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Broad beans, wild garlic (Ramsons) and mushrooms mushrooms pan fried in butter on sourdough toast. Garnished with yogurt, dill and mint.

Soft boil an egg for 5 mins and set a side to cool. Prep your Pak Choi whist boiling the kettle. Open some noodles (Asian Supermarkets have the best). Boil the noodles with their sachet with the Pak Choi for 2 minutes. Chuck in a bowl and add some frozen prawns. Peel your egg and slice in half. Add Miso, fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sweet chilli & mango sauce or whatever you like to the broth. A drizzle of sesame oil really works also.

Birthday

For years I worked at a desk and I was like a caged animal, luckily I smashed my way out of the confines of the office and was set loose on the streets of Exeter to terrorise the public with my offensive language, average baking skills and a severe dose of arrogance. Somehow the lovely people of Exeter have nurtured and tamed the beast inside me to some level of maturity, like a fine wine I’m developing with age, the acidity is mellowing and I’m becoming a little more rounded. So raise your glass for it is my birthday. Well the Bakery’s birthday. Cheers.

So we are five. And we act like five year olds. We still find crude humour funny and draw dicks on everything. But on a serious level, we set sail on the voyage 5 years ago without any knowledge of business, no money, no real plan, no idea about costings and we’re still sailing at full speed, with the wind behind us. We still have those cluster fuck days, where things don’t work out, bureaucracy gets the better of us, that tap just keeps on leaking and our order doesn’t turn up. But we’re still having fun. I work with one of my best friends, who I grew up with in Devon. Every day I get to drink a shit load of coffee, meet some awesome people, have arguments with the public on TripAdvisor and not pay myself very much. What more could you want?

Busniness is fucking great fun. It’s like a game, only you deal with real money. So it sucks when you’re loosing, but winning is a real buzz. We started with nothing, so it doesn’t matter if we go back to square one and it all goes tits up. I suppose there’s a load of risk involved, just get the odds stacking in your favour and minimise risk. I honestly believe that fledgling entrepreneurs can make a city like Exeter great. I’m amazed with Bristol, so many creative people are starting new businesses and taking a leap of faith, it causes such a buzz. And fuck age, knowledge, skill, experience, money, all that shit, it doesn’t matter, we just need more people to grow a pair of balls on their backbone and jump in, ‘cause the water is fine!

Listen to Pool by Porches on @AppleMusic. For a chilled bake this album gives you a good crumb.

The Curious Incident of the Lemon in the Water

A few weeks ago there was a hilarious kafuffle in York involving a slice of lemon and some hot water. It gained a lot of media attention and was publicised throughout the national press with tremendous support for the catering industry. If you didn’t get a chance to read it it’s worth a glance - Here

Anyhow this incident did two very good things. Firstly, it demonstrated that the customer isn’t always right and that business owners should grow some balls and a backbone, and stand up to these Trip Advisor bullies. Whist these cowards type away, hiding behind the veil of anonymity, they forget this style of trolling can be so damaging to small companies. I can relate to this because we had a bad review recently. I was inspired by the manager’s response in the Lemon incident, so I decided to publicise this review via our social media avenues. I assume this reviewer wanted an audience, otherwise they wouldn’t write a public review, and therefore I was within my right to send it out to the masses. Have a read if you wish - Here

Although my actions and response on Trip Advisor was equally as cowardly & petty, I though it was my duty to stand up for my staff and my suppliers, who had done nothing wrong. Why should this reviewer subject us to insulting claims, when all we’d done is serve a premium product with the upmost care and attention, whist giving a polite response to her request for a skinny cappuccino? So, shame on you blackcornish1964 and shame on you Trip Advisor for being the advocates of such bollocks.

Secondly, and most importantly, the newspaper articles gave the public a better understanding of the catering industry, and how it’s large overheads and the breakdown of costing something that appears to be worth a few pence is much more complex than first perceived. Heck, even the Daily Mail and its readers supported this café in York.

I also found this article a useful tool for staff, which sometimes take the side of the customer and feel that things like takeaway cups are free.

I’m going to highlight some other factors that were not considered in the costing of providing hot water. So the coffee machine we use cost nearly £7000. We have a water filter that cost £200 and is replaced twice a year. There is the cost of keeping the coffee machine on that is about £10 a day and then there is obviously the other hidden maintenance costs when the machine is serviced or needs repairing. But the most important issue here is the cost of someone taking up a seat. We only have 11 seats inside the bakery, so when someone is sitting there and not buying anything, they are taking away potential revenue. We’re quite lenient in the bakery. If a bunch of students take up a whole table outside and only a couple of them buy a drink, we let it slide. Or if someone wants to eat a packed lunch whist drinking a cup of tea that cost £1, it’s kind of ok; it just fits with our relaxed style. But it’s crazy to think that members of the public believe it’s there right to be provided with free service. That’s why we now have a large 8L Kilner water dispenser; because water is and should be free to all, but people can help themselves (that includes non paying customers), just don’t expect a slice of lemon in there.

