CakeWire speaks to Martha Swift, co-founder of The Primrose Bakery, London about how the bakery was formed, international expansion plans and brand development.

Primrose Bakery was set up in 2004 - but has quickly garnered an excellent reputation for the quality of its cupcakes.

Nine years later the bakery has two shops - one in Primrose Hill and one in Covent Garden, London, has published three books and has its own app. In this exclusive CakeWire video, co-founder Martha Swift offers her tips for burgeoning businesses.

She explains how the business was born out of passion, saying: "We started Primrose Bakery 9 years ago and it came out of a seeming lack of cupcakes to start with, good cupcakes in London. My business partner and I decided to see if there was a business to be made out of it.

We both loved baking, we both had children and grew up in households that did lots of cooking and baking and so thought we would give it a ago. We talked about it a lot, deciding what we wanted to do."

She also advises cake connoisseurs to:

  • Start small... "We started with a limited range, based around cupcakes, until we got confident and good enough at doing it and realised there was demand and then we expanded."
  • Network... "A delicatessen opened near where we lived in Primrose Hill and we went to see them, told them we were thinking of starting a cupcake business and asked whether they would be interested in us supplying them. For two years we worked out of our home kitchens."
  • Watch your costs... "Marrying up the sales of cupcakes with the shop."

Watch the video: