From its origins in the Cornish harbour town of Mevagissey to 70 bakeries across the UK, Cornish Bakery has always been a people-first business. Now employing more than 800 people, with four more bakeries due to open before the end of the year, the award-winning company credits its sustained growth and success to its culture, its people and its clear purpose to “nourish people”.

 

Building on that foundation, Cornish Bakery has launched a new mission to “change hospitality for good”, an ambitious commitment to create a world-class place to work and set a new benchmark for positive workplace culture in the UK hospitality sector.

 

The company’s purpose shapes everything from how the business recruits and develops its teams to how it rewards them. Benefits include an extra day off for birthdays, private healthcare, quarterly team rewards based on bakery performance and a shareholder scheme after two years of service.

 

Cornish Bakery has also proudly built a culture of collaboration and empowerment. Guided by the mantra to make “decisions in the bakery, not the boardroom”, teams are actively involved in new product development, trials and business improvements. Weekly “Dragon’s Den” style sessions invite any employee to pitch ideas or investment proposals directly to leadership, reinforcing an open and inclusive culture where everyone can contribute.

 

Each individual bakery is encouraged to bed into its local community, hosting everything from live music nights and mental health events to local fundraising activities, ensuring that Cornish Bakery’s presence and impact goes far beyond its physical bakeries.

 

One example of its strong commitment to internal development and career progression is Victoria Lintern’s journey. Victoria was recently promoted to people director after eight years with Cornish Bakery in various HR roles. Since she joined, the business has grown from 200 to more than 850 employees, underscoring both the scale of its expansion and the opportunities created for its people. Victoria has been an integral part of helping shape the people-first culture every step of the way.

 

The company’s people-focused approach is paying dividends. In its most recent engagement survey, Cornish Bakery achieved an employee net promoter score (eNPS) of 45 – the highest in its history and more than double that of the previous year. Retention has also improved, and 67% of all internal appointments now come from within the business, reflecting a strong culture of growth and opportunity.

 

At the company’s recent annual managers event, founder Steve Grocutt presented 17 “legend awards” celebrating long service and exceptional contribution. The event also marked the official launch of Cornish Bakery’s new mission, “change hospitality for good”, an ambitious commitment to building a world-class place to work and setting a new benchmark for positive workplace culture in the UK hospitality sector.

 

Our people tell us that our culture is a big part of why they work for Cornish Bakery. As we grow, we need even more people to lead and role-model that culture, developing great careers in hospitality. We must continue to nourish our culture, because a happy team is everything. A happy team is highly engaged and retained, and enjoy coming to work. We want people to stay and grow with us but if they do decide to leave, we wish for them to leave happy and positive about their experience, maybe returning one day or recommending us to others. We consider that the true measure of a great workplace.

 

Today, and every day, we are doing things differently, for our valued people, in a standout way that is decidedly uncorporate. While many businesses in the sector are cutting back on people and leaning into automation, we are proud to be taking a different route, keeping our teams at the heart of the bakery experience. This is incredibly important to us, and we have ambitions to go even further in terms of strengthening our culture and making a positive impact on the industry. We plan to drive even better team engagement, promoting more team members to manager roles, developing life-long careers. Fundamentally, we strive to be ranked as a world-class place to work.

 

Cornish Bakery’s people-first philosophy is not only creating engagement but also driving results. The company recently delivered a record-breaking summer of trading, achieving 24% total sales growth year-on-year, with 8% like-for-like sales growth in August, despite the Confederation of British Industry reporting a continued decline in UK retail spend that month. Customer numbers, average order values and satisfaction scores all continue to rise, with the August bank holiday delivering the company’s biggest ever week of sales.

 

As Cornish Bakery continues its expansion and mission to “change hospitality for good”, its commitment remains clear – to create a workplace where people thrive, communities flourish and hospitality is celebrated as a rewarding, lifelong career. With its people-first values, growing national footprint and record-breaking results, it truly is setting new standards for how hospitality businesses can thrive, through purpose, culture and care.

Norman’s was a modern take on the greasy spoon with check table clothes, bubble and squeak and hash browns on the menu, negroni’s available as the day wore on and queues out the door. When its owners recently decided to call it a day, the site, near Archway in north London, was taken over by new operators who have turned the unit into The Dynamic Spud, serving jacket potatoes with various fillings. 

 

Will the spud-selling cafe prove to be as popular as the previous incumbent? I’d have found this highly unlikely had it not been for the current renaissance in the dependable jacket potato. It’s hardly a new concept, with the original branded chain, Spudulike, starting out in 1974. But after many ups and downs, there was ultimately more of the latter, and it ceased trading in 2019.

 

During its long journey, it acquired Fat Jackets, whose cuisine I tried in 1998 when I attended the official launch of The Trafford Centre in Manchester. On a recent return visit to Europe’s largest food court, I knew I wouldn’t be reliving my baked potato experience. Well, I was partially wrong. Although there was no Fat Jackets with traditional toppings such as cheese and beans anymore, I instead came across the smart Nichi restaurant, where I tried one of its most popular dishes, a rather exotic baked spud covered in ponzu nori butter sauce and crispy shallots.

 

Interestingly, it’s not such outlandish new takes on toppings that has pushed the jacket potato into the consciousness of Generation Zs and a new audience for the dish, but rather the old-school traditional toppings. Cheese and beans is among the most popular offerings, with 56% of people going for it, while tuna mayonnaise is a hit with 36% of people, and 23% prefer bacon, according to a study published by The Sun. 

