Introduction to Bakerman
Bakerman is the trading name of Baker People CIC. It is a non-profit social enterprise whose social mission is to improve the lives and well-being of disadvantaged young adults in the Darlington area and to increase employment opportunities for them. We will do this by providing structured and customised skills training and work experience courses within our existing fully operational organic artisan bakery that was established for this purpose.
Our Story So Far
Bakerman’s current bakery/shop operates from a site in Darlington town centre and began trading in September 2020. Here we produce and sell a range of organic bread (including sourdough, baguettes, focaccia) and other baked goods (cakes, brioche, savoury items, cookies, etc.) using only organic, sustainably grown and ethically sourced ingredients, and employing only traditional ‘artisan’ baking techniques. The products are all freshly prepared and baked on-site and our loyal customers are discerning consumers whose motivation to buy is not solely price i.e. they also consider quality, taste, nutrition/health, environmental/sustainability, etc.
Bakerman is the brainchild of our Head Baker Dan. Dan was previously employed as the Head Baker at another organic bakery/café in Darlington operated by a large national charity. The activities of this charity included the provision of accommodation, education and training to disadvantaged young adults nationally, as well as the operation of the bakery/café and sales of its own farmed organic produce. In his role here Dan and other staff worked closely with disadvantaged young people, teaching them various bakery and customer facing skills.
Unfortunately the charity closed their Darlington facility due to the first Covid lockdown and Dan and the other staff were made redundant. This meant that not only would this clear need and benefit to disadvantaged young people no longer be provided in Darlington, but the town would also lose its only organic artisan bakery. So Dan set out to address this by setting up a similar non-profit operation.
Using his redundancy payment, donations from friends and family and a previous crowd funding campaign, Dan opened our current small bakery in Darlington town centre as the first stage of this project. The aim of this first stage was to develop and perfect the operational aspects of running a bakery and to sell sufficient of our products for the business to be able to fund the provision of the training and support services to Darlington’s disadvantaged young people.
The bakery started out in September 2020 with just Dan doing all the baking and other operations, one staff member running the shop, and with input from family and friends taking up the slack as necessary. We had a queue down the street on opening day and by Christmas demand had pretty much outstripped our output capacity and we realised we’d soon have to scale up.
We bought a larger oven in 2022 (the largest one we could physically fit into our space) and a larger mixer (the biggest we could afford), and these helped, but demand continued to increase and we soon reached maximum capacity again.
We recruited and trained additional staff (we now have a dedicated and hardworking team of 7) and, with economies of scale and greater efficiencies, Dan managed to increase output still further and is now wringing every ounce of product out of our small space! The simple fact is that our products are so popular we’re now consistently unable to meet demand and we regularly sell out before closing time each day.
The Need for our Social Project
Lack of life opportunities and unemployment among disadvantaged young adults is a major issue UK-wide and especially in the Darlington area.
Many disadvantaged young people suffer from various mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and OCD, or neurodivergence (ADHD, autism, dyslexia). Some suffer with behavioural or emotional disorders and some have experienced social exclusion, poverty or abuse. Whatever their cause, these young peoples’ disadvantage(s) reduce their self-confidence and mental well-being. Consequently their opportunities for employment and their chances of leading otherwise fulfilling lives is severely limited.
These are our ‘beneficiaries’ and this is the social issue we will help to address.
Our head baker Dan learned from experience at his previous employment that baking as an activity is calming and therapeutic for certain disadvantaged young people and he witnessed significant improvements in attitude, behaviour, social skills, self-confidence and mental and physical health in the numerous disadvantaged young people he’d tutored. Their employment opportunities also increased, giving many the confidence and skills to apply for jobs, attend interviews and gain employment they would not otherwise have obtained.
What we Plan to Do
To summarise the issues we face then, the small size of our current premises has 3 main implications:-
- We don’t have space for larger ovens and fridges and have to prepare and bake our products in several batches each day, which means we have to work during the night (often starting at Midnight) in order for all products to be ready to sell in the shop at opening time. Night time working is not only demanding for baking staff; it also means that the disadvantaged young people we wish help are unable to participate in baking activity due to the unsocial hours at which we carry out these activities.
- We’ve reached maximum capacity and are unable to meet all of the demand for our products. We routinely sell out of most products (especially bread) before closing time every day.
- Our current premises are too small for us to physically accommodate any more people, nor can we house additional equipment, and consequently we therefore cannot properly provide training and support to the disadvantaged young people we wish to help.
To address these issues we need more space and we’ve acquired additional premises next door to our current site. We plan to relocate our current shop from within our existing premises to this new site and to convert our current site into purely a bakery/training facility.
This will more than double our space and thus enable us to increase our output by buying a much larger oven, larger fridges and additional equipment. It will also enable us to widen our product range and begin producing such things as patisserie (sweet and savoury croissants and pastries), freshly-made sandwiches, pizza slices, pies and other savouries), etc.
We will also be able to transition to day time baking hours, which will (a) be less punishing for our baking team, improving their work-life balance, and (b) enable the disadvantaged young people we wish help to benefit from participating in the baking activity.
Finally, the extra space will enable us to:-
- Extend our opening hours
- Run bakery classes for our deserving and enthusiastic customers
- Sell baking accessories (books, tools, ingredients, etc.)
- Sell other locally-produced organic products
- Educate people from the local community on the health and environmental benefits of consuming ‘real’ bread/baked goods (versus the mass-produced equivalents), as well as the environmental benefits of the regeneratively produced ingredients we use.
How Will we Fund This?
We’ll fund this expansion by various means, including…
- Grants that are available to non-profit businesses such as ours that benefit their communities and deliver meaningful social impact.
- Donations from our directors, friends and family.
- Cash reserves generated from our trading activity.
- Another crowdfunding campaign (see below).
Our New Bread Oven
Contributing toward the cost of our new bread oven by participating in our crowdfunding campaign will give you a real stake in this project. You’ll help facilitate a very worthwhile and life-changing service for disadvantaged young adults in the Darlington area that would not be able to proceed without your help. You’ll help the people of the Darlington community continue to enjoy the benefits of having their own community organic bakery. And you’ll help the environment by furthering the case for artisan bread that uses organic and regeneratively farmed ingredients.