Exmoor Cakes, the story so far…

In the summer of 2001 Lucy and William Bowden got a lucky break and with the help of friends and family they managed to scrape together enough money to take on the lease of a redundant shop and convert it into a small Tea Room. Despite the then problems of Foot and Mouth and the fact that some miscalculations in set up costs meant that they had to borrow the money from Williams mothers purse to open on their first day everything went well.

The shop was packed throughout the summer months and the winter months were greatly supplemented by Lucys Christmas Cakes which she had been making and selling at local markets for some years.

In the summer of 2004 boredom was setting in, the shop was becoming too easy so in a moment of madness Lucy booked stands at the BBC Good Food Show and the BBC Festive Food Show without really thinking it through. The NEC show alone expected to have 128,000 people attending. Even if 1% bought a cake we were in trouble!

Before long the tea rooms store was overcome with cakes and the boxes started stacking up in their flat. The show stand was built and painted at the last minute. The day before the show 3.5 tons of cakes and equipment were loaded into a borrowed trailer and in and on the family Land-Rover and they set off to the midlands.

The two shows were a great success and orders went from 10 or 20 at a time to orders of 3000 at time!

 In 2005 it was obvious that the tea rooms had to go to make way for more serious cake production. Opening times of the shop were shortened to make way for Christmas cakes and we made the decision to sell up and find new premises.

In May 2006 we opened our new premises in the heart of the old part of Lynton and along with our new staff we can now bake and decorate far more cakes than before.

Autumn 2006 saw us recommended by Henrietta Green in the BBC Good Food Magazine and we were soon marching to the Post Office on a daily basis sending Christmas Cakes out by post all over the UK and beyond.

Now in 2007 we have all new labelling and barcoding for all our cakes. We have launched three new recipes, Ginger Fruit Cake, Tropical Fruit Cake and Cherry and Sultana Cake. We have also started selling our loaf cakes in display boxes of 12 and these are available as mixed boxes to make ordering easier for smaller stockists.

Also new for the summer season we are making catering size cakes in all our recipes to supply Tea-Rooms and Cafes to sell on by the slice. These are already selling well, we can afford to make these very cheaply due to the quantity of ingredients we purchase weekly so they offer and excellent financial return to our customers.

Our weekly delivery area now extends throughout the South-West from Somerset to Cornwall and we even have a stockist in Surrey! Our Stockists vary from larger shops and chains such as the fantastic Darts Farm near Exeter and the Mole Valley Farmers outlets to small shops and village Post Offices.

Early September 2007 saw our proper online shop open. We have been doing a steadily increasing amount of mail order cakes in the last year and we decided to bite the bullet and set up the online shop so customers can pay by credit card and get their cakes quickly.

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Exmoor Cakes, 19 Queen St, Lynton, Devon, EX35 6AA

Tel 01598 753662

©Lucy Bowden 2007