Cornish Bakery ranked in UK’s top 100 fastest growth retail brands

Founder-led Cornish Bakery has today been cited as one of the only UK hospitality companies in the 2024 Top 100 Interpath Retail Growth Index. The company has also announced that another new bakery will open in Cirencester in the near future, taking the Cornish Bakery estate to almost 70, on the back of record-breaking sales of over £1 million per week.

The inaugural Interpath Growth-Index lists the top 100 UK’s fastest growing businesses across a multitude of sectors, from fashion to forecourts and from hobbies to wellbeing. This index, compiled by analysts at Oresa, ranks retailer’s two-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) based on the last three years of their sales.

Cornish Bakery is also shortlisted in the Best Bakery/Food Chain section of the upcoming Allegra Best European Coffee & Hospitality Awards 2024, alongside Gail’s Bakery, Paul’s and Pret a Manger, with the winner due to be announced next Tuesday.

In recent weeks, Cornish Bakery has opened new high street locations in Taunton, Winchester and Chelmsford – all significantly exceeding expectations in the first few weeks of trading. The company has also reported a record October half term with customer transactions up 26% on last year.

Its new Milton Keynes bakery, its 65th, will open within centre:mk next month and today Managing Director Mat Finch has announced that Cirencester will follow in early 2025. Works have already commenced to refurbish the town centre old bank building, return it to community use for the first time in a number of years.

The company intends to open at least 10 more bakeries in key locations in 2025, pushing towards the stated ambition of at least 100 bakeries across the UK.

Managing Director Mat Finch says, “I’m delighted to be one of the Top 100 retailers, cited in the 2024 Interpath Retail Growth Index. We’re already one of the only UK independently owned fastest growing bakery companies so I’m not surprised to see that our exceptional, yet carefully tuned, growth has made such an impressive list of all UK retail companies.”

Mat continues, “In the words of our founder Steve Grocutt, ‘Bakery is the new coffee shop’ and we’re bringing our high-quality products, freshly baked in-store every day to more and more cities, market towns, tourism locations and designer shopping villages every month. Our New Product Development is completely on point with immediate high demand for our recently launched Shakshuka Croissant, alongside our big summer hits - the Pistachio Croissant and Chorizo, Mozzarella & Cornish Sea Salt pasty.”

Cornish Bakery was listed as OUTSTANDING in last year’s Best Companies to Work for survey. Over the last two years, the company has added an additional 20 bakeries to its estate, whilst growing sales, continually achieving industry leading NPS scores and adding new products.

The independently owned chain has a long-standing commitment to the B-Corp certified specialty coffee company Union, and also proudly sources the majority of its ingredients and products from across Cornwall and the south west.

Cornish Bakery also recently received an unexpected visit, a resultant review, and high praise from The Times hard-to-please food reviewer Giles Coren. Writing in The Times weekend Magazine, Coren said, “One of the best sausage rolls I’ve ever had. Sam’s (his son) pasty was perfect too.”