Music to Bake to

Smashing out tunes whist baking really gets the workflow at full speed. So here is a link to some of the albums which have helped us reach such a high degree of professionalism over the last few months. Enjoy.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/playlist/exploding-tunes/idpl.3234ab9ddf6548e0bf99e1672e9b25fd

You may need to update your iTunes to enjoy this link. Perhaps you could use a Spotify version if you you’re an Apple hater -

https://play.spotify.com/user/olivercoysh/playlist/28hG1yKl1Ftg0cS3SY6asm

The Beer Train

As I catch the 18:22 Great Western train to Totnes for a boozy night out, I play a game of catch up, as I assume my friends have been in the pub for a while now. So I stride to the buffet carriage and order a pint of St Austell’s Tribute for a cool £3.40. I sip my refreshing beer from the plastic pint glass and gaze out of the window of the moving carriage and suddenly it dawns on me; this could be the best bar in the world.

Ok, there are a lot of bad points about this bar, such as the plastic glasses, the poor selection of low quality alcohol (although Tribute is great), there’s nowhere to sit down and the actual bar where I rest my pint is a pathetic Formica mantle. But on further investigation, this bar has a very unique quality and that being; it’s the only public bar in the country with a permanent alcohol license on a moving vehicle. This unique license gives the bar a certain vulnerability, and I’m sure it won’t be long before they call time on Great Western’s Express Café Bar and probably a ban on consuming alcohol on all public transport (Buses and the Tube already have the ban).

It’s simply the view from the window that makes this bar so special, not much else. On my particular journey, which happens to be one of the most beautiful sections of track in the country, I choose to peer through the window on the left hand side between Exeter and Newton Abbot. This small window is not much bigger than a TV screen, but manages to yield sights such as pervert Herrons wading in the Exe estuary looking for dinner or groups of Cockle pickers raking the sandy mud for the buried bivalve molluscs. The view on the right hand side gives you the chance to spot a sly Fox in a field on the hunt to destroy some poor farmer’s roosting hens and you’re guaranteed to see the Deer at Powderham Castle, which I’m now a little bored of to tell the truth, so I stick to the left side.

So as I clutch my flimsy plastic pint and compose myself as the train rocks from side to side I get a spectacular view of the vast ocean as we pass Dawlish Warren, on occasion you’ll get waves delivering their ocean spray against the train windows, but this evening I get the view of a calm, flat sea. My view is disturbed as we enter Brunel’s tunnels, carved through the red cliffs 170 years ago, my diminished pint and I make haste towards Teignmouth and my 34 minute journey has reached the halfway point. Time for another swift pint? I ask myself this question, but I already know the answer as I reach into my back pocket to dig out another £3.40.

As I fill my flimsy plastic vessel and clutch it’s waist, it bends like Isambard’s tracks and begins to overflow, so take a big slurp. At this point I choose to switch windows and gawk on the right hand side of the train and get a glimpse of Dartmoor, but Newton Abbot Race Course dominates the view. A brief stop at the town itself and then the final leg to Totnes. Because the views are a little less spectacular I entertain myself by sticking my head out of the window of the train door, dodging overgrown trees and plants I get a roller coaster of a ride, this stupidity is obviously caused by my traveling companion cheering me on. His head has disappeared, but intend to keep mine! So I quickly stop before decapitation occurs and before long the train pulls up to the platform in Totnes, my home town and gateway to the South Hams. And how better to arrive than on a moving pub with the magnificent views that Devon delivers so well. Perhaps not the best bar in the world, but certainly one not to take for granted, so grab that squeezy pint while you can.

@tate amazing spread of food you laid on last night for @theybfs. So many Oysters and so much wine. Wonderful times. (at Tate Britain)

Guilty Pleasures and dirty secrets

15/07/15

I’m a fraud and this is my confession. I love some really unspeakable, filthy, and questionable bits of food. The whole process from acquiring the products to consuming them is shameful. For my sins, I’ll probably go to hell, but you’re probably all coming with me, because everyone is guilty of this crime.

