Flour adds new premises into the mix

Thursday 15 October 2020

A local cake business is flour-ishing despite challenging trading conditions, with plans to open a second premises providing a tasty new opportunity for two young people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Bakery and patisserie Flour will opening a permanent stall in De Gruchy next Friday.

The Jersey Central Market-based business is owned by Le Cordon Bleu certified chef Kirstie Taylor, who is assisted by her Sales Manager and cousin, Jamie Lovatt, alongside baker Lilly Catney.

Speaking to Express, Jamie explained that in “about May we were asked about doing a pop-up in De Gruchy.” 

As conversations between Flour and De Gruchy continued, they started baking an even more elaborate plan – to launch a whole new permanent Flour concession in the shop. 

Pictured: Jamie said that Flour aims to be "contemporary" in their cake-making, focusing on patisserie and bespoke work. 

“We did an event for them as a tester for their 210^th birthday celebrations, and rolled out our new flavours as a trial run in the shop that day, and that went really, really well. 

“So pretty much since then we’ve got the shop fitters coming, the glass is being made for the cabinets, we are trying to get everything prepped as much as we can because we open next Friday!” 

Visitors can expect a mix of tastes too, as Jamie said that the new venue offered the chance “to showcase a completely new range of flavours,” with some “slightly more adventurous” choices on offer. 

Pictured: The new De Gruchy stall has given the Flour team the opportunity to showcase new flavours.

The new flavours include a “gin and tonic, lime and raspberry flavour”, which Jamie described as having “quite a punch to it” and “exotic” treats like “Mango and Coconut” and “Mango and Raspberry.”

However, he assured that the reworks of familiar favourites like Salted Caramel will be there too. 

The new location itself will be on the right hand side of the entrance opposite Romerils. Speaking about the advantages of having this extra branch, Jamie said: “If you work on the Esplanade, you don’t want to walk all the way through the market on your lunch break, so it’s that little bit closer.”

Pictured: Lockdown saw a huge demand in deliveries for Flour, and word of mouth about their services has been spreading ever since.

While lockdown at first seemed a challenge, it ended up presenting Flour with a new opportunity.

During that time, delivery demand soared and the resulting word-of-mouth recommendations appear to have sustained that interest.

According to Jamie, the opportunity to offer more work during the challenging business conditions caused by covid-19 has been the other key highlight of opening a new branch.

He said: “It’s been really fulfilling in this climate to give two young local people a job who are only 19 and have lost their jobs through this pandemic.

"That’s really important to us.”