14/01/2022
I’m very sorry to say that the bakery won’t be reopening. It’s a long story but I’ll try and break it down into something that, hopefully, makes sense.
The bakery that we built a little under 4 years ago is old and tired. We put it together on a shoestring budget and it’s done us very proud. We’ve grown from a 1 person team with a handful of customers to a team of 8 with queues down the street.
We’ve known for quite a while that we needed to rebuild the bakery however, as much as we love the beautiful old building we’re in, it does come with its own issues. A limited power supply and shared usage to name but a few. Our current lease expired half way through last year, which wasn’t great timing. Dealing with the effects of lockdowns and restrictions made planning for the future quite tricky.
We needed to guarantee a home for at least the next 5 years but unfortunately that wasn’t on offer. We held good and honest discussions with our landlords, Artworks, but the timings of our project and their project don’t match up.
Having fought and survived our way through the last 2 years, setting up online ordering, cycle deliveries, collection only, people allowed outside, people allowed inside and then starting to recover and grow… there hasn’t been any time to look beyond our own four walls.
So, with only a short term lease on offer and a production space that is no longer fit for purpose, I’ve had to call our time at 3 Creekside to an end.
It’s been an incredibly difficult decision, made harder because of how well we’ve recovered from such an insane period of time. Unfortunately, the combination of future planning and COVID trading conditions have left us in an impossible situation.
Although this is incredibly sad, I’m making this decision with a positive outlook. As a business we’re still in control of our own future. We just need a little bit of time to wrap up this part of the journey and then we can move onto the next.
We’re not just going to go completely silent on you, but we might be lying low for a few days as we let this all sink in.
