Award winning Lancaster business reveals plans to open a new not-for-profit bakery

Filbert’s Bakery on King Street is launching Filbert’s Too in an old workshop next to Halton Mill. The bakery will be almost completely solar powered, making it one of a select few solar powered bakeries in the UK.

Its aim is to support community food clubs and banks in the Lancaster and Morecambe area, and to build local food resilience.

Filbert’s Too is currently in the funding stage, using some hard earned savings and grants to kickstart the venture, and is appealing to the local community to make it a reality.

A crowdfunding campaign is under way to help set up the new bakery and subsidise work to support various community initiatives.

"We will provide bread and baked goods to local food clubs and food banks, cooking and baking classes to schools and community groups, along with working with Lancaster’s Food Futures project on their allotments and farming projects,” said Felicity Duirwyn, Filbert’s Bakery owner.

“The cost of living crisis is affecting us all and pushing more and more people into food insecurity.

"Community has always been important to Filbert’s and we wanted to see how we can make a real difference. We’re really excited about all the possibilities this new chapter will bring.”

Lancaster has a strong track record of helping the bakery out – a generous round of donations to help it buy a new mixer a few years ago, and a more recent donation of equipment that was the impetus for this latest adventure.

Felicity said: “With a little bit more help we can pay that forward significantly.

“There’s lots of work to do before we hope to open towards the end of the summer so we are looking for support in a few ways, either contributing to our crowdfunder, shopping in the bakery, or just spreading the word.”

The crowdfunder can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/f/filberts-too-adventures-in-social-enterprise

For more information go to www.filbertsbakery.co.uk/filberts-too

Filbert’s Bakery opened in 2013. It is renowned for its long fermentation bread, pastries and other goodies baked daily by a team on site. It was crowned Best Baker in the national Farm Shop and Deli Awards in 2018.