We had our best & biggest week since we opened – Thank You!

Why?

We think:

1. Many Rex Friends come back regularly, for more.  Hooray!!
2.  It’s back to work/ school after the Easter holidays, so lots more traffic
3. Others are spreading the word and every day new people visit thanks to a recommendation
4. But we also think that the refit of Tesco might have brought in some extra people this week, looking for their lunch!

We love that our shop is near Tesco – let’s face it nearly all of us in Little Chalfont do shop there & that means a lot of footfall in our parade, all the time.  Many newbies to Rex seemed excited with what they found & we hope they become new Friends after their visit.  But without a doubt a few baulked at the prices of say a Rex Croissant or a Sausage Roll compared to their usual supermarket experience, that they were looking for something more Value.

For them, that seems to mean value in price, not value in product.

Rex Artisan Bakery is passionate about the product.  The Rex Baker started the business because he couldn’t find the best in food that he wanted to buy & eat – and envisioned that if he made the very best – the best ingredients, the best methods, for the best taste – then others like him would want to buy it too.   But he didn’t want some kind of exclusive fine dining club – it needed to be what everyone has access to & could afford daily and baking fits the bill perfectly.  Besides, he’s always loved good bread 🙂

Indeed our Sausage Rolls are a great torture test versus anything else on the market.  Ours have a hand-made puff pastry with the highest regarded Shipton Mill organic white flour which of course contains absolutely no corner-cutting additives.  We purely use the very best French patisserie butter because it has a very low water content which makes the best pastry – and then we work it, by hand & with the greatest care & attention, until it’s ready to roll.  The highest quality & delicious tasting sausagemeat was chosen as the best in the region after an exhaustive selection process.  It forms the basis for our secret recipe including added onion & herbs to recreate a food memory from the Rex Baker’s childhood, inspired by  the sausage rolls the Rex Baker’s own mum used to make.

Compare the care in Rex with the dubious packaged thing you could buy cut-price elsewhere – questionable quality, taste & texture of “sausagemeat” filling in a possibly hydrogenated fat “pastry” – mass-made by machines not a baker.  That feels more designed for profit than to delight the taste buds & the body.  Thinking of the contrast, we maybe don’t charge enough for our Sausage Rolls!!

Yet you will see some huge claims out there, some of which we’ve blogged out before.  Amongst the most misleading is the commonly used “Freshly baked” description.  It sounds so nice, yet this smoke & mirrors approach to pretending it’s real bread has been dubbed the Great British Fake-off.  In reality, a huge consignment of products mass-produced on a factory line somewhere far off & frozen some time ago are shipped in for reheating & “tanning” in an in-store oven.  Or a scary chemical cocktail mix (“just add water”) requiring really no skill or attention is used to balloon into various items to bake & sell as “freshly made in-store”.  And whilst what’s on sale might seem on 1^st take to be higher value products because they look & smell just-cooked, these “bake offs” probably have the same questionable approach to pastry & sausagemeat at heart.  That’s not offering the best possible product value so wouldn’t come anywhere near to the Rex Bakery standard.

We are so confident about our products that we offer lots of tasters as any regular Friends will know! Plus that’s why we have our open layout, so you can see upclose for yourself how good everything is.  The baskets are not for self-service, we want to help you make your selection ourselves – we can tell you about everything & keep it all hygienic that way.  The old adage “If you touch me, please buy me” is definitely true for our displays 🙂

Ultimately our standards are for you, our Friends, to judge.  Only you can decide where to shop & what to buy, and we will just keep applying our hand-made, best quality torture test – that’s a great discipline for us!  We hope our best-product approach is enhancing our local community in many ways  and that because of that we continue to have Friends’  wonderful support for their baked needs– whatever supermarket they also shop at! xx