A beloved Birmingham bakery that helped earn Stirchley the title of best place to live in the Midlands is on the brink of closure after being priced out of the neighbourhood it has served for 14 years.
Community bakery Loaf opened on the trendy Pershore Road back in 2012 and attracted queues for its fresh bread, serving customers with cookery lessons as well as bakes. The bakery closed temporarily in February in anticipation of a move into the Stirchley Cooperative Development building (SCD) over the road, a block of three shops and 39 flats it had played an intrinsic role in creating.
However, its plans to reopen in the landlord-free development were crushed a month later when builders GreenSquareAccord made a last-minute decision not to honour the turnkey promise it had made to Loaf and the other cooperative members. GreenSquareAccord had taken over building the site after the previous firm went bust. At the time, it said that there had been a number of challenges during construction that had resulted in a £1.16m shortfall that it would be irresponsible to absorb. It meant it would be offering the building out to people on the city's social housing waiting list, with cooperative members like Loaf worried they wouldn't get a unit at all.
Later, GreenSquareAccord offered to sell the development to the cooperative, sparking a huge fundraising effort, with Birmingham City Council stepping in to offer financial and operational support. However, the association has since raised the asking price, pricing the cooperative out and giving no firm date on the building's completion. The decision has left Loaf and fellow businesses Birmingham Bike Foundry and Artefact scrabbling to find the means of making income without any idea of whether they have a future.
Baker Neil Holland, a director at Loaf, told BirminghamLive that all nine members of the team are working reduced hours in a bid to tick things over in the interim, though uncertainty over how long that can realistically continue is causing heartache. "The completion date on the building keeps moving so we're only able to plan on a fortnightly basis as that's all we can do. We're just doing a bit of baking to make enough money to see us through to the other side."
Anosh speciality coffee, which runs from Deadbeat bar on Pershore Road by day, has been sharing their space with Loaf in the interim while fellow bakery Steamhouse, in Redditch, has been allowing the bakers to use its premises to continue serving their loyal customers. The community it helped to foster has been rallying too, with the likes of now-closed Verbena offering to share its Pershore Road space.
"We had to give six months notice on our old premises to give them time to find someone new to move in. Initially that was for September last year because we were told the building would be finished last August. Our landlords let us extend but there was only so far we could keep pushing it back, a new independent business was ready to move in and we didn't want to stand in their way. We saw the date of completion go past and we had to make a plan of what to do. We moved all of our stuff into storage. The oven is in the new building because the cost of moving it was so prohibitive. We couldn't afford to do that twice, we're a small business during a hard time for hospitality. That was really helpful, but we thought it'd just be for a few weeks, rather than the months it has now been."
A spokesperson for GreenSquareAccord (GSA) said that the projected cost had gone up due to interest costs, inflationary pressures and challenges during construction. It said: "These included the original contractor going into administration and issues identified when we took over the site. The purchase price has further increased due to the ongoing costs of construction. We appreciate this is not the outcome SCD and our partners had expected but, as a not-for-profit social housing provider, it would be irresponsible to absorb the shortfall which would ultimately compromise investment in homes and services for our customers. We are seeking only to cover costs with the sale of the development, not generate a profit. We are committed to reaching the right outcome for Stirchley residents and to working in partnership with Birmingham City Council, which manages the housing waiting list, to ensure the homes on Pershore Road are allocated appropriately. There are nearly 24,000 people on Birmingham's housing waiting list. We are in regular communication with the three cooperatively owned businesses and are having ongoing discussions about letting the retail units."
Birmingham City Council says it is aware of the challenges around the development calling for flexibility from both the cooperative and the housing association. A spokesperson said: "Birmingham City Council is supportive of community-led housing and has been working with the Stirchley Co-op to promote and endorse similar schemes coming forward across the city. Both the new homes the development seeks to deliver, and the businesses associated provide vital infrastructure for Stirchley and the council is keen to see the original scheme come forward. We are providing both financial and operational support to Stirchley Co-op in their negotiations with GSA and are keen to help to leverage a mutually beneficial solution. We will continue to act as an enabler whilst these issues are ongoing with a view to reach a resolution. This will require all organisations to act in a flexible and reasonable way to provide the best possible outcome for the local area."
While the row rages on, the team at Loaf are fighting to survive. Neil said: "The main problem is the uncertainty. We can't make plans. If we'd known that the building wouldn't be finished until June, we could have planned. But having to do it piecemeal is almost worse than the reduced pay because the not knowing makes us think, next month will we even have jobs? Will we even be here? We're holding out because we love what we do." He added: "We got through Covid, just about. And now it feels like one of those things all over again - our world is upside down." Loaf has a crowdfunding campaign to help make ends meet in the meantime and you can follow them on Instagram to learn more on their next pop-up.
