Baker Direct website launches to help housebound households find bakery delivery services
Baker Direct, a new online directory of British and Irish bakeries that are making home deliveries during the COVID-19 emergency has launched today at: https://bakerdirect.org.uk/
Baker Direct is a very easy to use website. Simply pop in your postcode to find your local bakers that are making home deliveries, what they sell and how to order from them. Then sit back, stop worrying about food shortages and wait for your freshly baked goods to arrive. The site also lists many bakeries that deliver nationwide.
Baker Direct is supported by bakery trade groups The British Baking Society, the Craft Bakers Association, Scottish Bakers and baking trade magazines British Baker and Bakery Business.
All have urged their members and readers to register with the site at https://bakerdirect.org.uk/register-a-bakery if they are shifting operations to feeding their local communities during the Coronavirus outbreak. Registration is free of charge. Baker Direct is a not-for-profit service.
Baker Direct was created by the Cybake team at York-based RedBlack Software, with Squeegee Design, a web developer also based in York, all from their respective homes, in little over one working week.
Cybake is the UK and Ireland’s leading bakery management software system. The Baker Direct initiative started after Cybake users started telling RedBlack that they were introducing home deliveries to support their local communities.
As orders from their usual customers like restaurants, hotels and schools, disappeared overnight, many wholesale bakeries shifted production to keeping their local populations fed. With the UK and Ireland now in total lockdown, retail bakeries soon followed with delivery services for their housebound customers.
New bakery home delivery services are now springing up all over Ireland and the UK every day. Baker Direct launched with over sixty bakeries listed, a number that grows by the hour. The site aims to give British and Irish households a quick and easy way to find, connect and order from them.
Jane Tyler, managing director of RedBlack, says: “The demand for bread has been brought into stark focus by panic buying. Households in lockdown are already missing fresh bread and other bakery products, so bakeries that continue through the crisis are doing their respective nations proud. Our aim is to support them all the way.”
“Baker Direct is very easy to use with postcode search,” explains Tyler. “We want to encourage people to buy locally rather than from the over-stretched supermarkets. If you are a bakery that has switched to home deliveries or are thinking about doing so to serve your community and keep your ovens going through the emergency, please register.”
Seamus Quinn is the head of communications for Cybake, Cybake USA and Cybake Australia.
