Cotswold artisan bakery receives our latest Raikes Recognition Award
When a small Cotswold bakery was chosen to supply pastries to a fast-growing global high street coffee chain Raikes took a look. It revealed a fascinating and ambitious Gloucestershire food business.
Dear reader,
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Raikes Journal.
We have various stories backing up - about the future of farming (a debate that took place at the Royal Three Counties Show and involved Gloucestershire experts), about just what Gloucestershire really did win in terms of investment when it went north for the UKREiiF show, and more.
But today we’ve swept almost everything aside to run an article on another winner in our Raikes Recognition Awards 2026. The awards showcase businesses and business people doing great things in the county using the increasingly forgotten art of journalism.
It’s an awards series made possible by sponsors QuoLux, the county-based leadership development specialists, law firm Willans Solicitors LLP and Gloucestershire College. A massive thank you to both of them.
Today we showcase a Cotswold food business catching the attention of a fast-growing multinational business that loves its food so much it’s partnered with it.
A massive congratulations to The Little Bakery Company.
(If you know of a business or individual or team you think deserves showcasing in one of our Raikes Recognition Awards, please do let me know.)
Best regards,
Editor | 07956 926061 | LinkedIn: Andrew Merrell | andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk
Believe in Gloucester Awards 2026 open for nominations!
As community events supporting real local businesses and putting a smile on everyone’s face go, this is right up there. We’re talking about Gloucester BID’s Believe in Gloucester Awards. Back for another year. You can see images and read a full report on last year’s event here (Believe in Gloucester Awards 2025) and nominate your choices for the various prizes here: Believe in Gloucester Awards 2026.
Your briefing notes…
🏘️🏘️🏘️ More than 280 new homes could be built in Gloucester if the landowners get permission to demolish the existing buildings. French energy giant EDF did have its UK headquarters at Barnwood until it moved operations to Gloucester Business Park in 2022. It’s just submitted a planning application to the city council for permission to build 281 homes on the 10.31-hectare site, as well as 8,000 square metres of employment space and 532 sq m of community space and a play area. Gloucester firm Roberts Limbrick is the architects presenting the scheme.
🏘️🏘️🏘️ A developer who wants to build 750 homes on 40 hectares of land between Swindon Lane and Hyde Lane in Cheltenham has been told by the borough council the plans need to be accompanied by an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Blenheim Strategic Partners and Galliard (Cheltenham) Ltd had hoped the EIA would not be necessary, but the local authority has concerns over the environmental impact, urbanisation of the area and traffic.
📈 A surge in demand for wellness breaks in the Cotswolds has created growth for a Gloucestershire-headquartered holiday homes business. StayCotswold, based in Stow-on-the-Wold, said that in the 12 months to March 31 it grew its portfolio by 16 per cent to 300 properties. Average gross income per property climbed to more than £50,000 with an average of 50 bookings per property per year. Staff numbers rose to 20. StayCotwold was founded in 2009 by Fergus Mitchell, acquired in Spring 2021 by Tracy Archer, Mat Faraday and Tom Burdett, with Mitchell remaining a director and shareholder. More growth is expected.
💷💷 Gloucestershire-headquartered independent estate agency Move has been bought up by Dwelly, which is touted as a ‘proptech’ lettings platform. The firm uses AI-powered systems to digitise operations like rent collection and maintenance and started after a £69m funding round in February of this year. It already managed more than 10,000 properties. The Move deal adds 1,100 fully managed properties across its three branches to the Dwelly network.
The Raikes Journal is a community interest company. Everything you read is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People, our sponsors, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
Readers who upgrade to become a paid subscriber become part of this CIC too (from £2.30 a week). It helps make us sustainable, allows you to see past the paywalls, comment on our stories, and know you’re making possible the county’s only editorially-led digital magazine dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire about its businesses, charities, education and training sectors.
Raikes is the only independent website approved to use the BBC’s local Government copy. It recognises Raikes as independent journalism.
Diary dates…
Tuesday:
The LinkedIn Sparkle System: Get Seen. Get Leads. Get Clients, by Cotswold Networking Ltd. From 9.30am to 12.30am. More here.
Jo Robert, a chartered management accountant, is due to stage this one: Accounting one-to-one in-person for sole traders, start-ups & SME’s, at The Growth Hub, Stroud. More here.
Wednesday:
Engineer and designer Granger Forson is due to front this one: Personal productivity workshop: Time-focusing tactics for small business owners. At The Growth Hub, Cheltenham. More here.
Thursday:
Business immigration update for employers. Free online webinar staged by Willans Solicitors LLP. 10am to 10.45am. To register or find out more click here.
Women in Leadership conference. Speakers including Christina Line of The Nelson Trust, James Forrester of Gloucester Rugby Club and Gloucester Hartpury Women’s Rugby Club, Sam Nicholas of The Benefact Group, Dr Stewart Barnes, CEO of QuoLux Group and Camella Cephas of WSP Solicitors line up for this special event celebrating women in leadership. More here.
Friday:
Cheltenham Food & Drink Festival opens at Montpellier Gardens in Cheltenham. and runs all weekend long.
