Help Hearth Survive and Grow

Aim

Hearth is fundraising to put down more roots, build resilience and adapt in our changing environment.

Where We're Coming From

If you've come across this page, I can only assume it's because you're familiar with our bakery and kitchen, but if you're not and this is your first time stumbling upon us then welcome!

Hearth is a small local bakery, and we're approaching 5 years old, which is a wild and amazing thing to think about; 5 years of feeding our community, supporting local farms and working in a way that puts our wellbeings first.

Hearth wouldn't exist without the successful Crowdfunder we held, nearly 5 years ago, that got us started on the build of our kitchen. 

By no means did I think we would be back here yet again, asking our friends, customers and community for support.

To say it has been a smooth ride for the bakery would be rather a large understatement and in the face of multiple hurdles and blockades - we've clawed our way through to this point. 

It has meant a lot things for us as a business and even more as a social enterprise. Our social impact and dream projects have been cut short or shelved over the years due to lack of external funding and our own profits, and we have done what we can with what limited means we've had. 

I often have to remind myself of what we have achieved in such challenging circumstances, and it's only moments of reflection like this where you can stop to take stock. Our social and environmental impact includes, but is not limited to, hosting affordable workshops, opening access to our oven, pay what you can events and sourcing the entirety of our fresh produce and grains from the UK.

Despite our plans having to change course, through the thick of it we have doubled down and stuck to our ethics, and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

We purposefully don't make it easy on ourselves because ultimately what we're working towards is something that will outlive this physical space and that is the idea of something better:

A food system that supports and nourishes everyone and everything in it. 

A world in which we all get rewarded well for our labour, the land it's grown in isn't over-extracted but rather replenished and the end product is nourishing and accessible. It sounds pretty straightforward in theory.

The reality is that our current food system is the antithesis of this and it is that way by design. Hearth's sole existence is to ask, but what if it wasn't?

Where We're At

The trouble is, there is not much profit in food and hospitality even at a conventional level. If you want to get into it, the average net profit for food businesses is 3%–8%, and that number is on the decline.

For us, we have only ever broken even or made 1% net profit which subsequently then helps buffer out the months we make a loss. We've only ever aimed for 'enough', any profit is for projects or fed back into the business itself.

What it means is there little to no wiggle room for error and definitely no wiggle room for emergencies. 

And I don't know about you, but this year has felt like an emergency.

The hospitality industry as a whole is under an immense amount of pressure but the thing that really has driven the fragility of everything home has been the weather.

When starting a business centred around environmental impact, I failed to think about what the environment's impact would be on us.

We can spend all day picking apart things we did that might have gone wrong this year but ultimately it comes down to the thing outside of our control- the weather.

January and February, are usually quite decent months for us, people come into the new year with a replenished drive of wanting to do better and often that means shopping local, supporting community projects or eating healthier. As a 3 for 1 on resolutions, we're an easy win in dark grey months.

This year, we didn't break even on either month, because it just rained. 

Every. Single. Day. 

For two months straight, it was relentless. A lot of panicked messages with farms that were flooding and fellow food businesses feeling the hit. We all suffered it together and with the impending knowledge that the budget was going to hit us with new rates and taxes, it felt like an overwhelming blow.

March and April, gave us all a huge respite, the sun came out. The land dried up enough to get spring sowing in and hot cross bun season brought us back from the brink. 

The first half of May looked like much of the same, the weather was fairly balanced and the Hackney Half always treats us really well for hungry runners and their supporters. That was the last time we made a profit this year.

The end of May saw the first heatwave of the year, and since then it has been a game of survival mode. 

Our days became not just physically surviving in the heat doing manual labour, which we did manage with early measures in place we kept one another safe but we were all far from thriving in those conditions. 

Constant lack of sleep and dehydration really does a number on you mentally and physically. The only relief of going to local libraries and museums to enjoy their aircon just to feel human.

We were getting through, limiting our product range and kitchen hours, trying to get out before peak heat. It was incredibly tough, and the few customers that did make it out to us in the mornings were describing similar scenarios within their homes, their kids schools and their workplaces. It was scary but it felt good to have each other, share those conversations and hold our fears collectively in our space.

It's not unusual for us to have a drop off in summer when the school's break up, a lot of our regular customers have families. What was unusual was the sheer number. People got out of the our area because they had to, and those that did stay weren't out on the streets or staying in their homes.

