At the Pop up point we are asked – naturally & understandably – “when will you open?” We say that we we hope it will be within a couple of months/ by March; and everyone tells us that they can’t wait to have a real bakery in the village.
For brand new Friends of Rex Bakery, and we are happy to meet so many each Saturday morning, you can sign up to our newsletters by adding your email address in the top right handside box of the blog. People email us here by Thursday at 9pm with their weekly order choice from the week’s bake list, and hopefully find our newsletters helpful to remind them to do this. Lots of good reasons to order as explained here, and we meet you at the Saturday pop up with your order all ready for you.
It’s taking longer than you’d think
Alternatively we are taking extra bakes to the pop up, because there are a lot of Little Chalfont-ers new to Rex Artisan Bakery ready to give us a little try. We hope that they like what they sample enough to come back when the shop opens! We know everything always takes longer than you think, but it is soooh frustrating. Here’s 4 reasons for the long leadtime since acquiring the shop:
1) Money! We weren’t able to start seriously spending until we knew that we didn’t have to pay upfront VAT on the purchase – for complicated legal & commercial finance reasons, and before Christmas this just wasn’t clear.
2) Christmas! Britain – planning, builders, utilities, us – comes to a bit of a standstill over the festive holidays and we couldn’t move forward with some of the important steps we need to take.
3) Plans – now we have navigated critical details such as air conditioning regulations, food premises legislation, signage & café disabled loo expectations… we can sign off the plans & move ahead with the more exciting phase with the builders.
4) Utilities – a bakery requires significant power & water and all at exactly the right temperatures (240 is perfect for proving….) Apart from resolving a ceiling leak & replumbing, we learnt this week we have to treble the power source to deal with the retarders, provers, ovens, chillers that will all be working simultaneously in the bakery. And we are still trying to persuade air conditioning companies to work with us, we are on to our 4th contact now!!
Meanwhile the more rewarding decisions for lighting, wall colour, flooring, furniture, staff are all underway so we can’t wait to see it all taking shape & those in place. In short, we can just point to the shop shell from the pop-up & hopefully it’s clear at a glance how much there is to do, that we don’t mean to drag our feet 🙂
To keep up & even grow the community interest, we will be taking orders & popping up every week until it’s time to transfer the baking equipment. Hope to see you next Saturday! xx
