I have been involved in food since my birth; my Mother was a chef and she trained me to cook and the passion for food and great food has been a constant for me. I am dedicated to championing Welsh farming and producers and supporting and buying local and have always through my own catering business and more recently when running hotels followed this philosophy.
This project Simply Welsh Cakes is an evolution of a business I first began in 2011 making a range of sweet and savoury welshcakes and other traditional Welsh cakes such as hafod cakes, teisen laps, shepherds purses etc alongside some savoury Welsh classics like oggies, bara planc, barley bread and so on. I went to many food festivals and found there was a huge market for these wonderful recipes that had with time seemed to have largely disappeared from the baking ovens of Wales today. The delight on people's faces when they discovered they could buy say a hafod cake created wonderful conversations as it evoked memories of their childhoods and the chance to once again eat these great recipes.
For many years I have always dreamed of having a permanent premises in which to showcase these wonderful products and one day a couple of months ago happened upon the perfect premises in my local town Newcastle Emlyn. An old bakery that has served the town for many years - it is the absolute right location from which to take the Simply Welsh Cakes idea forward. It is a lovely old building situated on the main high street of the town - a great base for customers to easily access the shop.
I plan to use the kitchen there to make freshly every day the range of traditional Welsh cakes, Welsh bread and Welsh savoury foods all made using local Welsh ingredients. I will also sell in the shop some other local small producer's items such as honey, Welsh salt, Welsh water, Welsh coffee and tea, Welsh craft beer and Welsh spirits and through the year will offer local growers the chance to sell some of their fresh vegetables. I will also make some delicious Welsh meals which customers can take home to eat for lunch or dinner or freeze for that day when they just don't have time to cook but would like a yummy meal that they know isn't full of preservatives and fake ingredients but made with good local Welsh ingredients.
The shop will also have some tables where customers can sit and enjoy their food and have a cup of Welsh coffee or tea from vintage china and there will be free wifi.
In the evenings I will run some food demonstrations and also have an events calendar which has evenings with local producers and in time I would also like to develop an online element for the shop as well.
All my suppliers will be local producers and businesses so all the products will be local to their core and when you buy something from Simply Welsh Cakes you wont just be supporting my shop but also other community businesses.
So why am I using crowdfunder? Well I have already got some of the commercial kitchen equipment and some items for the main part of the shop but I need to get some other items for fitting out the main part of the shop as well as purchasing the all important oven, a commercial mixer, some other kitchen essentials and I also need to paint the shop and sort out signage and the business website.
Funds wise therefore I just need and am hoping for a helping hand please if possible with these last but very essential bits and that there are other people out there who like me see that this is a really great idea with a solid business plan behind it so I can get started and open the doors. Time wise my planned date to open is for the Easter holidays.
So there you go a simple idea which is quite Simply Welsh! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and fingers crossed I will very soon be able to welcome you to Simply Welsh Cakes in person!