 

What’s fuelled the appetite for the spud and these rather middle-of-the-road toppings is their clever promotion by two operators leveraging social media. SpudBros and Spudman have clocked up millions of followers hungry for their online content. On the back of their big-time virality, Spudman has taken his food truck in Tamworth on tour (including cities abroad), and SpudBros has gone beyond its original cart in Preston’s Flag Market to also operate units in London and Liverpool, and the first franchise store is due to open in Sheffield.

 

They are certainly big-timers on TikTok et al, while their exposure to actual outlets is clearly currently small potatoes, although SpudBros has plans for as many as 40 franchised sites by the end of 2027. But more meaningfully, what they’ve done is attract the attention of the likes of Subway, which last year undertook a trial of jacket potatoes in 170 of its stores. It might have only done it to be able to use the name Spudway, which I reckon is inspired, but what has transpired is it has tapped into a big appetite for this new side-line to its core sandwich menu. So much so, in fact, that a spud range is going permanent across all its 2,130-plus stores within the UK. It has returned the jacket spud firmly on to the mainstream stage.

 

Cathy Goodwin, interim director of culinary and innovation at Subway EMEA, says: “The nation’s love of jacket potatoes is unparalleled. The enthusiasm we’ve seen on social media, and the strong demand from our guests throughout the trial, made it clear that Spudway deserved a permanent place on our menu.”

 

What has also undoubtedly helped is the health benefits of jacket potatoes. They win out over the fried variety on pretty much every metric you care to consider, and they also arguably deliver more substance (however that is defined) than many of the lighter salad-based options that have proliferated – in London, at least. The jacket potato is certainly a much more egalitarian dish and is finding broad countrywide appeal. I’ll be eagerly watching out for any queues forming outside The Dynamic Spud.

Another Cask Ale Week has come to a close. How can people tell, I wonder sometimes? As a professional drinker, it’s business as usual for me. For the whole year I’m trying different cask beers (craft, too) in various pubs and bars. 

 

I did make an extra effort this year, travelling to the Sun Inn in Stockton-on-Tees for what I hoped would be my first gulp of its famous banked Bass. In case you don’t know, this means that your pint is served with a huge domed head of loose foam, standing a couple of inches proud of the glass. It’s a Teesside tradition, resulting from the need to part pour the beer in advance for legions of thirsty workers coming off shift.

 

Unfortunately, I’d picked a bad day. The town was virtually locked down for the celebrations around the 200th anniversary of the world’s first railway journey, from Stockton to Darlington, and it was impossible to park. Yeah, I know, I should have taken the train.

 

Apart from that, Cask Ale Week seemed to have a higher profile this year. A public relations push got it into the papers, and BBC Radio 5 aired a package (as I believe they call it) at 4am on the first Sunday morning. I don’t know whether the audience at that time is clubbers or farmers, but you take what you get.

 

In a recent Propel Friday Opinion, Mark Bentley presented an excellent analysis of the state of a category that’s so important to the health of our pubs. Some may have been surprised that he called it “Britain’s Champagne”, but that’s not all froth. A properly conditioned cask ale is naturally sparkling, in a gentle way, and arguably the beer equivalent of Pet Nat wine. Though it might take a while yet for that to sink in among the wider public.

 

Meanwhile, we have the troubles of the consumer organisation originally set up to champion cask. A few days before Cask Ale Week, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) announced its Great British Beer Festival, the biggest showcase for cask for the past half-century, will not be happening next year – or, reading between the lines, probably ever again.

 

The 2025 event, in August, followed a fallow year to allow for its transition from London to the NEC in Birmingham, a bold move but, perhaps in the end, not bold enough. For me, it was a missed opportunity to reimagine what a beer festival could be. Instead, it felt like the same format dropped into too large a box. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but it lost money and is clearly unsustainable.

 

It’s a blow for cask ale, but other, local festivals continue to flourish, whether or not they’re organised by CAMRA branches. Last weekend, for instance, the Hanover Beer Festival, billed as the longest-running non-CAMRA festival, opened its doors for the 36th time. It’s only five minutes down the road from me, and it’s an event where everyone comes together, as much about community as beer, and perhaps that’s the future for festivals.

 

Cask Ale Week also brought CAMRA’s 2026 Good Beer Guide, landing with a heavy thud on my doormat. Even though I’ve now co-authored my own guide to beer breaks, I couldn’t live without the guide. Well, I couldn’t drink without it, anyway. 

 

It isn’t perfect, of course, being crowd-sourced from the, sometimes idiosyncratic opinions of CAMRA members. But its weakness is also its strength. The 2,026 pubs listed have been chosen by people who use them day in, day out. When you’re in a strange town, it means you can always find a reliable pint.

 

There is an argument, most recently expressed in their newsletter, by beer writing duo Boak & Bailey that CAMRA’s job is done as far as beer itself is concerned. When the organisation launched in the early 1970s, there was every chance that cask conditioned ale would not survive the rise of keg beer. CAMRA played a key role in saving it and, whatever the issues cask ale faces today, there a wider and deeper appreciation of its qualities that is the campaign’s legacy.

 

Along the way, CAMRA realised that cask would not exist without pubs, so it started campaigning for them, too. The Good Beer Guide, it seems to me, is now not simply a listing, but a celebration of the diversity and resilience of pubs – despite being limited to the ones that serve cask.

 

The appearance of craft beer – good beer, in another guise – has rather confused CAMRA’s original mission. The organisation’s power now surely lies in campaigning for pubs and its marvellous Pub Heritage Group, which identifies historic houses and unspoilt interiors and tracks their fortunes. I’ll raise a glass to that – whatever’s in it.