09/05/2024
Hi everyone,
We wanted to give you all a little more information about why we’re closing the bakery.
Filbert’s has always felt closely entwined with this community, so we know you all have your own relationship with it, with us. And your own stories, and memories, and questions.
Bread is the oldest of things, the heart of communities since we learned how to turn grain into the best expression of itself, so I think it speaks to something deeply human and soulful in us. Which we can see in the outpouring of love and support that we’ve felt over the last few days.
Thank you.
To stop. To close, is the hardest decision we’ve ever made. And as all things that are so deeply rooted in purpose and identity, is nuanced and complex.
There is no one thing, it’s a bit of everything. It’s Covid, Brexit, the global economy. It’s mental health, and family, and timing. It’s self care, and location, and nothing-left.
Operating a small business over the last 10 years has been a constant struggle (lovely, much of the time, but very hard). Partially to do with us not really knowing what we were doing for quite a while, but partially because we’ve seen two proto-recessions, incompetent political leadership, a global pandemic, and the stark impacts of serious climate change; all woven together into an anxious and unpredictable tapestry.
We sit at a point in the market where we can’t keep raising prices - our bread is already a luxury item for many, where it should be a staple. How have we got so far from the traditional village bakery that the healthiest and simplest of products is reserved for the wealthy?
We have both a moral and practical reason to keep our prices as low as can be borne. Too high and people from lower income households can’t come in the first place, and everyone else stops spending as much, which is what we’ve already seeen over the last 6 months (average spend is nearly half what it was this time last year).
It’s no ones fault, this is not a call-out, this is the consequence of austerity, and small business is where it is felt most.
Did you know that one in three small businesses expect to go bust by the end of this year?
30,000 in 2024.
So we are one of 83 small businesses that have closed today. We are a statistic.
And when we drill down through all the other contributing factors, the one that has done it, the one that will push many people over the edge, is unsupportable cost increases.
For us that comes from all quarters:
Ingredients
We place enormous value on provenance of ingredients (local, small producers, organic, tasty), which means we’re watching eagle eyed the global markets and shifts due to all of those confounding factors above, so that we can stockpile and buffer our costs, because the choice is this: raise prices or don’t use those ingredients any more - then reap the consequences either way.
The third choice is to get creative. Be vigilant. Plan. So that's what we’ve done til now.
The olive harvest has failed two years in a row due to climate change related drought and bad weather, which you are seeing now in the price of olive oil in the supermarkets. We saw that coming a year ago and bought A LOT of olives, so we could keep doing olive bread - one of our firm favourites.
The war in The Ukraine saw a spike in vegetable oil prices for all our vegan products.
Chocolate is the newest casualty with the South American crops being ravaged by years of loss (this is year three, with another expected next year, increasing year on year costs by 245%).
The chickpea harvest failed last year and is vulnerable again this year.
British wheat has been hit by the ‘unseasonal’ wet weather we’ve had this year so is only expecting 40% of its harvest.
This story is happening everywhere, all the time. It is only the artificial padding of our economies and the emptying of stockpiles that has kept things stable, but we expect this relative stability to begin to unravel. Prices will rise, harvests will fail, small business will pay the cost.
Energy
Our bills rose from around £350 per month to nearly £1000. Whilst the utility companies rake in massive profits. Energy isn’t more expensive, it just costs us more.
The minimum wage
We have always been embarrassed to be a minimum wage employer. Why is the skilled work of a baker worth less than a plumber? Or an office worker? So we pay pennies above it as best we can, with an optimistic intention to some day pay a fairer wage. But with all of these other costs, we’re trapped. The yearly increases are absolutely deserved but another external mechanism that forces us to raise our prices to meet it, which in turn reduces average spend in the shop or turns customers away. Enough is enough at some point right?
Now I know that if we were in a different location, or a bigger premises, or had a better oven, or more time, or any number of things that we don’t actually have, then our economy of scale would be different. That we may be able to weather these challenges better. But we aren’t, and we don’t, and we’ve been running on fumes for too long.
These external factors all put pressure on small businesses, and we knew we needed to be creative in order to survive. So we tried various things to drive new business - streamlining our production, reducing staff hours a little, saving pennies wherever we could, a delivery service to reach new markets, which was met with great enthusiasm but then not used. Starting a social enterprise to help both ourselves and the wider community become more resilient to these threats (which to be fair, was helping, but not enough, not in time, and a huge undertaking all of its own).
So we have tried, we really have.
ADHD and burnout
Many of you will know that Felicity (Fil) received a late diagnosis for combined type ADHD a year or so ago. This put her lifes experiences into stark contrast, and for many women who have fallen through the misogynistic gaps in the medical community this is an incredibly complex time that comes packaged with grief and anger, and a slow path of acceptance and learning how to work with your own brain, rather than continually fight it.
The complicated feelings of self worth and productivity that capitalist structures impose on us are the antitheses of the ADHD brain, so this un-learning is hard and traumatic and slow. Combined with nearly ten years of pushing to run the bakery despite the ADHD this caused almost catastrophic burnout. Fil hasn’t been able to come into the bakery for atleast six months, and without her passion and creativity and warm chaos the bakery can’t really work.
I stepped in six months ago to hold this for her and for our team, and for you, and to see if we could make enough changes quickly enough to both save the bakery and give Fil time to heal.
We made great strides towards that goal, the team have worked incredibly hard and should be immensely proud of all that they have achieved. But we’ve reached the end of our resources, and the rising costs/dropping sales made the decision for us.
Regardless of the numbers, Fil isn’t able to return any time soon, I have another career to return to, and we need to focus on our family and choose ourselves for the first time in years. The metaphor I’m leaning on is the old airplane one - in an emergency put your own mask on first.
This feels immensely selfish, as it has so many consequences:
Our amazing staff who have been with us for years.
The many wonderful businesses we supply or support.
The food clubs and food banks.
All of you.
We can’t help but feel that we are letting you all down, but the local economy just can’t support us in the current version of Filbert’s so we’ve run out of time. We’ve run out of Fil.
We’re putting our own mask on first.
So thank you all for your suggestions of new and wonderful versions we could try. Thank you for the offers of cash or investment or collaboration. We see you, and we know that something may be possible from all of this love, but not for us, not right now.
Thank you to our staff, to Sally, Antonio, Bonni, Madi, Zion, and Reuben. Who are all shocked and hurting and should hold their heads high. Thanks for being part of teh Filbert's family.
Thank you to our collaborators: The Patten arms, The Printroom, The morecambe bay chowder company, The Brittlestar winebar, The Runner Duck.
Thank you to all of you, our friends and customers.
We love you all.
Please be patient with us while we grieve our way through this process, and if anyone can support our wonderful staff, we’d be very grateful indeed.
Perhaps when the dust has settled, there will be space and energy for some new version of Filbert’s flavoured love.
Joe & Fil
