Tom Molnar’s simple mantra at Gail’s: doing bread better

The space is every inch the 21st century HQ, but amid the lashings of beech wood, gleaming kitchen surfaces and well-appointed training rooms lie two skateboards – 58-year-old co-founder and CEO Tom Molnar’s preferred means of transport to the office. Perhaps the rebellious spirit lives on after all. “I don’t have a driver’s licence yet. And I failed my test yesterday. I went too slow in a 30mph zone,” laughs the American. “But on a nice day, skateboarding is a great way to get around.”

And getting around is a perfect summary of where Gail’s is up to. It’s opened 51 new bakeries in the past two years, taking its total to 173, and now has more than 4,000 employees. Molnar says they’re targeting another 35 to 40 openings in 2025, because “we need more points of sale for good bread”.

“Unfortunately, the bread market is still dominated by bread that’s made too fast and without nutrition in mind,” he adds. “Supermarkets focus too much on price. We’re just trying to provide an alternative.”

From a petition and protest when it announced its opening in hitherto independent-centric Walthamstow Village to the revelation that during the general election the Liberal Democrats focused their campaigning efforts on areas with a Gail’s, few fmcg expansion drives have attracted more headlines in recent years.

“I’m always surprised by how people use us as a reference,” says Molnar. “There’s those articles that go: ‘There’s a Waitrose and a Gail’s in a neighbourhood, which means X.’ I’m curious about it. We’re just a bakery, you know? There used to be like 100,000 neighbourhood bakeries around this country, and they’ve been decimated. What we’re trying to do is bring that very simple concept back in a modern way.”

 The opening in Walthamstow was particularly contentious. It brought up issues such as gentrification, homogenisation of the high street and multiple headlines along the lines of the Daily Mail’s ‘Why DO so many people HATE bakery chain Gail’s?’ It’s a “pretty difficult” question for Molnar to answer. “I don’t know, really,” he says. “If I dig deep, I think a lot of them don’t know us. They have a perception. And this is our fault. We need to make sure that perception is right. When we first started, people called us a ‘posh bakery’. And there’s still some of that residual, but it’s getting less.”

So, when the Walthamstow hubbub was kicking off, how did he feel?

“Again, a bit curious. Like, why is this such a big deal? I do understand there’s a discussion, though. People want to buy locally, know the people that are there,” he says. “I don’t think of ourselves as a chain, but I recognise we are a chain. And I understand what people like about independents. We try to do all the good things an independent would do. But there are good independents and bad independents; good chains and bad chains. I don’t think the evidence is there that when we come, we decimate anybody.”

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Plenty would argue that buying too many Gail’s products may just decimate one’s wallet, though – with price another stone often cast in the bakery’s direction. Though Molnar says he “would challenge that”.

“If you’re talking about all bread, you’re absolutely right. The average loaf is like £1.40. But for good bread we’re not [expensive]. It’s pricier than supermarket loaves, but it does take a different kind of skilled person and different level of ingredients to do the good stuff.”

Bringing quality and variety to high streets that “have been chasing price and efficiency rather than health and enjoyment” is Gail’s raison d’être, according to Molnar. But providing quality bread to the masses at affordable prices is no simple task.

Scaling up

“How do you get good bread to more people? I think for a start you need to make it easier for them to buy, so part of it’s accessibility. And the financial side comes with some kind of scale. Distribution is a really costly part of bread. So if you can reduce that, you can put more money into the food. Size gives you an opportunity, and we would say responsibility, to do it better.”

One of the ways Gail’s is trying to do things better is by “reversing” the normal way of doing things in its supply chain. “We’re working with a farmer now and basically said: you grow what’s good for the soil, and we’ll figure out the products that’ll come out of it,” Molnar explains. “Normally, a baker says: I need this. And then the farmer is kind of forced to make it.”

The result is Gail’s new Bruern Farms Sourdough, which will be available in select bakeries from next month. Also in the offing is new investment – with Molnar keen to stress that “it’s not a sale” as has been reported – and plans to further leverage the “big opportunity” he sees in supermarkets.

“We’re talking to nearly all of them,” he says. “For grocery, we could have Gail’s in so many different places. I just need to make sure we do it right, because I’ve seen a lot of food businesses be in demand so fast and they crash. And that’s not the way a craft baker thinks. If it takes time, who cares?

“Ever since we hit 30 or 40 sites, we’ve always said you’ve got to make an impact. If you’re small, you kind of have to take what’s out there. If you’re large enough, you can start to shape the future.”