Brexit is a nightmare for us. I went into panic mode when the result was announced. I was bawling my eyes out. It’s the end of an era. It’s not good for us because we are the only organic gluten-free bakery in the UK and we import all our ingredients. Not because we want to but because we have to.
We went 100% gluten-free in 2014, but we differ hugely from your average gluten-free bakery. No xanthan gum, methylcellulose or cheap fillers like potato or corn starch are used, as is so common in gluten-free baking the world over. Our ingredients are roughly 17 times the price of wheat or starche,s and our bread should retail around £17 which, of course, would never work!
We have tiny margins and if I have to put prices up by 50p a load people will not stand for that. Bread is expected to be cheap in the UK and the thought of having to add another 50p onto a loaf that already retails for just under £5 is just not going to go down well when the full horror of the devalued pound hits. We already have to calculate the numbers to the bone.
We hedged some funds, but that will run out towards the end of the year. We do get a lot of enquiries from other European countries where people are more used to paying more for quality bread as they cannot get what we make anywhere else. So we hope it will all work out for us, and for our devoted customers, so we don’t have to increase our prices in the UK. If that doesn’t work we will consider moving the business to the EU zone and send bread back to the UK. The EU shop is made possible by the recent announcement of DPD offering an affordable service into Europe – so I guess that is our silver lining.
We have Polish workers that have been here for 10 years, started families and bought property. But as the pound collapses unless I can pay these guys in Euros they won’t want to stay here. They don’t mind starting work at 3.30am, they are a fantastic workforce and I couldn’t find replacements. We took on two young English apprentices lately, and one lasted a week and one lasted three. They don’t like getting up, they are unfit, they go out drinking at night and they aren’t really interested.
The prices of raw ingredients haven’t gone up because I pay in Euros but I don’t dare look at the exchange rate for the pound because it’s down. We are setting up an EU webshop to get Euros in so we can buy our ingredients. We buy almost everything in Euros as it is not available in the UK. We will be starting an EU website very soon and try hard to sell in Europe. And eventually, if that works, we will just pack up and go to the continent, because this won’t end well. There are only a handful of diplomats trained in rewriting agreements. You need 200 specialists and we don’t have enough. There is too much uncertainly and I can’t see the EU waiting around for Britain to sort out this mess.
Ingrid Eissfeldt is director of ABO Artisan Bread Organic
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