Homebaked Bakery: Rising to the Challenge

197-199 Oakfield Road in Anfield has been a bakery for over 100 years, closing in 2010 due to deprivation in the area. It was reopened as a bakery by a group of local residents in 2013.

Now a thriving social enterprise and award-winning brand, the community-owned Homebaked Cooperative Bakery aims to provide good jobs and training for local people. It is a real living wage and disability confident employer. It provides quality affordable food, subsidised by the commercial sales of its award-winning pies, and advocates against food poverty.

Residents saved the building from demolition, employed 21 local people (including those excluded from the job market because of issues such as history of substance abuse, mental health issues or learning difficulties), refurbed the bakery, added two rooms as a retail and a community space, as well as refurbished its courtyard. It leases a commercial unit for pie production, and supplies the local football club.

The bakery is a beacon on a High Street characterised by boarded up shops, fast food restaurants, off licenses and betting shops, the majority of which only open on match days.

What’s more, it hosts a weekly debt advice surgery, is open to community groups, including poetry, reading and church groups, and hosts a recovery group in partnership with Liverpool Homeless Football Club.

It has won multiple awards, featured in local and national media, and received a visit from Mary Berry DBE for a BBC show, highlighting its community work.

As well as continuing a 100-year tradition of baking fresh bread daily, it has an additional cafe outlet in St Georges Hall in Liverpool, in partnership with Liverpool City Council, to provide affordable food in the city centre, supporting the major heritage building’s visitor growth plans.

But after strong growth and increasing impact – particularly during the pandemic – the bakery was hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis, with up to 20% increases in ingredient costs, and a 100% increase in utility costs.

Based in a 1% most deprived area in the UK, there is a limit to how much costs can be passed on to their customers. The bakery has had to move to a more realistic trading and grant business model; Key Fund provided a £30,000 flexible finance loan for working capital support to make this shift.

The funding has helped safeguard 15 local jobs, and the future of the bakery.

The bakery’s ambition is to deliver healthy eating programmes in schools and the community, to open a community shop supporting local foodbanks, develop a makers and business incubation space, and create a community market garden.