Gluten-free bakery, Honeybuns, will soon launch a bespoke cake range with London restaurant chain Leon as it outgrows its current Dorset premises.
The company, led by Emma Goss-Custard, was founded in 1998 and has worked with Leon for 11 years. Now the chain has challenged her to come up with a product completely free of refined sugar to fit its healthy-eating image.
Goss-Custard told British Baker: “We are working very closely with Leon restaurants and it has been challenging, in a positive way, to come up with an answer to the sugar dilemma. We are using dates as a sweetener in the products. As a fruit, the sugar is encased in the fruit and not extracted, which means it is genuinely healthier.”
The products will be bespoke to Leon, with four launching in around eight weeks’ time, but Goss-Custard intends to take the learnings and develop similar products under her Honeybuns brand. One product for Leon will be a dessert and there will also be a couple of individually wrapped concepts. “The first will definitely launch within eight weeks and I’m keen to repeat it across the whole range,” she said.
Leon is the only customer for which the company does own-label. Other customers include John Lewis, British Airways and Virgin.
Meanwhile, Honeybuns has outgrown its 8,000sq ft Dorset premises where it also houses a café. Goss-Custard hopes to secure a nearby site at auction this week to build a 14,000sq ft “fully eco-friendly bakery along Scandinavian guidelines”.
“We will probably retain the old site as research for test development – to be confirmed,” she said.
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