Bread Ahead rolls out new stores through shared ownership model
High streets shops are the backbone of local communities and there has been plenty of bad news stories about closures but there’s some good news. The opening of the first Bread Ahead outlet under its new owner-operator model, in Harpenden, sets the template for many more such stores across the UK.
On the opening morning of the Harpenden, in Hertfordshire, store the local community turned out in force to check out the new venue and sample its famous sugar-dusted doughnuts. Workers with lap tops, mothers with babies, and locals catching up on the latest gossip all grabbed seats in the 60-cover space that is run by Emese Dombai Szucs who was previously head chef in the kitchen at the Wembley Bread Ahead outlet.
Subscribe to TRBShe doesn’t just run it though. She is the first person to take up the owner-operator model that involves Bread Ahead paying all the investment in the new site while Dombai Szucs pays a management fee to the company to cover things like logistics, training and IT systems. She then gets to keep the profits from the site.
Reece Collier, chief operating officer at Bread Ahead, says that all future outlets on UK high streets will involve this model because it ensures the business stays close to local communities while also growing. The owner-operators will only be allowed to run one unit – unlike businesses that franchise – and there is no need for area managers to oversee multiple venues that are wholly owned by remote business owners.
He argues this is the only way to counter the negativity that often comes with operating an expanding chain. If Bread Ahead ends up with 50 stores then at least it can counter this with all its store owners being known to all the regular customers and the business being fully embedded in the local community as Bread Ahead typically connects with residents through events and partnerships with charities, food banks and grassroots organisations.
Collier reckons it is similar to pubs that might belong to the same group/chain but this is immaterial because it’s the manager and the team that make the place unique and is the reason people spend their time and money in them.
Building a community of future owner-operators.
Expected to follow in Dombai Szucs’ footsteps is a group of Bread Ahead ambassadors who represent future owner-operators and who it is hoped will further build-out the Bread Ahead community. An integral part of the company’s stores are the bakery schools held on-site that Collier says have “educated outwards” while the new ownership model is doing “education inwards” and developing people to run their own operations.
Further highlighting this in-house and external community focus is the fact the management fee Dombai Szucs pays also includes a ‘pay-forward’ amount that will go towards helping the next ambitious individuals who embark on their own ownership journeys. This is not just some short-term ambition though because Collier says the Bread Ahead founder (Matthew Jones) has no intention of selling the business and that it will remain as a family-owned organisation.
This ethos has been extended to Dombai Szucs and those future owner-operators who follow her because there is the prospect that she ultimately passes it onto her children if that’s the course she chooses to take.
Where Bread Ahead plans to open next
For now the new model is very much in its pilot stage but when the finer details are ironed out then there is the plan to open further such units in University and market towns, initially within the Home Counties – that can easily be supported by the mothership in London. Cambridge is cited as an example as the new team there could be trained by the Harpenden crew who will by then be sufficiently experienced.
It’s refreshing to see the high street continue to be attractive to progressive retailers who are breathing new life into many locations and helping to change the negative narrative that has sadly built up around many high streets in recent years.
