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Co-op bakery?
As mentioned in a previous thread (about the demise of Home on SGR) I have been reading about this co-op bakery - [Handmade Bakery](http://www.thehandmadebakery.coop)
The idea is that as many local people as possible subscribe to receive bread. Pay monthly, pick it up weekly. This commitment underpins the business of the bakery and allows it to set up. Any profits that are generated over the year are circulated among the subscribers.
Not only might this give us the local bakery we've all been after but it might just add something to SGR.
I don't know much more than that at the moment but if enough people are interested I can look in to it... i.e. how many people would be needed to get it up and running, how much it would cost to set up, how it would work legally, where you get a baker from(!) etc
Let me know what you make of it by leaving a comment and if it seems positive enough we can have a look at working it up. In the meantime, any lawyers or accountants out there with anything to add? Pro bono of course.
Comments
Arky
There’s a lot of competition to consider and people are so fickle. They get bored and grumpy at the slightest thing, then they boycott you forever. I wonder if a lot of the people on here get their bread delivered with their organic veg from Abel and Cole etc, it’s kind of easier.
If you had a shop premises, you would need to sell lots of coffee to bring in more profit. For some reason people prefer to spend £2.50 on coffee than, the same, on a loaf of bread. Stroud Green’s not exactly affluent. Any successful bakery would need all of those Crouch Enders stopping off on the way up and down the hill and coming in. You would need them literally getting off the bus or parking the car, making a special trip and queuing around the block, to sell enough of the stuff. They would have to come in because the croissant were so delicious, but still reasonably priced, the excellent customer service and the fact that there was nothing else like it nearby.
This then brought me to how I would put Dunns out of business, which I think is essential to the project. You would need all of that custom. After going into Dunns and studying the individual, I felt a seductive temptress might be able to send him off the rails and make him take his eye off his business. Later I thought maybe a rent boy would be what’s needed. It wouldn’t so much be the procurement of the rent boy, but the keeping him to the job description that might prove tricky. Then it all, just kind of, gets further away from the original purpose of selling bread.
Anyway I’d love a good local bakery.
Contrast this with the very large number of people in SG who don't drive on their daily commute, and are much more likely to stop off when walking/getting on or off the tube and bus and pick up something much more regularly. Also, apart from Tesco's and the occasional other shop if you're there early, very few places sell any brown/wholemeal bread at all except Hovis. Even a not so posh proper loaf would go down well I think, if the shop was well located. If it sold non-plastic cheddar as well then I might never need to go to SGR tesco again...
It's not that a bakery wouldn't work, it's just that it would be tough in Stroud Green. I must admit I'm not sure where the Handmade Bakery is, but if they're only competing with supermarkets then it's easier. There are quite a few places you can get decent bread in north London, but just not on our doorsteps. The same is true of cheese, but I won't start on that.
We used to get some lovely bread through a Riverford veg box (I know, I know) but apparently the bread is so popular that they've had to temporarily stop
Personally I have a bread machine and hardly ever buy a loaf in a shop/bakery, and nice though it may be to have an artisan bakery nearby, I can't see myself spending a lot more money (probably at least 3 times the cost) to go and buy bread made by someone else.
The black bread in Lidl is lovely.
Just read that they've come joint third (with Aldi!) in a Which? poll of best supermarkets - ahead of Sainsburys, Tesco and Morrisons. They also sell a highly recommended Wensleydale with cranberries. I know it's not bread but it is delicious.
Not that that's a bad thing.
maybe worth contacting them about a market for SGR?
Just an idea.