Our area is in state of mass gentrification, although we are sandwiched between two generously sized parks, our immediate neighbourhood is slowly becoming a concrete and glass greenhouse. There is little shade, there is little flood protection, there are minimal mature trees. The short-term thinking behind the new designs is unfathomable at best and at worst reckless. 

In a lot of ways, what our area is becoming, is everything we stride away from and we will, in a not so distance future, no longer have a place around here.

It was never going to be Hackney Wick forever. We are so grateful for our space and our neighbours here at Grow Studios, it's a really special community. 

This building will at some point no longer exist and that is the only way we could afford to exist here in the first place. The dying state of small creative spaces is a whole other tale...

We can't afford to move, and nor do I really want to. To stay and make this work is the focus.

So don't panic, we're not leaving here until this building is coming down, who are you kidding, have you seen the size of our oven?! We're not moving until we absolutely must.

But we do need to pivot and adapt to survive these coming years, and in order to do so we need your support.

Where We're Headed

One of our favourite and regularly used heritage wheats in the bakery is Ölands. 

It's a Swedish heritage from an island in the Baltics of the same name. It's a remarkable thing in terms of evolution.

Most heritage wheats will stand tall in the field, their deep roots holding them up do keep them strong but it would be nothing against a strong coastal breeze. 

Ölands, over time, adapted to the local strong winds. Deep rooting down into the earth but it then comes up to no more than knee height. The straw and grain, both are short and squat. 

Seeing it in the fields always reminds me of a line from Seamus Heaney's 'Storm on the Island':

"We are prepared: we build our houses squat"

This is where we're at. In order to survive, we need to grow new roots, dig ourselves in and adapt in face of our challenges.

Our Action Plan:

1) We're putting together a new and improved online shop which will allow for a number of things including:

• Easy to access online catering orders
• Click and collect bread orders from local pick up points
• Nationwide delivery of longer life goods 

2) We are joining a farmers market to reach a new area and customers. We've just lined up one to start with but maybe more will follow in the new year if all goes well.

3) Weather-proofing our outside area. It'll never be perfect but if we can get one month more of outside seating on either side of unpleasant weather then that will go a long way.

4) Approaching summers in a different direction. This plan, isn't fully hatched as we're still taking stock of the summer just gone, but we're talking as a team over the next few months of what future summers will look like for us. It might be closing for two months and taking this show on the road. It might be going down to the farms and helping reduce waste at the farm gate with pickling/jamming on site. It might mean limiting our opening days and hours. 

 A combination of all of the above? Open to suggestions while we hash this one out.

5) Refocussing our social goals. We are putting our main focus on building our community's collective food resilience. It is something that we started to do with the themes of this year's workshops and events before things became a bit too hard for us to run. This funding will feed into new revenue streams, which in turn feeds into our social projects. More workshops, more events and more resources.

Where this money will go:

• A new (to us...) proofer to help get enough buns out for a Saturday market
• Maybe a new (again...to us) convection oven to deal with the additional load
• An electrician to install the above goods
• A bread slicer to save our costs (I know you're all excited about that one)
• Fixing up our cargo bike
• A secure collection point outside the bakery for bread orders
• Market set up costs
• Last, but not least, breathing space to make this all happen

Work that we can start ourselves is already under way but there is physical work and costs involved in achieving all of the above that after a long summer of loss, we simply can't sustain. 

This fund will mean we can keep cooking and working towards the better food future we dream of.

A note from Maisie 

There are many times when running a small business you're told to quit. Largely, it is by the people who love you the most and think you're insane, but there are multiple other occasions where you look at it all and the voice in your head says: it's time to stop.

I've had a lot of those moments this year. 

The thing that's keeping me going, and that's keeping this whole place going, is the thought of whats to come next.

In the coming months and years, the fragility of our food system won't just be obvious to the people looking at it every day but to everyone. We all need to eat.

It's the farmers, producers, dynamic chefs and bakers like the ones that Hearth champions that will be able to continue to feed people in a crisis.

Preparing for that coming crisis is what we're now doing and the seemingly minor business actions above is what will give us the ability to do so, not for just for our survival, but for our communities.

Our space is small and squat but our roots run deep.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 20th October 2026 at 2:15pm