Independent sourdough specialist Gorse has opened a new café and bakery in Cornwall.
The new site marks the company’s latest stage of expansion, following two years of growing demand for its specialty products such as Marmite, Pickled Green Chilli & Cornish Cheddar Sourdough, and Pastel de Nata.
Co-owners Nat Galliano-Hale and Anna Gerrans established Gorse bakery in 2021. They started producing sourdough loaves for café and restaurant clients around Cornwall out of a business park in the outskirts of Newquay. With the wholesale business booming, they were subsequently able to open an weekly counter on-site.
The company has now moved down the road to set up shop at Lanteague, a community of studios for small businesses near the village of Zelah, between Newquay and Truro.
“Since we started Gorse just after lockdown, it’s always been our dream to have a bigger location and invite customers to sit in,” said Galliano-Hale. The bakery’s vision, he noted, was to create a space that visitors would come to enjoy ”the ultimate duo” of superb quality baked goods as well as tasty coffee.
“Thanks to the support of our local community and customers, we’ve now been able to grow as a business to get to this milestone, as well as creating six local jobs. From the seating area, visitors can also see behind the scenes of life as a baker, which we hope will inspire more people to learn about the craft,” Galliano-Hale added.
Gorse showed its commitment to supporting other local small businesses by hiring Timpson Carpentry to design and build all the interior work of its Nordic-inspired café. The wood was felled and milled locally, with Owen Davies from Gulland Rock fabricating the two-metre-long bread rack and Kim Moore from Cornish Hardwood Supplies crafting the wooden shelves.
Milk for its drinks is sourced from Trink Dairy and coffee from Foundation Coffee Roasters, both based in St Ives.
Gorse currently opens from Tuesdays to Saturdays, offering a menu including vegan, vegetarian, and dairy-free options.
The menu changes regularly with items such as doughnuts, cinnamon buns, croissants, and raspberry bostock among the sweet treats recently on offer alongside the likes of spelt sourdough, sourdough pide flatbreads, and baguettes.
“As well as opening on Sundays in the near future, we’re also hoping to bring back the Gorse Supper Clubs towards the end of the summer, which proved a huge success last year,” said Gerrans. “We’ve also got plans to regeneratively grow our own fruit & vegetables in a small plot of no dig beds, for the bakery.”
No comments yet