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Big update

Kitchen Update

I just thought I'd give all my amazing customers a little update on why our kitchen is closed at the moment and not shipping orders. 

Some might think I'm taking a break after the Christmas rush... phhhfftt! I wish! No rest for the wicked! 

We had a few days of family time over Christmas, and yes, I took my wifes birthday off... Not sure I would have got away with that... but as soon as I could I jumped back into work to fix up the new unit we moved into! 

(pic - our new bakery)

Why did we move?

The new place is actually smaller than our old unit, but it's only 3 minutes away from our house, with 2 young children, this is going to give a much better work life balance! We have literally taken on the closest unit to our house that was suitable for our needs, literally... we got so lucky!

When I started the business, 10 years ago, from my mother-in-laws home (on the same road we live on now), I always dreamed of taking on a unit on the 20/20 business park round the corner from us. But it just wasn't possible, it was definitely a pipe dream!

 (pic - me and my mate Dave in Feb 2015 making cookies)

About 7 years ago we ended up taking on a massive unit on an industrial estate 30-40 mins away from where we lived. We rented from the council and was incredibly cheap as it was part of a business nurturing project. Fast forward 6 years, we came to the end of our lease and our local council decided to pull the project and doubled our rent overnight, then added on a service charge and demanded more deposit… which made the commute not worth it anymore. 

I had actually been looking for somewhere to move the business for years, I haven’t been happy in the old place for a long time, I started dreading going to work, the estate was so far from home and just unsuitable, it was motor trade central. 

I did look at retail but the thought of running and managing a shop filled me with dread in our current personal circumstance, I need to be able to come and go and I need, plus there was just nowhere suitable in our area. 

Our new place came up for rent just at the right time, like it was meant to be. We had to move quickly on it, hence the panicked move just before the Christmas rush, but we managed to set up a temporary kitchen to get through the season. 

Renovation saga

The new place needs a bit of work to bring it up to our standards. I am doing all this on a shoe string budget with the disaster that was the 2024 Christmas season.

With a to do list as long as my arm, the floor was the first thing we needed to do, everything else is a nice to have, the floor is an absolute must. I’m going to be coating the concrete with an epoxy resin food grade paint. But first I had to take up the old paint, the only way to do this was scraping it all off by hand… this is a shoe string budget project so I had to get down on my hands and knees and scrape every last little bit off by myself! HARD WORK!

(pic - Me scraping all the old paint off by hand)

The next step was the get an epoxy primer down on the prepped concrete, unfortunately, at this stage 2 things started to go wrong… first was that I caught “the bug” that is going around (I’m just grateful it waited till after the Christmas season) and the ridiculously cold temps did not help either!

I’m massively behind schedule on this now, but with the heating on full blast I managed to set the base coat and get the top coat on, it looks amazing, but I’m only half way there, I need to do the back end of the unit now!

(pic - before and after of half the unit)

Behind schedule

I had hoped to be back up and running by now, but it looks like Friday 17th Jan is going to be the first bake now.

(pic - first coat down on the second half of the kitchen)

The first coat on the back end of the unit is down, as I write this the heating is on full blast while I wait for it to cure ready for the top coat.

So, you're all updated! Maybe I'll be more blogs/vlogs (I was going to vlog this but lost my voice with the bug I picked up), a new years resolution maybe?

Thomas x

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