GAIL's announced it will open its first neighbourhood bakery in Wilmslow in early 2023, with further locations in the North West to be announced in the new year.
The new bakery on Water Lane will serve GAIL's artisan sourdough breads, pastries, sandwiches, and cakes alongside its House Blend coffee.
Several of their products have won prestigious awards. In 2022, GAIL's was awarded fourteen Great Taste Awards by the Guild of Fine Foods, the most respected accreditation scheme for artisan and specialty food.
GAIL's believes in supporting local charities in their neighbourhoods. In 2021, it partnered with over 95 charities close to each bakery, donating surplus food to feed these communities.
The bakery was started by Yael (Gail) Mejia in the early 1990's serving top chefs and food venues. In 2003, Tom Molnar and a few friends joined Yael's wholesale craft bakery and grew the business organically. In 2005, the team opened its first high-street bakery in Hampstead.
Over the following six years they grew the business with top chefs and opened seven GAIL's retail bakeries in London. The business has since expanded outside of London in locations from Cambridge to Oxford and recently in Henley and Brentwood.
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was started in the 1990s by Gail Mejia, and opened its first bakery in Hampstead's High Street in 2005. Tom Molnar is the co-founder and CEO of Gail's and its parent company, Bread Holdings.
Bread Holdings is owned by Risk Capital Partners, which is Luke Johnson's principal private equity vehicle. In May 2021, The Times reported that Johnson was trying for a third time to sell Bread Holdings, and had hired investment bank Nomura to do so, aiming for about £250 million.
It is quite a large company then.
The customers seemed split between sitting in/outside for refreshment or, like me, there to try some of the 'crafted'(?) artisan bread - a term I sometimes find used to make something sound really special when it isn’t.
After waiting for what must have been 20-30 minutes the queue finally reached the counter and I made my purchase of a couple of sourdough loaves and two almond croissants - plus a cheese stick to eat on the way home.
I then realised why I had stood in a queue for so long. There was only one person at the serving counter who then also walked me to the till and took my payment [cash not allowed].
There were two assistants at the drinks machine and someone wandering around with a small tray containing a drink & cake on a plate, trying to find the ‘owner’. Plus several other staff intermittently appearing who presumably worked ‘in the bakery’? The trays they use are so small it is impossible to fit on them a drink AND the small plate holding a cake, without part of the plate hanging over the edge of the tray! So poor choice of trays.
At the counter there is a glass screen up to waist/chest height and NOTHING MORE. The produce on sale is therefore freely open to allow any coughs, sneezes, saliva etc. to land on top of them and NOT like all the other quality bakeries in town [Peter Herd, Wienholts] who have their produce completely protected behind glass from such watery contamination by the customers. By contrast, the serving assistant was regularly changing disposable gloves in order to handle the various loaves stacked on a shelf behind.
Finally, there were no prices on display for any of the items and I was unpleasantly surprised to find after payment that the total bill was approaching TWICE what I might expect to pay elsewhere.
The ambience for sitting in for a cake and drink wasn’t wonderful in my view either. As for sitting on the pavement with traffic buzzing past a few feet away, I just cannot understand why anyone would wish to have this experience anywhere, and especially in Wilmslow - as if it was like being on a pavement cafe in Paris, Rome or Venice!
I would like to see our council check on this burst of expansion by eateries who since the smoking ban inside and then covid have expanded onto our pavements and reduced the space available for pedestrians who are nudged nearer a busy road. Are they using space that isn’t theirs?