Family bakery in Lichfield that dates back to 1893 celebrates milestone
A family-run bakery in Staffordshire that was bought by the owner's great grandfather in 1893 has celebrated 130 years of business.
Hindleys Bakery and Cafe, on Tamworth Street in Lichfield, is currently under the ownership of Duncan Hindley and his sister, Jackie Beaumont.
Four generations of the Hindley family have worked at the bakery, which was first opened by Joseph Hindley at a previous site on Upper Brook Street, Rugeley, in 1893.
A photograph of an old financial log shows that Joseph paid £21 for utensils, which is around £2,165 in today's money and £14 for stock, which is approximately £1,451 today.
The log also detailed that the baker spent £10 for goodwill, which was the value of the business aside from the value of physical items such as stock and utensils.
Duncan, who joined his dad at the bakery in 1990, said: "I'd only been working in the business three years when we had our centenary and it doesn't seem five minutes since then. It's a special thing, the fact that we have kept it going so long.
"We have lots of regular customers who come in the shop and know all the staff who are serving, some customers come in almost daily. At one stage, we were described as a community centre, we hadn't realised how strong that feeling was until Covid came along – for a lot of people we were probably their only contact.
"What you see is what you get in the independent [shops]. Lots of bread that has been sold in the supermarkets has been baked in a big factory somewhere else, whereas our stuff comes in the back door as flour and goes out as bread."
The bakery originally had 18 locations across the Midlands, and was based in Rugeley for 114 years before deciding to operate at one site in Lichfield, where the family has been trading since 2007.
Hindleys now attends a range of farmers' markets and food festivals in the region, as well as offering weekly bread-making courses to its customers.
Duncan, 56, said he believes the key to running a successful business is learning to adapt.
He added: "When I joined the business 30 years ago we were looking at expanding and we did grow, but we decided it suited us to be smaller so our strategy changed enormously.
"You have to nurture it, you have to look at it and adapt accordingly and you have to care. When we realised we were heading to tricky times, we took action to change and adapt to the changing environment to suit what we felt was best for the business, so it's about looking ahead and learning to adapt.
"I think the biggest change is there is no pattern to things anymore, whereas before you could almost predict what you were going to sell, it's much less predictable [now] and of course with social media and the interest of food in general growing, we feel that's been of a benefit to us because I think people are looking for provenance on products and they want to see who has made it and what they made it with."
Tina Hibbs, who is a shareholder in the business, started working at the bakery 30 years ago when she joined to gain work experience at the age of 16.
She added: "Through Covid we stopped open and helped the community out, we did a lot of donating to food banks. It's made now looking back because thinking about it, it was a privilege to be still supplying to the community.
"With it being a small, independent [bakery] there is a lot of commitment to staff, they tend to treat the staff like family rather than just staff. We have customers coming up and ask questions and talk to you - it's a nice feeling."