I hate to use the term ‘Food Trend’, but we are undoubtedly going through a trend for all things healthy in our current instagramable lives. And this purge is probably a reaction to the previous trend (which we’re still experiencing), for the love of gourmet junk food, i.e. the BBQ/ Burger/ Craft Beer fiasco. So whist everyone is projecting the image of their #meatFreeMondays or Chia seeds and avocado for breakfast, they are also loosing touch with some of the wonderful pleasures in life, like the St John Eccles cake consumed with Mrs Kirkham’s finest Lancashire cheese, which is one of the most wonderful flavour combinations on earth and everyone should experience it once.

But forgive me as I have a standard shameful act, that occurs when I’m hung over and this is my cure. I actually prefer this combo to a Full English. It’s a MacDonald’s Cheeseburger, or two, with a can of coke, or two. And I stress a can, not those plastic bottles or a diluted icy MacDonald’s coke, it must be a can. So when I take my hangover out for breakfast I buy him, or her, a can of coke from a newsagent or somewhere (because I’m classy) and I like to hold the chilled drink on my forehead for a few minutes and roll it from side to side, this helps with my headache and is is why the can is a must. With that phase completed, I can enter the golden arches to make the transaction of 99p for a soft, sweet, salty representation of a cheeseburger. It just puts me right and I always manage to stomach one, or two. The soft brioche and fat soaks up the remaining booze in my stomach and all that other junk in the burger sorts out my salt and sugar levels, which seem to be deficient with a hang over, almost as if they have been working on what makes people want something for when the body is craving it. Even the texture works for me and that shitty processed cheese slice which looks like plastic. This cheese represents so much about this Botox burger and how it doesn’t age with all that plastic surgery or shall I say MacDonald’s mummification, as apparently they will keep preserved for a millennia. But despite all the bad stuff, it does me good, it restores balance to my messed up world and calms the turmoil from the night before.

Back to the cheese. I personally think cheese slices work best in a burger and a 2-year-old Cheddar over powers the sandwich. I once had a conversation with Mary Quicke (Devon’s Queen of artisan cheese making) and told her how much I love shitty cheap cheese on a burger. She just politely smiled at me. I then went on to tell her how I am also partial to an instant coffee with loads of milk & sugar, it’s a completely different drink to me, almost like having a Horlicks. We buy Quickes cheese for the bakery though, so I hope she understands that I also love quality and my lapses are rare and guilt ridden. Maybe I’ll send this blog post to Mary to help her understand that I’m not a total prick and that my point is coming from somewhere.

But now I’m going to go more low brow and discuss or should I say confess my deepest, darkest food secret. The Greggs Vanilla Custard Slice. It’s a whore, and I’m a pervert willing to pay good money for what she has to on offer. This chilled rubbery excuse for a cake has probably never even heard of real vanilla, never mind being made of the stuff. But how I love them. I love them for who they are, a cheap, sugary, poorly made slice of confectionary, which cost 95p and is readily available in nearly every town. I’m not trying to pardon Greggs and the rest of the stuff it produces, I’m not even trying to pardon it’s vanilla slice, it’s low end stuff and could be dramatically improved on so many levels. But it’s my love affair and I’m gonna continue, even when I get caught in the act. Every couple of months there is a moment where I get the urge and it’s simply a case of circumstance, I find myself near a Greggs or simply see a Greggs out of the corner of my eye, that delicious blue and magnolia branding. It can happen to anyone. You’re in an unfamiliar place, on your own, less likely to see someone you know, the risk of embarrassment is lowered considerably and the door is open, with a very appealing invitation to mouth fuck the shit out of a Gregg’s Vanilla Slice! Just don’t tell the wife.

Should I just sack myself?

12/06/2015

I’m running around, spatula in hand looking for the spatula. My onions for my Tortilla are beginning to catch, but I need the spatula to stir them, as this is the method I have cultivated and only this utensil will do. Then our Barista asks me “where are the small lids for the takeaway cups?” because we’ve run out and there is a queue out the door, this throws me into a spatula driven brain freeze. I run to the storeroom pointing at the high shelf, not really saying words, mumbling and swearing about using your fucking eyes. I soon realise that I’m pointing at the lids with the spatula and run back to the onions to stir them just in time. Feeling a small wave of relief as I stir and having won my own mini battle against stress. But then the buzzer on the oven goes, my phone starts to vibrate again and a customer is leaning across the counter asking me if I can keep a loaf of Soda Bread back to collect next Friday and if he can just call me to let me know on the day, as he doesn’t know if he’ll definitely be able to collect it. An old friend appears to say hi, I’m covered in flour, my onions are on the edge and the egg delivery guy is waiting for me to collect the old containers that he recycles.

