Local Food Heroes - Stephen Wheeler talks to Tim Hall of Halls Bakery
When Halls Bakery baked its first loaf of bread in1903, the Wright brothers were making the first powered flight, and the first motorcar was sold by the Ford motor company.
Tim Hall’s great grandfather set up business in Minchinhampton in a single roomed bakery with a coal-fired oven, and delivered his bread in a horse-drawn two-wheeled cart. Today Tim employs 54 staff at their bakery in Woodchester, and sends out over 400 different types of loaves and cakes a day, to their four retail bakery shops, and to hundreds of caterers and retailers across Gloucestershire and beyond.
I asked Tim whether such a diverse range presented a production challenge? “We have developed an efficient way of working from one product type to another during a 24 hour baking cycle,” he said. “We see our large product list as a strength. We have something to sell to a wide range of business types, and one category on the shelves often opens the door for another.”
Since joining the family the family business Tim has witnessed a significant change in their customer profile. “Small corner shops and rural post-offices have closed in their hundreds, so as well as operating our own bakery and sandwich shops in local town centres, we have targeted the catering industry from hospitals and schools to hotels and pubs,” he said. Whilst bread still makes up 75% off Hall’s turnover, they are constantly developing new products to suit ever-changing tastes. “Cup cakes and muffins have been the latest success story,” said Tim. “Another growth area has been ‘over-night’ bread. Taking longer to prove the dough and bake, it’s ‘slow food’ and gives a more traditional, harder, open texture,” he added. Halls use around eight tonnes a week of locally milled flour from the likes of Shipton Mill in Tetbury.
Tim’s great-grandfather made ‘snow-boots’ for the bakery horses so they could cope with the steep lanes around Minchinhampton before the petrol engine. I asked the master-baker what recent achievements he was most proud of? “Delivering to all our customers during the snows in January,” he answered modestly. The long-standing Halls tradition of customer choice and service is simply the icing on the cake.
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20th March 2010
Nathan Williams takes some cakes out of the oven
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