Markets & Retail Manager

WHO WE ARE

Founded in 1996, Celtic Bakers is one of London’s longest standing artisanal bakeries. On a daily basis, we produce and deliver a wide range of lovingly hand-crafted breads, patisserie and savoury treats to 1000s of London’s trendsetters and tastemakers – including Planet Organic, Wholefoods and Selfridges. Originally based in Harlesden, we then moved to Wood Green and we’re now proudly centred in a bespoke bakery and office in Tottenham which really is open-plan up-scaled craft baking at its very best. We’re so proud of Tottenham that our signature range is the Tottenham Sourdoughs.

Our roots are and always will be firmly anchored in North London. We pride ourselves on the fact that our team is as diverse as North London itself, an international spectrum of baking heritage and experience is represented across the business. A local bakery with big ideas and long standing in the London food scene.

After 25 years of baking, we’re never complacent. Our overarching goal is to continue setting standards for outstanding hand-crafted loaves and pastry – we’ve been pioneering vegan pastry for years already. We help our wholesale customers achieve next-level standards for their customers and ensure that our customers are popping slices of the best organic sourdough into their toasters. We’ve also succeeded in securing 100% sustainable sources for our electricity and work with food banks and charities in north London to ensure zero food waste as a result of our manufacturing.

Organic is central to our business, and we pride ourselves on what we see as the finest range of Soil Association-certified breads and pastries in London. Organic farming is about much more than just “chemical-free”; we are working with both our farmers and the mill to find better ways to communicate the importance of organically-grown wheats to the wider agricultural landscape. Our fields and our harvests are precious natural resource; in making organic breads and pastries we can be one tiny part of an important movement to protect the earth’s most important resources for future generations.

HOW WE WORK

North London works hard and we’re no exception. Our bakers are working from the crack of dawn to sunset, mixing, shaping, proving, and baking. On busy days, over 20,000 loaves will leave our ovens and make their way across the city to delis, restaurants, and shops.

When you’re working with a product that requires intimate understanding of the full production cycle from grain to loaf, you need to have experts in the building. Our Head Baker and Operations Manager have 60 years of baking mastery between them and are a wealth of knowledge. We’ll be the first to say that even after such a long time in the industry, things go wrong. We pride ourselves on focusing on what we can learn and how we build on our heritage of working hard and smart.

We value a human touch. This extends from the hand shaped loaves to our culture. From the top down, everyone knows each other’s names and there’s always a friendly ear for life’s peaks and troughs.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

A self-starter (if you’ll pardon the sourdough pun) with experience managing a small team. You’ll be solely responsible for making sure the retail operation is running smoothly and that any issues or roadblocks are effectively communicated to the wider team.

You’ll be hands on with our product and will become an expert in grain-to-loaf baking in no time at all.

You’ll need to be passionate about quality produce and be able to communicate the importance of all the hard work that goes into producing genuine quality breads and pastries. In time, you’ll become the face of the business across London’s farmers’ markets and need to have a natural ability to engage with our loyal customer base – some of whom have been buying our bread for more than a decade.

The ability to manage relationships with a wide range of stakeholders is essential and a natural ability to bring people on side will put you in a great position.

A confident decision maker. There will be on-the-fly problems to solve as well as long term strategic decisions to make.

A solid understanding of food safety procedures would be great, but we can train you up to understand all the ins and outs.

A keen attention to detail and comfort with numbers is crucial and an understanding of Excel would be great.

The retail arm of the bakery is a hugely exciting part of the business with bags of room for growth and learning. We have big ideas about how to push onto the next steps and this is your opportunity to be a transformative presence at the coalface of Celtic Bakers – and the wider London food scene.

There will be occasional early starts alongside beautiful spring mornings and wet and windy autumnal afternoons. All-weather self motivation is essential!

Key responsibilities:

·      Leading the Celtic Bakers retail team: all day-to-day operations, plus business development

·      Embedding operational excellence, commercial growth objectives and best in class branding across our portfolio of markets (currently between 10 & 13 per week)

·      Working closely with MD, in achieving business growth across the Farmers’ Market portfolio.

·      Ensuring an accurate reporting structure is ready for finance and operational requirements

·      Build towards a permanent initial retail foothold with a view towards expansion