bread factory

Source: The Bread Factory

The Bread Factory has acquired a new 70,000 sq ft bakery in Milton Keynes as it forges ahead with foodservice and grocery expansion plans.

The company – a subsidiary of Bread Holdings, which also owns Gail’s – said the new factory marked the ‘next phase of growth’ for the company and provided ‘world-class production facilities’, ‘state of the art freezing and storage capabilities’, as well as ‘additional capacity’.

The business currently serves artisan baked products, including bread, viennoiserie and cakes, to premium hotels and chefs in the UK and operates bakeries across north London, Manchester and St Albans.

The investment would enable the business to work with more leading restaurants, hotels and retailers in the UK and further afield by supplying both fresh and frozen bakery products at scale, it said.

“This move is a firm statement of our belief in the power of better baking,” said managing director Mathieu Le Bras. “I am immensely excited at the growth potential this new bakery brings to our group.”

The Bread Factory was founded in 1993 by Yael Gail Mejia with the aim of producing bread by hand using time-worn artisanal methods.

In September 2021, parent company Bread Holdings announced it had secured an investment from Bain Capital Credit in partnership with EBITDA Investments, a ’food ecosystem’ fund backed by entrepreneurs Henry McGovern and Steven Winegar, to support the bakery’s expansion.

In an interview with British Baker last year, Bread Holdings CEO Tom Molnar revealed the company had plans to double in size in three to five years.

Molnar told British Baker the new investors had been chosen carefully to help the group’s expansion. “A team doesn’t make itself overnight,” he said. “It took a lot of time to find the right people for the ecosystem around which we built this business.”