Honeybuns is a bakery founded by Emma Goss-Custard, situated in Sherborne, Dorset. Emma came up with what she refers to as ‘a hare-brained scheme’ to pedal around Oxford delivering her home made sandwiches and cakes to delis and cafes during the late 1990s. Emma’s success meant the business expanded into what is now known as Honeybuns. There were over 100 varieties of cakes, cookies and biscuits when she founded Honeybuns, but when Emma’s husband Matt came on board they streamlined the products on offer down to fifteen. Emma’s trusty bike is now taking life easy as the customers come to her now to sample the goodies at the Bee Shack Café.
Honeybuns’ products are wheat free and many are gluten-free and dairy-free too. Emma says: “We bake our cherished products far slower than larger bakeries do. We set our oven temperature low to allow flavours to mingle and develop properly. Batches are small and our products are made only from natural ingredients.”

BACKGROUND

How did the idea of a bakery come about?

I’d always loved baking - I have vivid memories of helping my mum with making yeastie buns. As a student I baked as a stress reliever and it seemed like a good idea to then develop this hobby into a business.

Who started it up and when?

I had just finished a teaching course in Oxford and I realised I wanted to run my own business rather than work for a company, so in 1998 I bought my old Post Office bike and started a gourmet sandwich round with the cakes as an add-on.

How many staff did you have at the start?
It was just me for a year, then my sister-in-law helped me by making flapjacks and then my great friend Rakel started baking for me too. We are now a team of 20 and during busy times we’ll draft in our willing student helpers to bring us to 26 in total.

How have your products changed?

At the beginning I made the mistake of saying yes to any customer suggestion, which resulted in a product range of over 100 items. However, when my husband Matt came on board we streamlined the range to just 15 lines.

What ingredients do you use?

Nearly all our ingredients are gluten free - the only exception are two non gluten free lines. We focus a lot on local sourcing - our free range eggs are from two miles down the road, our beautiful honey is from Dorset as is our chutney, lemon curd and cranberry jam. With ingredients non-indigenous to the UK we will source as close to the UK as possible. For instance our almonds are Spanish rather than American and we don’t use air-freighted ingredients either.

What’s the most popular product?

Everyone has their favourites. Julia in packing can’t get enough of the Amondi - cake. Tasting is a very popular activity in general and we do a lot of it!

Is everything baked daily?
We bake every weekday and Saturday mornings. Everything is done by hand. As our products are destined for coffee shops all across the country we blast freeze on site and then the products are delivered frozen. We make relatively short shelf life products with no preservatives, so freezing is an excellent way of delivering beautiful, specialist cakes to our customers.

Who do you supply your produce to?
We make products for Leon restaurants and have been supplying John Lewis restaurants for nine years. Originally we started off supplying farmers markets, but nowadays we just do one-off food fairs.

What’s the company’s ethos?
To create utterly gorgeous cakes in a sustainable way. We aim to be kind, thoughtful, fun and gentle - the antithesis of The Apprentice approach.

INSIDE INFORMATION

How did you get into baking?
I’ve always been a keen baker, but I’ve never had any official training. My research mainly centred around eating lots and lots of cakes and realising that there was a genuine gap in the food market for exquisitely made gluten-free treats.

What is your earliest memory of baking?
Surprising my mum by baking her a chocolate sponge cake when I was about seven. Everything was going perfectly until I got a little bit impatient and took the half baked sponges out of the oven to apply the buttercream filling. I panicked when I realised the centres were basically raw so then camouflaged them with a hideous mix of bread mashed up with butter. My mum was very gracious and declared the cake delicious - I still feel guilty.

What did you do before you became a baker?

I studied English and then trained to be a secondary school teacher for a year. I realised pretty quickly that I needed to be self-employed though.

How hands on are you?
In the first year it was just me baking, packing and delivering, which was a little bit fraught to say the least. Now I rarely bake but I’ve grown to love the marketing and design side of the business. I still bake when we’re working on new product development and I find it a great stress reliever.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

What do you like most about being a baker?
There is great satisfaction in bringing something out of the oven that you’ve made from scratch and you know people are going to thoroughly enjoy.

What’s difficult about being a baker?
The competition nowadays is fierce. When we first started out in 1998 with producing gluten free treats there were very few similar offerings around. I guess competition can be a worry, but it also motivates us to keep improving what we offer.

What do you do to unwind?
I love running both road and cross country. I run with a friend and our motley collection of dogs. I also love horse riding, bric-a-brac markets, reading and sharing a meal and wine with gorgeous friends.

What is your ideal sandwich?
I’m not a great bread eater. Having worked with gluten free products for such a long time I tend to avoid wheat, so I’d go for a gluten-free bread toasted sandwich spread with lightly salted Dorset butter, loads of cracked black pepper, smoked salmon, lemon and cucumber.

What is your favourite sweet treat?
My favourite cake would be either a Triple Chocolate Tinker Cookie, a Heathcliffe Brownie or a good old fashioned Victoria sponge with raspberry jam and oodles of cream.

VIEWS ON THE INDUSTRY

What challenges are craft bakers facing?
I think the larger, commercial brands are getting crafty and appear to be more artisan in their marketing material than they truly are. It’s therefore challenging for genuine craft bakeries to get their message out there and believed by the public.

How do you promote your artisan products?
I think there is great potential in popping very simple little films onto your website to demonstrate exactly how your products are made. Inviting your team to write blogs online is also a lovely way of personalising your business. Having open days and developing lots of connections with your local community through school visits, charity link ups etc can really spread good words too.

What are your future plans?
We are currently working on our new savoury gluten free line for John Lewis and we’re also looking at a new cake in a pretty case that definitely is not a cupcake.

What’s the future of artisan baking?

I think there will always be discerning consumers who care passionately about how their food is produced. I think this group will increase year-on-year and if we are transparent and imaginative in how we communicate to these potential loyal fans the future looks bright.