In this series, British Baker talks to people from across the baking industry to find out about their career path, what their job involves, and the latest trends that are shaping their work.
We’re looking to showcase a diverse range of talent and job types across the industry, so if you’d like to be involved, please email dan.riley@wrbm.com.
Name: David Martos
Age: 31
Job title: Founder
Company and location: House of Cinn, London
Education: BEng Biomedical Engineering, MSc and PhD in Retinal Tissue Engineering at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London
Tell us about your career to date:
I grew up in Madrid and as a teenager, worked in my dad’s family restaurant. I saw how tough it was running a small business in the food industry, so I never imagined I’d end up doing the same. I loved science and moved to London to study Biomedical Engineering before completing a PhD at UCL, where I was developing retinal patches for children with inherited blindness.
While volunteering with homelessness charities, I met my now wife and business co-founder, Itse. We started baking cinnamon buns alongside our PhDs to help fund the community projects we were involved in. That side project slowly turned into House of Cinn, and we started our journey of building our own bakery brand.
How would you describe your job, and what kind of tasks and responsibilities does it involve?
People think I spend a lot of time eating cinnamon buns, which I do, to be fair, but that’s a very small part of the job. Most of my time is spent on production planning, forecasting, operations and working with our retailer partners to keep growing the business.
We don’t directly employ a bakery team, but work very closely with our manufacturing partner in Luton and are heavily involved in the development of new recipes and the production process.
Tell us about a challenge you have overcome recently:
Scaling production without compromising quality – making sure the hundred-thousandth bun tastes as good as or better than the first – has definitely been our biggest challenge.
The stakes are completely different when you’re supplying national retailers like Sainsbury’s; the scale is just enormous. We’ve spent a huge amount of time refining our manufacturing processes, ingredients and quality controls so customers get the same product every time they pick up a pack.
What have been some highlights of your career?
Seeing House of Cinn on supermarket shelves is still a bit surreal, especially knowing it all started as young 20-somethings with a big dream.
I’m also really proud that we’ve managed to build a business that grows our social impact alongside our retail footprint, being able to fund the type of projects we used to dream of is really rewarding.
To date, we’ve partnered with six UK charities supporting initiatives that tackle domestic abuse, homelessness, loneliness, and provide opportunities for care leavers. This includes with Bromley & Croydon Women’s Refuge, Justlife (Brighton & Manchester), Vintage Vibes (Edinburgh), Power2Prevail (London), Greenlight Medical (London), and Accumulate – The Art School for the Homeless.
What advice would you give to aspiring young professionals entering the baking industry?
Just start! Don’t wait until you think you’ve got it all figured out because you never will. Funnily, a bit of naivety actually helps. If you knew every challenge, every setback and every problem you’d have to solve before you started, you’d probably never do it.
We certainly had no idea what it would take to build a national bakery brand. If we had, we might have decided to print T-shirts instead!
Interested in a career in bakery? Check out Foodmanjobs for the latest vacancies
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