What happens when one of your major suppliers goes bust?

 

At Woods we are very proud to make as much of our menu as

possible from scratch, buying in fresh ingredients and preparing

each of the dishes on our menus, from soups to stock for our

sauces, to our own ice cream. However, one aspect of our menu

we don’t prepare ourselves is our bread. This is because we have

found and been using for quite a few years now, a very nice

artisan bakery who supplies us with bread which is of a much

higher quality than we could make ourselves.

 

So imagine my dismay last Saturday, arriving into work to the news

that my baker has gone bust. Gone, poof, vamoosed! Just like that!

No warning, one day the bread is there, the next it’s gone! Now what

am I supposed to do?

 

What’s the saying? You don’t what you’ve got until it’s gone!! Well,

I’ve spent the last couple of days trawling the internet, phoning

bakers, visiting local bakeries, all in the hope that one might be

able to supply me both with the high quality bread I’ve been used

to in the past AND the quantity I need. Woods is a busy restaurant

and the majority of our customers order bread, some even go for

second helpings, so you can imagine the number of loaves we

require each week. My wife even went to the local farmer’s market

on Sunday to check out suppliers for me. But as yet, nothing fits!

Maybe my expectations are too high, but why not? My customers

expect the best, how can I serve them something which I don’t think

is good enough for them. One bakery I spoke to, when asked what

types of bread they do, answered white, brown and granary! Our

usual varieties include curried, tomato and herb, olive, walnut, onion,

donkle and wholemeal, so I’m sorry Mr Baker, that’s just not going to

cut it with my customers!

 

Another I visited used Tesco value tomato puree for their tomato

flavoured bread, and their olive bread included some manky looking

olives from a cheap looking jar. Whilst I know we’re in a recession

and everyone is trying to keep costs low, using cheap supermarket

ingredients is not good enough! You expect me to spend money with

you, you have to give me a quality product that I’m prepared to pay for.

 

So the search goes on and in the meantime, it looks like for now,

my chefs will be getting dusty with the flour and needing, proving,

knocking back and baking copious batches of our own loaves.  At

least we can truly say we make EVERYTHING on our menus.

 

Wesley Hammond

Head Chef,

Woods Brasserie.