Events & DemonstrationsFrom Lucas
Continuing the Family Tradition
A fantastic Craft Bakers Association trip to Birds this week, and the new shops look superb.
Birds has been baking in Derby since 1919, when three brothers bought an existing bakery and put their name over the door. More than a century later it is still a family business, and still one of the most recognisable names on a high street across the Midlands. That kind of longevity in craft baking is not luck.
What struck me was the quality of the products on the shelf.
A shop refit is the easy part of a project like this — anyone can spend money on a fit-out. The hard part is making sure what sits inside the counter still justifies the walk to the shop. Plenty of bakeries modernise the space and quietly let the product drift. Birds have done the opposite: the shops look brand new, and the standard on the shelf has come with them.
That is what continuing a family tradition of quality actually looks like in practice. Not preserving things exactly as they were, but carrying the standard forward into whatever the business needs to be next.
It is something I think about a lot, coming from a family bakery myself. Every generation inherits a way of doing things and then has to decide what to keep, what to change, and what is genuinely non-negotiable. Watching another family business get that balance right is a good day out.
Thank you to everyone at Birds for having us.
“A refit is the easy part. The hard part is making sure what sits inside the counter still justifies the walk to the shop.” — Lucas Fussnegger