This is approximately a ten minute snippet of my work life in our Cakery. It has made me think about the inner workings of the company and what I actually do for a job. Mentally torn apart by task forces, is that a job description?

Our staff are the mainstays, no doubt about it, a total godsend. Right now, in our Devon and London Bakeries we have the best bunch of staff we ever could have imagined. They are the ones who make the business move forward, they are the oil that greases the engine, and at the moment we are running on Castrol GTX super synthetic.

As for me, maybe I need a service. When we set out I was able to do all the things needed to make our little bakery flourish. I’d wash the floor, take the bins out, serve some customers, fix a leak on the dodgy second hand dishwasher and then bake a batch of cakes for the wholesale orders. Over time all these small jobs have turned into giant versions of what I started with, giving me no defining role whatsoever. I’ll be making a coffee for a customer, which I am reasonably proficient at, as my coffee knowledge is quite in depth, but I’ll hand it over with a small, slightly nervous smile, knowing that our barista would have made it a whole lot better. The point being that we have trained the staff to be standout in their field and I can’t compete. The same goes for our baker, If she takes a day off I’ll be bashing around and flustering my way through a days baking, red faced and most likely chucking out expletives as I wipe an unintentional Hitler moustache of brownie mixture across my sweaty upper lip. Again, knowing that she would be serenely completing these tasks with ease and better results.

I’m increasingly found hunched over my makeshift desk in the storeroom, furiously replying to emails and looking blankly at pieces of paper that make no sense to me, then stuffing them out of sight. Clearly I’m not a natural at the paperwork either. So is it time to issue myself with a P45? (I probably wouldn’t know how to fill it in). Shall I stand aside and let the professionals that we’ve invested in do it the right way? Well, no, not really. I mean who’d do all the running around and swearing for start? I now believe that stress and problems and fun and life interweaving with work go hand in hand when you run a business. I just need to accept this and get on with it. It seems that the more staff we take on and the better we make our company, the less my job is defined. My day is always full, but I’m never really sure what it’s going to be full of, sometimes it’s fun and you meet the best customers in the world and learn something new, but sometimes it’s cleaning a drunk mans sick off our outside seating at 8am. I have now accepted that my job is to not have a job, I’m a problem solver, a sticking plaster, a pliable plug for those hard to reach holes and it’s going to be that way for a good while yet.

Transparency – Saving the World from Mediocre Businesses

06/05/2015

Election Day is upon us. Time to vote. The nation makes a very big decision, but a very difficult one. Probably like me, you can’t see the wood for the trees. As the media is pummelling us with facts and information, it makes it harder to distinguish what’s true and what’s not. So to avoid media manipulation, I went direct to each party and read their manifestos, without the refraction of the media’s skew. But it’s so hard to trust what is being said, because these political parties have a severe reputation for not keeping their word, distorting facts and basically lying. I just wish everyone could see a true representation of each party without all the hidden bullshit. I suppose it’s best to go with your gut feeling. It almost reminds me of choosing a tariff with your mobile phone contact, it’s never perfect for what you want, but you have to choose something.

For a while I’ve been pondering with the thought of Transparency. I’m really into the idea of honesty, integrity and complete exposure in business. Balls out; unlike our cowardly politicians, who only expose their genitals when prostitutes and cocaine are involved.

Perhaps to many business owners transparency is a scary thought, but to me it's exciting and I hope it excites and inspires other people. But the main goal is trust. If a customer trusts a business, then their experience is heightened in a positive way. They will ultimately form a better relationship with the company, with their loyalty and return custom. This is particularly important in the food industry as it has a shady reputation for large profit margins, up selling, loss leaders, questionable hygiene standards and exploited staff that are over worked and under paid.

Transparency helps customers understand our industry and our pricing structure. This can be done on a basic level, for example a break down of a cup of coffee. I’m more than happy to tell people how much our coffee cost and our profit margin on the cup.

To be really transparent and open, I’d say Transparency is a form of marketing, similar to informing customers to what ingredients you use; it is a promotion of the product. But it’s also a double-edged sword, and certainly wouldn’t work for every company, although even

McDonald’s are using this form of marketing, albeit best taken it with a pinch of salt.

But I honestly believe this transparent marketing could be used to the advantage of many businesses; for example, High St coffee chains could release information about their extortionate rent and rates and this could help customers understand their pricing and why they can’t use expensive, high-grade coffee.

Things are definitely moving in the right direction. It was only 10 years ago that restaurants started revealing the source of their ingredients with information about food miles etc. Soon they may reveal how much the ingredients cost and the margins they make on each dish. Would you choose differently if this information was presented to you?

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