Filbert's Too - adventures in social enterprise

The headlines:

Lancaster’s award-winning Filbert’s Bakery on King Street is opening a new not-for-profit bakery in Halton. ‘Filbert’s Too’ will build local food resilience and support community food clubs and banks in the Lancaster and Morecambe area.

We are currently in the funding stage, using some hard-earned savings and grants to kickstart this exciting venture, and we would love the help of our local community to make this a reality.

All funds raised will initially be spent on the bakery fit-out - buying equipment and making the building fit for purpose. Any surplus will be used to subsidise bread and baked goods for food banks and clubs, or used to facilitate our wide range of community initiatives.

The detail:

Filbert’s Too is a registered not-for-profit social enterprise (registered as Filbert Aussi, trading as Filbert’s Too) and the sister business to Filbert’s Bakery in Lancaster.

We plan to use our platform to widen our reach and embed ourselves thoroughly in local community food initiatives.

This new venture is the culmination of 10 years of hard work, a reaction to our current political and economic climate, and an opportunity to build a truly sustainable business that supports and meets the needs of our community.

The rising cost of living, the increase to energy bills, and the growing uptake of food bank use around the country has a practical effect on running a small business - traditionally if our costs increase then we must increase our prices, which we have done reluctantly up til now.

That is only ever going to be a temporary solution, otherwise we’re just contributing to the cost of living crisis - passing the problem downstream to people who are already struggling.

We knew we needed a better solution, something that would help our business stay open, that would allow us to sell our wares at lower prices and would expand our reach to fantastic community food initiatives.

Filbert’s Too is the solution.

As a social enterprise based in a workshop in Halton, we can redirect profits into the business along with raising funds and attracting grant funding to help keep our costs down and allow us to provide free or subsidised food to food clubs and banks.

We’re going to install loads of solar panels to lower our carbon footprint and reduce our vulnerability to rising utilities costs.

We’re going to partner with Food Futures and the wonderful local allotments, using locally-grown produce in our recipes and helping redirect surplus to food clubs.

We’re going to teach baking and cooking classes to community groups and schools, helping provide some choice and agency for those in food poverty.

We’re going to work with local farmers on ambitious projects to grow produce and wheat for us.

We’re going to offer deliveries in an increasingly wide area, by bike and electric van, subsidised or free to those who are more vulnerable or have impaired mobility.

We’ve got loads of great ideas, and we think they’re going to do everything we hope - keep our heads above water, allow us to continue producing delicious baked goods for the Lancaster region, and help us provide meaningful and broad-spectrum contributions to our community.

We are super excited about this, and we’ve made a start already - we have a great workshop over in Halton, a bunch of solar panels waiting to go on the roof, some hard-earned cash to get us started and a container of bakery equipment we rescued ready for cleaning and reconditioning.

We’ve applied for a few grants and will be applying for a few more, but we still need some help to get on our feet. There’s a fit-out to do, some bikes and vans to buy, and some more equipment to acquire. Hence this crowdfunder.

So if you’d like to help, we’d really appreciate it! You can do that in a couple of ways:

We’re all in this together, and we know we’re incredibly lucky to be part of such a wide and caring community. So thank you for your support. We love you.

Fil, Sally, Joe, and the rest of the team at Filbert’s.