Free-from company to trial pop-up shop

Northamptonshire-based the Incredible Bakery Company is to open its first bricks-and-mortar site with a pop-up bakery café. 

The company, whose Incredible Onion Panini won the Free-From Product of the Year category at the 2015 Baking Industry Awards, will open the outlet in Northampton. It aims to experiment with recipes that it struggles to bring to the wholesale market, due to packaging difficulties.

Company director Valerie Mizuno-Turner explained: “Throughout the time we’ve been doing what we do, we have developed a very large number of recipes. With some of the products we know how to make, it’s very hard to get them to consumers because of packaging or because they are very fragile products, such as our amazing chocolate tart.

“We don’t sell the chocolate tart because it is a very cumbersome product to pack for the size we are. So, in the shop we want to serve all these recipes we have that are for products which are delicate or very exquisite and we find difficult to distribute nationally.”

Set to be open for six weeks until the end of August, the pop-up will see if a more permanent site could be established. Turner said: “The whole idea behind this pop-up experiment is to go out there, try it out for six weeks and get a feeling of the market - how well would we do if we had a shop and whether it would be good for us. So, I’m thinking that, in six weeks we can have a small taste of what it will mean to the Incredible Bakery Company.”

The company has also recently launched a gluten-free and margarita pizza. The pizzas, which have a frozen shelf-life of three months, come in boxes of eight at a price of £30. All the firm’s products are free from the 14 common food allergens under EC regulations.

The Incredible Bakery Company also took Highly Commended status for its Incredible Mini Red Quinoa Loaf in the Gluten-Free category in this year’s Britain’s Best Loaf at the 2016 Farm Shop & Deli show. The outlet will open in July.