Fitzbillies Artisan Bakery and Tearooms
Fitzbillies Artisan Bakery and Tearooms was founded in Cambridge, England, by Arthur and Ernest Mason in 1920.
A firm local favorite for decades, it was forced to close in the 1990s, but, in 2011, Fitzbillies was restored to its former glory by new owners Alison Wright and Tim Hayward.
When asked about how their bakery uses Cybake, Alison Wright says: “Cybake is a system for getting all the orders from our own branches and from customers. We feed them all in and it spits out what the bakers need to make tonight for tomorrow morning. So, it’s a way of resolving all the inputs and actually turning them into a recipe.
Alison says that without Cybake, Fitzbillies would find it harder to bake daily: “I think if it wasn’t for Cybake, it would be very difficult for us to run the business in an organized way. We’d probably be doing it off lots of not quite fit-for-purpose spreadsheets. So, for us, the good things about Cybake are that it’s kind of preprogrammed by someone else to know what a bakery needs it to do, as opposed to having to make your own spreadsheets, basically.
“So, it saved us from that. It means that we can train a number of people in the business to use it, so that we have a sort of security of production and know what we need to produce.”
Overheads
Alison stresses that Cybake bakery software helps keep administration-based costs down, which is essential when overhead costs like labor and ingredients are high.
She says: “I think all businesses probably are suffering from a labor crisis. It’s really difficult to get good skilled people. I think we are fortunate. Maybe it’s the [Great British] Bake Off effect, but quite a lot of people want to come into bakeries. So, we’ve got quite a few apprentices now. That’s been a really positive thing for us.
“Ingredient costs too. Last year, ingredients went up a lot. That’s levelling out a bit now. Power costs are the ongoing big thing.”
Describing Fitzbillies Artisan Bakery and Tearooms’ history as checkered, Alison explains: “We’re the fifth owners of the business. It’s been bankrupt twice, destroyed by fire. Obviously, it managed to go through rationing in the Second World War and the pandemic and here we are still going strong.”
Part of Fitzbillies enduring appeal through all these years has been its especially noted Chelsea buns.
Alison says: “They’ve been made since the beginning, since 1920. They’re different from a lot of Chelsea buns; they’re really sticky and coated in an amazing treacle syrup. They’re our biggest selling product. We’re quite famous for them, at least in Cambridge. We make at least 200,000 a year, which is a lot to make by hand.
“I think people love them because they’re so sticky. They’re a classic rolled up Chelsea bun shape. We roll them up with lots of brown sugar and currants and, when they come out of the oven, they get brushed on one side with this special bun syrup so that they’re always super gooey.”
Asked whether they would recommend Cybake, Alison says: “I would certainly recommend Cybake. There’s an investment in getting it set up and learning how to use it, but I think it definitely saves time in the long run.”