Cotswold artisan bakery receives our latest Raikes Recognition Award
When a small Cotswold bakery was chosen to supply pastries to a fast-growing global high street coffee chain Raikes took a look. It revealed a fascinating and ambitious Gloucestershire food business.
As we move through 2026 The Raikes Journal is singling out individuals and businesses we think deserve showcasing as part of our Raikes Recognition Awards, telling their stories with original journalism, and the latest is The Little Bakery Company.
The awards exist thanks to sponsors QuoLux, Willans Solicitors LLP and Gloucestershire College, which make possible a whole series of articles showcasing unsung county businesses.
The Little Bakery Company sent out a press release earlier this month announcing it had been chosen to supply Blank Street Coffee’s debut South West store in Bristol with its hand-finished viennoiserie and pastries.
Something else seemed to be going on here – more than just a happy deal for a small Gloucestershire business – so we decided to take a look. And true enough, what we found was something special – and that’s not just the pastries and viennoiserie!
The release made no mention of bakery director Alex Clavel’s pedigree, the entrepreneurial mindset driving the otherwise quintessentially Cotswold English business or revealed its ambitious plans.
Clavel runs the business with co-owner, fellow director and chef Narda Franco, taking the business (which dates back to 1928) over in 2023.
He told Raikes: “I am a former fine-dining restaurateur having worked in New York, London, and the Middle East. My principal challenge was finding baked goods from someone else that matched my menu. It was close to impossible and compromises so often had to be made.
“Restaurants typically do not have in-house bakeries and thus they must rely on a third party bakeries to supply baked goods at the highest and most consistent standard- think croissants for breakfast, buns that matched the exceptional burgers, or cakes that conclude a dining experience, for example.
“They rarely did, and this is why I chose to focus on addressing this challenge across all three areas of bakery: a viennoiserie team for morning pastries, bakers for artisan bread, and a pastry team for cakes and desserts.”
And the deal with Blank Street Coffee, does that point to what is helping his business thrive in challenging times for the food, drink and hospitality sector?
“The business fundamentally survives because of our entrepreneurial mindset. The core focus on our business is product and service.
“Maintaining the highest standard of both of these, while tacking through headwinds by being fast, efficient and adaptable has allowed for not just our survival, but our growth.
“Our business is built on a very unique premise: to offer high-quality, entirely hand made products and to do so at scale.
“We use the very best suppliers in the market including the royal-warranted Shipton Mill as our Cotswold-based flour supplier (where we purchase exclusively from their organic range), butter from France for our breakfast pasties used by the top Michelin restaurants and of course we never use any chemicals, emulsifiers, stabilisers or anything else like this that needn’t be in your food.
“High volume and handmade typically do not go together, but this is my objective. It is our business’ USP.
“When it comes to bread and baked goods, there is just too much of a difference between products that are processed and made by machines and those that are made by hand.
“Quality-focused restaurants, pubs, cafes and hotels do not want, nor can get away with, offering machine made baked goods.
“At the same time, they typically cannot rely on smaller bakeries of handmade to offer the volume they need. It is this market that we are addressing.”
How important is the deal with Blank Street Coffee?
“While supplying one single Blank Street location does not have a significant increase in revenue per se, it does represent a massive milestone for our local business. Our family business has, up until now, only been servicing a small local market.
“We are proud to have reached a level that has allowed us to begin working with an international brand, and one of the quality, standard and incredible popularity of Blank Street.
“A brand such as this would only look to work with a supplier that it could rely on, one that maintains a focus on quality and reputation, and does so in a consistent, safe, and controlled environment.”
It’s a deal that has also created two more jobs at the Cotswold bakery which operates across three businesses, including Bakery on the Water (Bourton-on-the-Water), Bakery on the Hill (Burford) and Bakery on the Marsh (Moreton-in-Marsh).
As for Blank Street Coffee (a coffee and matcha specialist - matcha being a finely ground powder of green tea), it started small too, selling coffee out of a battery powered mobile coffee cart in Brooklyn in 2020 when Issam Freiha, from Lebanon, met Vinay Menda, from the UAE.
But in 2024 its UK operation reported a turnover of £35.8 million and growth of 214 per cent a year. Globally its turnover is said to be $149m (US).
It will now be supplied daily by its new Gloucestershire-based partner with all-butter pain au chocolat, croissants, almond croissants, and glazed cinnamon buns finished with cream-cheese icing.
Head baker Viktor, who leads the production team in Moreton-in-Marsh, said: “We make everything by hand, the same way we always have. When a brand like Blank Street tells you the product is what they want their customers to experience first thing in the morning, that means a great deal.
“It’s the part of this job you can’t really put a price on.”
Clavel added: “We’ve never been in a rush to be the biggest. We’d rather be the bakery that the region’s best operators choose because the product speaks for itself.
“Bristol has a discerning food scene, and serving it daily through a brand that shares our values feels like the right next chapter.”
What’s its most popular pastry?
“It depends on the category, but for pastry, it’s the cinnamon roll, for viennoiserie it is our almond croissant, and for our bakery, it’s our Cotswolds sourdough loaf,” said Clavel.