Pettigrew Bakeries has opened a 5,500 sq ft bakery headquarters and café after making a six-figure investment.
The purpose-built ‘Breadquarters’ is at Design Quarter in the Penylan area of Cardiff and brings Pettigrew’s team of bakers together under one roof for the first time. Designed to increase production while improving working conditions, it includes a 25-cover café where customers can eat and drink with a view into the working bakery.
The site has been designed from scratch around the needs of the bakery team, with new ovens, mixers, temperature-controlled spaces and other equipment intended to make production more efficient without removing traditional techniques.
A team of around eight bakers will initially work from the site each day, eventually rising to 14 as the full team moves in. Pettigrew, which was named Craft Bakery Business of the Year in the 2024 Baking Industry Awards, said the move will give it capacity to at least double production across the business.
Around 3,000 of Pettigrew’s signature Welsh cakes are currently made by hand each week, with the new bakery providing capacity to increase this to 5,000. Thousands of loaves of its house sourdough are also produced by hand every week, with new temperature-controlled walk-in facilities providing the potential to increase production by as much as five times. The bakery supplies Pettigrew’s five Cardiff shops as well as a local restaurants and chefs.
“Breadquarters really is the culmination of everything we’ve learned over the past decade,” said founder and owner David Le Masurier. “We wanted to forget compromise. We reject the idea that a space must be either purely functional or beautifully useless. We wanted to find the third way – a design that does both.”
He added that centralising production means Pettigrew will no longer need to operate duplicate bakery facilities or transport ingredients between production sites across the city.
The business estimates this could reduce its overall carbon footprint by up to 30% through reduced energy requirements and more streamlined logistics, with ingredients now able to arrive by the pallet directly into a dedicated dispatch and storage area.
“Bringing everyone together also gives us opportunities for much more collaborative working, teamwork and cross-training,” added Le Masurier. “Ultimately, it gives us more time and space to implement the ideas we have and unleash the potential of an incredibly skilled team.”
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