Pink Lane Bakery is Newcastle’s largest, best loved and longest established artisan bakery. Founded in 2012 we are owned and run by bakers, not investors. Growing from making and selling everything in 35m2 in Newcastle city centre, expansion, particularly over the last seven years, has seen the bakery grow to include two production sites, four retail shops, a cafe, thriving wholesale and catering business, a bakery school, a high profile department store concession and a great regional reputation. Our bakery was recently recognised in The Times and Sunday Times as one of the best bakeries in the UK.
The bakery is stable and established, with a multi-million pound turnover, employs over 60 people and continues to grow. Staff wellbeing is central to our values and training and skilling people up is a real focus here. When looking for new people to join our team, we’re really looking for an aligned attitude of care and attention to detail, self sufficient problem solving and collaboration. Staff turnover is very low and people who find a good fit with our hard working yet very supportive culture make longlasting careers here.
Our current head baker is moving on after leading six years of incredible growth, managing an engaged team of now 13 people to produce large volumes of sourdough and viennoisserie from our Gosforth High Street production site.
This is an exciting time to join the business as the senior management step into more responsibility, including share ownership and eventual buyout. We're looking for a motivated and highly skilled baker to not only continue to manage the team and upkeep our extremely high standards and consistency, but to join us in a very senior role to further shape the business in the years to come. Our hope is that our new head baker wants to fully engage with the management buyout process, taking on the responsibilities and rewards of business ownership. We’ll discuss this further with successful candidates at interview.
Job description
We're looking for an experienced and passionate artisan baker of sourdough breads and viennoiserie, who can take on this hands on role to work up to 45 hours a week-
- Leading production to deliver high quality artisan bakes
- Overseeing the entire mixing and baking process
- Developing products, refining, innovating and fully costing our recipes
- Managing, training and supporting a large team, emphasising development and welfare. Including responsibility for rotas and scheduling
- Actively managing compliance with food safety practices including HACCP and working with the senior team to develop and enhance our systems
- Ordering, working with suppliers and finding efficiencies to keep up with the great GP levels we’ve worked hard on as a business
- Developing relationships with our wholesale customers and working very closely with our retail teams
You'll have-
- Several years experience managing a sourdough production team
- Deep understanding of fermentation in bread
- Advanced knowledge of viennoiserie products and lamination
- A skilled pastry background is highly desirable
- Flexibility in your working pattern, including early starts and some Saturday working (the entire business closes on Sundays)
- Solid experience in managing people and training a baking team (we put a lot of emphasis on our training and development of staff here)
- A commercial understanding of the bakery business and knowing the importance of your GP - closely monitoring price changes and being competitive in finding better value alternatives, retaining efficiency and a close eye on scheduling hours
- The people skills to quickly integrate into an experienced team to lead from day one, having high expectations and providing individualised support
What we offer
Here at Pink Lane, we really value people and we pride ourselves on our staff benefits which include-
- A guaranteed pay rise at least in line with inflation every year
- 6 weeks holiday per year
- Paid breaks and standard 8 hour shifts for our team members
- Access to a health and wellbeing service with face to face counselling for you and your family and more
- Far more than statutory sick, maternity, paternity, bereavement and carers benefits.
- Cycle to work scheme
- Lots of training opportunities to upskill
- Relocation support
- For the right candidate, an exciting opportunity be a part of the to senior leadership team and ownership of the company
The people who fit well here at Pink Lane are imaginative and self-sufficient. They bring a calm sense of problem solving and managing their team to deliver the best possible product daily. You'll enjoy it here if you're looking for work life balance, although we pride ourselves on hard work and efficiency, we strive to build a business here where everyone’s voice is heard and skills are valued. We are very open to offering support towards relocation should you be in another part of the UK and are interested in living in the great city of Newcastle! It's a great family friendly city. Friendly, small and with affordable housing compared to other regions, beautiful national parks and coastline on your doorstep. We do need you to have right to work in the UK as we’re not offering sponsorship for this role.
If you've built your skills in artisan bakeries, and feel confident that your team management ability is ready for a new challenge, get in touch! We'd be happy to have an informal chat about the role before the deadline.
Do apply with a CV and cover letter telling us about you, your skills and experience and why you want to work here. The cover letter is really important to understand you so please don't skip that part, applications without it won't be considered. This is also a highly skilled senior role, so please reflect on the criteria and whether you meet them before applying.
Please note that sometimes we hire before the closing date of the application, so get your applications in early. There’s no fixed start date for this role, we‘re more interested in the right candidate.
Job Types: Full-time, Permanent, 45 hours
Benefits:
- Bereavement leave
- Casual dress
- Company pension
- Cycle to work scheme
- Discounted or free food
- Employee discount
- Enhanced maternity leave
- Enhanced paternity leave
- Health & wellbeing programme
- Profit sharing
- Relocation assistance
- Sick pay
- Store discount
- No Sunday working
Essential experience:
- Bakery Management: minimum 2 years (required)
Pay: £37,500.00-£40,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Bereavement leave
- Casual dress
- Cycle to work scheme
- Discounted or free food
- Employee discount
- Employee stock ownership plan
- Enhanced maternity leave
- Enhanced paternity leave
- Health & wellbeing programme
- Sick pay
Application question(s):
- This Head Baker role role is based in Newcastle, do you or are you willing to relocate to Newcastle?
Experience:
- bakery management: 2 years (required)
Work Location: In person
