Same day dispatch available on orders placed before 10am Mon-Thurs
Same day dispatch available on orders placed before 10am Mon-Thurs
Back in 2019 whilst we were eagerly setting up our mobile cafe, a wholesale cake business was the furthest thing from our minds. The premise of starting our business was always founded around the idea of doing two good things well. For us it was coffee, and brownies. We took a secret family recipe from Luke’s Mum that we’d both treasured over the years and made it our own. Luke had always worked in the food and beverage industry and was an incredible cook, so we decided it was best that he did the baking.
Once we were up and running, I asked if he could teach me how to make the brownies. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever entered the bakery to cook! It was very clear from the start that Luke had a serious gift for baking. He loved the alchemy of it all. Things had to be done a certain way, and whilst I’m a great cook (even if I do say so myself), I’m more of a “bung it all in” kind of chef!
Thankfully, the brownies proved really popular when we launched our business at a festival in 2019. Despite the hot weather, we found them to be best sellers. Over the following 8 months, we started selling more and more. Before long, people were coming to our mobile cafe JUST for a box of brownies. This was around the same time that the global pandemic hit. One customer posted on our Facebook “I’m desperate for some brownies but I can’t be bothered to leave the house, would you deliver?”. They were being cheeky, but this piqued something inside me. Vulnerable people were already starting to isolate ahead of lockdown and I thought maybe I could offer some more local deliveries.
Luke and I discussed our 5 year plan one day and we said that we’d love to be running an online brownie business alongside our cafe. This would be ideal to launch when our youngest (1 at the time) is at school.
Forced to close due to lockdown, we had plenty of time on our hands to plan our next move. With no income, we were starting to get worried that wasn’t going to go away any time soon. I asked Luke if I should have a go at selling our brownies on Facebook. He knew I was desperate at this point and humoured me. At the same time, a wonderful customer of ours contacted us and asked us if we could do a corporate order. There was definitely something in this!
We kicked off with creating our first corporate order and also put an advert in our local selling group on Facebook. To our enormous surprise, people across Norfolk and Suffolk really wanted our brownies. In fact, not just Suffolk and Norfolk… I was getting messages from people as far as Luton!
In the early days I was delivering everything myself whilst Luke continued to bake. It’s no secret that I am terrible in the car. I get really flustered if I get lost. So driving to lots of addresses I’d never heard of across East Anglia was my idea of hell. One day whilst lost, I stopped at a post office to ask for directions. I was so impressed by how helpful the owners of the post office were. So much so, I ran back to the car to grab a brownie box to thank them. This truly was the start of something magical- our wholesale cake business was born!
To our surprise, we swiftly received a phone call from the post office to ask if we’d like to supply them with brownies. We were absolutely on cloud nine. Although we’d never done anything like this before, we knew we had to take the opportunity! Garboldisham Village Store became our first ever wholesale customer and we still supply them to this day!
Since then, our range has grown and our wholesale cake business now encompasses a HUGE range of sweet treats (even some savoury). Luke spends every spare second researching new trends and delicious, traditional recipes. His Mum still plays a big role in our family bakery and even moved from Kent to Suffolk to be closer to us. To this day, Luke’s Mum still gets her apron on and helps us out in busy periods, along with Super Sue (our Sous Chef).
Expect loads more bakes, maybe even sourdough crumpets and bread! We look forward to expanding our business and sending out more excellent cakes across the UK.
