Why real bakeries still matter: The inside scoop from a bakers son

Does it feel like nothing is made properly anymore- or is that just me? When I walk past the supermarket bakery section, everything looks too uniform and commercial to be real food.  The perfectly round sugar doughnut or the the sourdough loaves each with exactly the same neat pattern on top. What makes for 'good' bakery these days just leaves me confused, not because for lack of selection, quite the opposite - its clear their focus is to give us exactly what we think we want when we want it.

My ideas of a bakery is very different, I was brought up to believe good food is about love, care and ‘only the best will do’. The way to do business is to make products people enjoy and actually want to buy again not just make a loaf of bread as cheap and visually appealing as need be to be convince the masses to buy it. As a business analyst I'm all about optimisation and efficiency. Even though it annoys me, I'm proud to tell you my family bakery does very little optimally or efficiently - true craft cannot be defined in a spreadsheet, instead you know it when you taste it and feel it when you walk through the door.

This blog post started life as post about the cost of living crisis and we started our mystery boxes to make our products more accessible. It just didn't sit right. It’s not in my blood to try and “trick” people into buying our products, I've been raised to believe if you make good products everything else will take care of its self.

For those of you who are now thinking to yourselves 'this is no way to run a business- what's he on about'. Everything I learned at university would agree with you, four generations of my family and 113 years of St Mawes' history would beg to differ. 

Find out more at www.stmawesbakery.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts - see my contact details below. 

Contact Oliver Curtis 

Oliver Curtis AMIMA | E-mail: olivercountspasties@protonmail.ch