Jones Village Bakery is recruiting for 30 new night jobs due to soaring demand for its flagship bread products.
The business has reported a 20% increase in sales of Jones Village Bakery’s own brand bread, with its signature Welsh Batch loaf proving ‘particularly popular’.
As a result, the firm is ramping up production on the night shift at its factory in Minera, near Wrexham, where the bread is made. From here, the bread is delivered fresh by a fleet of vans to customers across North Wales and the Marches, as well as supermarkets nationwide.
The company, which also operates a 140,000 sq ft ‘super bakery’ at Wrexham Industrial Estate, is a Real Living Wage employer. Night shift staff earn a premium of 5% on top of that, with a shift pattern of four on and four off. Pay rates start at £11.43 an hour and can increase up to £15.47 an hour. Staff are also entitled to other discounts and benefits, the company said.
“It’s a brilliant company to work for and it’s getting bigger and bigger because of the growing popularity of our products,” said night shift manager at the Minera bakery Kevin Jones. “Our own brand bread is flying off the shelves at the moment so we need to recruit more budding bakers to cater for that demand.”
He admitted that working nights is not for everybody, but noted the shift pattern allowed for plenty of time to do things on days off.
Minera bakery manager Tom Breeze, who started as a 16-year-old apprentice nearly two decades ago, said there were great career prospects for the right people with the right work attitude.
“We have a grow your own policy here which means that the vast majority of the bakery managers and supervisors are people like myself who’ve come up through the ranks,” commented Breeze. “There are lots of opportunities for extra training, earning qualifications and career progression. There’s a great camaraderie amongst the staff and a lot of team become really good friends. Most of the people are from the local area and they have known each other a long time.”
According to operations director Simon Thorpe, the phenomenal growth of the company was driven by great products and their secret ingredient – the brilliant people who work there.
“When you look at the quality of the product coming out of the bakery in Minera, it’s really driving the growth we’re seeing in demand. We’ve got a really good team on the night shift and we just need more people to grow it,” added Thorpe.
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