HONEYBUNS
Naish Farm, Stony Lane, Holwell, Sherborne, Dorset, DT9 5LJ
The bakery - 01963 23597; Accounts number - 01963 23706; Fax us on - 01963 23479; Email us on - thebee@honeybuns.co.uk

WHO WE ARE

Hello, I'm Emma and you may have seen me pedalling around Oxford with my home made cakes balanced in the front basket during the late 1990s.

I used to bake in my shared student digs off the Iffley Road & my first customer was Felsons on Little Clarendon Street. Back then, with youth on my side, I used to clock up to 120 miles a week on my bicycle.

We've still got the bike but I think our visitors assume it's just an attractive prop rather than the trusty founder workhorse of the Honeybuns' enterprise!

Back then all the cakes were made using my gran's and my mum's domestic Kenwood mixers.
We still use my gran's vintage model which is a luscious duck egg blue in our development kitchen. In the bakery itself, we use big old Hunt mixers- built like tractors & tough enough to cope with our increasing workload.

We have grown a bit since 1998 & now we are a team of over 20 members.
Our growth has been organic and we have avoided the venture capital, more high octane business path.

Our team work either in the bakery, packing room, office or the Bee Shack Cafe. Some team members, like Cath, Os, Aaron & Jason divide their time between production and the office where they need to fill in or cross check paperwork. It's nice for us in the office as we get to see quite a lot of the team day to day. At any one time we have 8 people each in the bakery and packing room and 6 of us work away in the office.
We are Lilliputian when compared to the more Behemoth commercial bakeries producing cakes in conveyor belt fashion. Most of our team had no baking experience when they joined us - as long as they are happy to learn from scratch this is not a problem. We aim to get new team members baking, under supervision, after a few weeks of training.
In the office, the team is headed up by Trish who has been with us since we moved to Dorset. She is our human equivalent of a SAD defence light box, a ray of human sunshine. Not all of our customers know that she is also a breeder of award winning Simmental cattle.

Our focus is on making yummyliciously good things from as many good, local ingredients as possible. We are careful about food miles but we have to make compromises on things like pecan nuts. Wherever we can, we will source the non UK grown ingredients from Europe rather than further afield. The fact that our cakes are gluten free and sometimes dairy free too is an added point of interest. Our number one priority is flavour & texture or "mouthfeel" which we spend a lot of time on, when developing new products. It just so happens that we prefer using ground toasted nuts, seeds, polenta & quinoa to regular wheat flour.

Our main focus is, of course our bakery, but we have a weak spot for all creatures great & small. We are not a rescue centre but we have been given lots of rescue animals including:

The Equines (and one VIP asinine):
Sammy: a big, strapping, battle scarred hunter who is now enjoying munching endless bales of hay and protecting Joan who he is deeply besotted with. He is 25 years old and is still ridden from time to time to keep his joints supple. He loves carrots, doesn't like apples!

Billy: a beautiful ex flat racer. Racing name slightly ironic "Dead Calm" ..hmmmmm...doesn't feel dead calm when you're hurtling round the Stour Head sponsored ride course on him! He is gentle and lovely and turns into a tiger if he thinks he is going racing.

Billy hangs out with, Rosie & Bee: Rosie is an old games pony and we think she must be 27 years old. A little bit grumpy but loves her food and loves Bee. Bee is a cutey. Very nosey, loves having her mane brushed and is a huge flirt. She was born with a badly deformed face and she makes odd snuffly noises.

Joan: another cutey. 36 yrs old and still strong and sturdy. We have to limit her calorific intake to save her little legs from carrying too much weight and she gets very cross if her plate looks less full than Sammy's. She adores all treats and loves having her neck scratched.

The Canines:
Diesel: big and cuddly German Shepherd who is glued to Em's side. At 10 yrs old he is now suffering a bit with arthritis and is on some new drugs which seem to be helping. Will often be heard barking when we're trying to talk to important customers on the phone.

Peg: little, cute and mad in the head mongrel. Came over from Ireland where she had been abandoned then put in a pound. She is VERY naughty but utterly adorable. She is head of security and has her own pink security T shirt to wear at The Bee Hop.

Honey: she is the Ginger Princess. Our beautiful, laidback Ridgeback (please do not let her know her ridge is missing) we keep her away from the mirrors so she has not twigged yet. She will not be seen outside from the moment the temperature drops and the Aga has been switched on.

Margot and Hilary are our two resident goats and they run circles around all of us. Impossible to catch/manage/do anything practical with but huge entertainment value!