New Business Focus – Proving that Bread is the Essence of a Community

We welcome Arisaig Bread Shed to The Chefs’ Forum Community. Opened during lockdown in the small village of Arisaig in North West Scotland – you can see the isles of Eigg, Rum and Skye from the village – the new bakery business, run by husband and wife Aubrey and Chris Bradford, is thriving on a very simple premise and looking forward to an exciting year.

“Lockdown made us,” explained Audrey. “We were able to refine our primary purpose which is making sure that there is always bread for the community. We bake twice a week and deliver it ourselves running our business on Facebook and Instagram.

“We’ve found that there is real demand for good bread and our local residents love it. We opened up in Arisaig about 18months ago and learned the hard way. My husband Chris has been making the bread by hand (I make the pastries) and we’ve only just got our first mixer! So he’s thrilled.

“It has been a labour of love but our bread and our mad pizza van has been so well received. We both did courses at The School of Artisan food near Nottingham when we were living down there. We don’t come from hospitality. I was a manager in the NHS.

“The menu is simple and our bread has got better and better the more we make it; Good sourdough, croissants, seasonal pastries and now a pizza delivery. This year we will start to add some value in the summer when the tourist influx starts. We want to do bakery delivery boxes and picnics for boats and walkers.

“There is so much love in a local bakery and I’ve really started to appreciate that the term artisan really means something. It’s a craft and the more you work it the more you learn. What we do no compared to what we did at the start is miles apart but that’s the joy of it.”

Bread is a huge part of the dining experience in our restaurants, always served as an entrée to fine dining experiences.

There is ever-increasing demand for bread recipes to be taught in our Chefs’ Forum Academies.

It is fantastic that Audrey got in touch and told us about her fantastic business born in lockdown – We would like to wish her the very best and look forward to inviting her and Chris to our next Scottish Chefs’ Forum event.