We opened with a domestic oven and a folding table.
Six years on Mill Street, one oven replaced, and roughly the same twelve things on the board.
The first winter
We sold out by half past ten every day and thought it meant we were doing well. It did not. It meant we were baking about a third of what the street actually wanted, and sending people away hungry is not a business model, it is just a shortage with good manners.
So we bought a proper deck oven, second hand, from a bakery two towns over that was closing. It came through the back door in pieces.
A shortage with good manners.
What has not changed
Everything is made on the premises, and everything is sold the day it is made. There is no second location, no wholesale, and nothing arrives frozen on a pallet.
That is a limit as much as a principle. It caps how much we can sell and it means Fridays are bread days rather than every day. We would rather be small and know what is in everything.
A limit as much as a principle.
What has
We do catering now, which we did not for the first three years, because a workshop down the road asked and we said yes before thinking about it. It went well enough that we kept doing it.
We also stopped opening on Mondays. Six days of a half past four start is sustainable. Seven is not, and the quality showed it before we admitted it.
The quality showed it before we admitted it.