Mozambican-inspired bread right to your doorstep

Aim

Hi, I’m Leo, founder of an exciting start up bakery in Kent. I’m crowdfunding £9,500 for commercial equipment to revolutionise my business.

Leo the Baker exists to make real bread with the finest quality ingredients accessible to the community of Sevenoaks. Born from my humble Mozambican beginnings, a love for fresh bread and taking the leap to follow my calling. 

How it ‘happened’

At the beginning of January 2021, during the second UK lockdown, I started sharing my freshly baked Mozambican-inspired loaves of bread with my neighbours.

The news (and smell) travelled fast and I quickly became inundated with requests and orders! Before I new it I was waking up at 3am everyday, mixing dough and baking loaves in our home oven before delivering them, still warm, on my way to my actual job. 

By September, after 9 months, I quit my job completely and became a full time self-employed baker! All due to me sharing a few loaves with my street in lockdown. 

By this point I had added my popular baguettes to the menu and was in the process of perfecting my sourdough skills. With the help of some amazing local businesses I was able to purchase a professional Rack Master oven and move into a small commercial space. 

Now, as I move into my second year of baking and trading, I am supplying my signature Mozambican-inspired Organic White Loaves, Organic Country Sourdoughs, Organic French-style Baguettes and Cinnamon Buns to a number of local stockists. As well as providing my doorstep delivery service for my customers who continue to buy direct. Demand is pushing me again and I now need to invest in some new kit to sustain the workload:

• Large dough mixer
• x3 industrial fridges / walk in fridge 
• Work bench

These items will be installed into a bigger commercial space that I have already secured. They will revolutionise the quantities I can bake and massively improve my efficiency and productivity. PLUS give me the space and time to add more items to the menu. 

Why I’m a baker at heart. 

I was born and lived most of my life in Mozambique and when I was a boy, from about age 11, my job was to go and buy bread for my family’s breakfast. 

6am each and every day I set off on the 40 minute round trip to the local padaria. I loved those walks. Flip flops on my feet, walking through my community over the soft sand. The smell of fresh bread lured me all the way. 

I was a small boy, and there was often a queue at the bakery. It was a struggle to reach my coins high enough in the air at the busy counter, for the baker to take note of me and sort my order. “Des pães” or “10 bread rolls”. Back then it was 1 meticais per roll. The padaria ran a good business. I recall getting too much change back on a few occasions...they were too busy to count correctly. 

The walks back, with my bread bag full to the brim of warm rolls was always a pleasure. Sometimes I would stop to watch the football at the community pitch, other times, I was in a rush to get back home and eat. 

The bread was always the centre piece of our breakfast. Always enjoyed with a black sugary tea, sometimes we had powered milk to stir in too. Most days it was just bread and butter, but that taste combination and the texture of the bread was never a disappointment.

Fast forward 10 years, I met my now wife, Amy, while she was volunteering in Mozambique. By 2016 I was arriving in the UK to start our new married lives together. There are so many things I love about the UK, but supermarket bread is not one of them. I began attempting to recreate that soft doughy bread from my homeland for our family to enjoy. We now have 2 small children and Leo the Baker is very much a family operation and I hope it will be for many more years and generations to come! 

I have come to realise that I was incredibly lucky to grow up eating organic, locally produced food that was mostly harvested, cooked and eaten on the same day! I believe that everybody deserves to have access to healthy food options and be informed about what is inside the food they’re eating. 

Why am I crowdfunding? 

Quite simply because we are not in a financial position to take a high interest loan from the bank. Crowdfunding was recommended to me by a lovely customer as an option to bridge that dilemma…so here I am! 

My pledges to you

• My wife and I are trustees and founders of a charity called Born Positive which supports vulnerable children in Mozambique. When viable, we will be donating a percentage of Leo the Baker profits to Born Positive and making the bread make a massive difference to the next generation there. 
• We will continue to operate in the most sustainable way possible including; using only 100% recyclable packaging and when we are able to invest in a delivery van, it will be electric. 

Thank you

Thank you, sincerely, for reading this far. If you feel moved to make a donation please know I am so incredibly grateful. If you are not in a position to donate but would still like to help, you could share this crowdfund campaign with your networks, and who knows...

Thank you so much / muito obrigado, Leo.

This project successfully funded on 23rd February 2022