They say that bad news comes in 3, but this week 3 is our magic number, check us out! 🙂

1) We had the good news from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that following a complaint from little old us, some questionable advertising claims by a chain bakery had been dropped

We had challenged whether “The Home of Read Bread” slogan complied with the Real Bread Campaign’s definition of Real Bread.  To comply, there would need to be no use of so-called processing aids or other artificial additives and we didn’t believe they weren’t used.  We also challenged claims that loaves were ‘hand-kneaded’, and ‘additive-free’.  The draft recommendation by the ASA investigation team was that all these claims were misleading, because the advertiser admitted that its dough contained E300 and E516 additives in their flour.

The Rex Baker was interviewed and said: “We are delighted with the outcome as advertising in the food industry is full of weasel words and unfounded claims.” We hope that other food retailers might now think twice before implying their bread is something that it’s not…

2) And then….. we were announced as Best Artisan Bakery in Buckinghamshire!  This is for the Bucks Food & Drink Awards 2015 and we want to say a BIG thank you to everyone that kindly voted for us, there were obviously very many of you!!  We are SO chuffed considering we’re only just 1 years old lol!

The awards also featured some of or wholsesale customers in categories like Best Deli, Independent food business and so on – and as the vast majority of Bucks winners seem to have come from our local Chiltern District, it seems we are developing into a fine foodie corner!

3) To top it all… From the wee small hours of this morning, a BBC crew & producers have been busily filming the Rex Baker hard at work at No. 4 Chenies Parade.  It’s for a programme presented by James Martin, and is about food memories (also important to us at Rex) – we believe this episode will be about Russel Grant, who lives quite locally in Harefield, reminiscing about bread.  The programme might be going to compare the horribly fast Chorleywood Bread Process which was developed in an Institute just up the road, with the slow, original way we make our Organic White Tin – and of course what that means for the sliced white fast bread product versus our Real Bread.    As probably the nearest artisan bakery to the Chorleywood process institute (how ironic!), it seems we were the obvious choice.

Thank you to all the lovely Friend of Rex customers who were filmed buying & talking about their daily bread this morning – hope you make the segment!!   All those many hours of filming will come down to a couple of minutes if we’re lucky, but we’ll certainly be watching out for it!

As always in the world of Rex, despite the amazing awards success, things can be a tad bumpy.  Just as we are expanding every day – we have been very badly let down by a new night baker who quit before he really began so the Rex Baker is night baking again until we can sort.  In addition, we will see quite a changeover in front of house staff shortly due to family issues, summer holidays, university courses etc kicking in.  So if you know of anybody who wants to

• join us because they are experienced OR want to train as a Night Baker
• use their catering experience – cakes, soups, salads etc
• be a full-time or part-time barista/ bakery assistant
• clean each day

Then do email us hello@rexbakery.com for an application form because we have a lot of vacancies.    As you can imagine, we do need wonderful local staff to keep going argh!

Have a great week xx