Crawley bakery celebrates 10th anniversary with free cake to local customers

The owner Jane Kirkham took over the business with her family a decade ago and it’s been growing from strength to strength ever since.

Although Covid has had an impact on the business, Tilgate bakery teamed up with Crawley Eats to offer food deliveries straight to your door.

The family-run business decorated the bakery to celebrate its 10th birthday, with many customers turning up to join in with the celebrations.

Mrs Kirkham said: “We’ve been in business for ten years now. We’re a family-run business, so my husband, daughter, aunties and cousins all work here.

“We took this over back in 2012. I used to be a part-time manager at the previous bakery but was made redundant because of employer administration.

“I looked at purchasing it and haven’t looked back. Pre-Covid, we had 320 people in our shop, but with the pandemic we’ve had to deal with the change.

“We worked throughout the whole lockdown.

“To be honest, we expected this level of success. We put in the hours, worked above and beyond to make the business successful.

“We set up a delivery service with Crawley Eats, which means that we are out daily delivering to our customers homes and businesses.

“Tilgate Bakery does a lot of community support and every week we have our local hero who is nominated by our customers and we deliver free jam donuts to them.

“Running a small business in Crawley can be tricky. Overheads, rent, electricity bills etc. But having the support from our customers and community makes it worthwhile.

“Our future depends on the pandemic. We want to continue running the shop, our delivery service and our weekly specials.”

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