An award-winning bakery have come up with a novel way of launching a recruitment drive for 20 new apprentices.
Village Bakery Wrexham, Pictured are Village Bakery staff Courtney Savage, Lee Pritchard, Chris O’Kelly, Lauren Ashman , Dan Peters and Ben Davies.
The Village Bakery have turned two of their delivery vans into mobile adverts by wrapping them with a special design to get out the message: “We Knead a hand!
The vans’ delivery route takes them around Wrexham and the surrounding villages.
They are looking for young people aged between 16 and 20 to become the next generation of bakers, engineers and admin staff at the family-run firm.
The company currently employs more than 400 people at their two bakeries on Wrexham Industrial Estate and their base up the road in Minera.
They are spending £12 million on converting the former Caparo Wire factory on the industrial estate into a state-of-the-art production facility for a new range of gluten free goods.
It will be the most advanced bakery of its kind in Europe and will cater for the explosion in demand from customers when it’s up-and-running late this year.
In the meantime, the first 10 products in the own-label range, Gluten Freedom, have gone on sale and are being made at the original but much smaller gluten free bakery on Wrexham Industrial Estate.
They also have a groaning order book for the more traditional baked and morning goods for which the Village Bakery is famed.
The new apprentices will be trained at the firm’s in-house Baking Academy and Innovation Centre which was officially opened by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2015.
HR assistant Courtney Savage, 23, said: “We’re looking for the next generation of bakers who are looking to progress their skills in an exciting new business.
“We decided to wrap two of our delivery vans with a special design to get the message out.
“The two vans will be delivering around the Wrexham area and the advert should help to boost our recruitment because we are so very busy.
“As well as our three current bakeries, we will have the new free-from bakery open by the end of the year.
“The Village Bakery is a fantastic place to work. It’s a family-run company so staff are looked after but it is also dynamic and progressive so it’s a really exciting place to work.
“The reason for all this growth is that we’re actually very good at what we do and we make good products.
“As well as making our own Village Bakery products, we supply a host of major retailers and our products are sold as far afield as Singapore and India.
“The company has a tradition of growing its own so most of the bakery managers and supervisors started out as apprentices.
“That ethos means there are great opportunities for career progression for the right people who are eager to learn and willing to work hard.
“It’s not just bakers we’re looking for. We’re actually looking for engineers and people to work in admin – there are lots of different roles here at the Village Bakery.
“We’re not necessarily looking for people with fantastic qualifications. We just want people who are driven, who want to learn and who are passionate about baking.
“In return, we have fantastic training facilities and we can provide a chance of a great career.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by production supervisor Lee Pritchard, 32, who has been through the apprenticeship scheme.
He said: “The Village Bakery are a great company to work for. They encourage you to make the most of the opportunity and the training they provide is second to none.
“We’re massively busy here which is why we need to recruit more apprentices. It’s a business that’s really going places.”
For more details email [email protected] or ring 01978 660840
