile said the business was preparing a 7,000 sq ft central bakery and production hub in Bermondsey. That kind of back-end investment is what makes a fifth bakery look like a business strategy, not a vanity opening.

The customer signal is strong too. The brand says it has won two World Bread Awards and three Great Taste Awards, and a local profile put its Instagram following well above 200,000. Highgate gave another clue that demand is still ahead of supply, with the bakery reportedly selling out by 10.30am for three days running. For a sourdough operation built on sustainable ingredients, artisanal techniques, a changing menu and comfort-food classics, Primrose Hill looks less like a leap and more like the next logical catchment.