We have had our last Saturday pop-up.

There is no bake list or orders being taken this week – we are transferring the secondary ovens & equipment from our home working bakery up to No. 4 Chenies Parade in the coming days, and attempting to dot all the i’s & cross all the t’s with target public opening date now of Friday 28th March.

In the meantime, there are just a few biggies still to sort…

Friends of Rex know that we have had a rough ride with the Utilities in Little Chalfont.

But after a dramatic U-turn by the electricity provider, that was all put right behind us and we have surged forward, powering through all the other (apparently very many!) challenges of opening a new business.  As 1 good Friend put it – running a bakery should be a cinch compared to opening one!

But this past week we have learnt of some new Power issues.  Oh no, here we go again!!

Whilst we have our shiny new much loved Electric-powered bakery ovens & most of the bakery power (lights, catering equipment, air conditioning) will be electric, we of course planned Gas for hot water.  The alternative –  immersion heaters in a hot water tank  – should only be a back up because they would burn out every couple of years, proving expensive in the long run.

We of course became acutely acquainted with all things Gas earlier this year when we had gone so far as sourcing Gas bread ovens from the Continent, after being informed there was no reasonable way to go Electric in Little Chalfont.   At that point, we learnt of 4 stages to using Gas at all for your business which involves 3 different companies, none of whom can do the others’ tasks.

What do they all do?

1) Transco.  They come & check your gas supply through your existing pipework and then have a second separate team who will organise the installation if you haven’t any gas.

2) The middle-man.  You pay them for all this work (British Gas in our case) to liaise with the upstream Transco check & the downstream metering, connection & of course bills moving forwards

3) The metering company who come & re-check the supply, install a meter, report back to the middleman.

We have had no problems all the way along this rather complex chain of hand-offs (except for the usual waiting around for each of the said-agents to arrive).  Transco had been and confirmed the supply & we thought we were in the final stages of meter installation last week.

So, imagine our shock to be told by the metering agent that there is NO GAS SUPPLY after all, so he cannot legally connect a meter or try to help us find out why.  His experience was that for some businesses who haven’t had Gas supply for 12-18 months, we might possibly need  to dig a trench( through our new floor) to install new pipes & connect to the  gas main in Chenies Parade, which of course takes many weeks.

Err… No thank you.     That’s not quite what we had in mind for our target opening date,  our working bakery operations nor budgets!!

Fortunately British Gas  organised Transco to come out very quickly a second time(in 48 hrs) who have now confirmed there is no Gas, but need a second team to assess how to reconnect the gas . So we await a second Transco team!
But we aren’t planning on waiting on them, we will use our Immersion Heaters for  hot water at launch.

So please do standby to come & visit us end of March, we will be excited to welcome you into the new bakery & shop which we think is shaping up beautifully (yes, we’re biased) with staff lined up, painted walls & ceiling, floors laid, lights fitted, counter tops in place, shelving & furniture about to move in.

See you soon!!