Nostalgia makes running business a piece of cake

Oct 1 2008 by Alistair Houghton, Liverpool Daily Post

Alistair Houghton meets CHRIS McLINTIC, managing director of Southport bakery Mellors

NOSTALGIA for old-fashioned cakes is a powerful tool. For the narrator of Proust’s epic seven-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, a humble madeleine cake was the trigger for a stream of memories and a literary masterpiece.

For husband and wife team Chris and Dawn McLintic, it’s a simpler matter: they believe the Great British sweet tooth is turning away from American-style doughnuts and cakes and towards the kind of sticky bun your grandmother used to make.

That’s good news for Mellors, the Southport bakery they bought in 2004 and which this month secured a £500,000 investment from Royal Bank of Scotland to help it expand.

Today the company, founded in 1840, turns over an estimated £3.4m a year.

Its biggest customer is Asda, but other customers for its fresh or partially-baked products include Tesco in Ireland and the Co-Op. It sells frozen products to food service groups such as 3663, which in turn supply them to the catering industry.

Managing director Mr McLintic and company secretary Mrs McLintic say the secret of Mellors’s success is simple – sticking to sticky buns.

He said: “I believe people want products like their mother or their granny used to make.

“There’s been too much American influence. People are going back to what they know.

“We make sticky buns. We don’t make bread, we don’t make pies, we don’t use cream.

“Our forte is icing – that’s where we excel, with hand-finished iconic products. We are a craft bakery.

“Our focus on sticky buns is a strength. It makes it difficult for people to compete.”

Mellors’s products range from Belgian buns to Victoria rings, and fudge cakes to iced buns – not to mention a few non-iced sweet treats, such as Eccles cakes and gingerbread people.

The business only deals in bulk sales. Mr McLintic talks pallets, not boxes, of buns.

But, despite the size of its production lines, the company aims, as far as possible, to use ingredients you might find in your cupboards, with as few additives and e-numbers as possible.

Mr McLintic was born in Newcastle and spent most of his life in Northumbria.

After Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, he headed for Maxway Foods, the business founded by his father in 1956 which supplied cooked chicken to the catering trade. The group included businesses in Wigan and Norfolk, where Mr McLintic met Norfolk native Dawn.

But, as the Millennium came and went, the business was put under huge pressure from increasing imports of cheaper chicken products from countries such as Thailand and Brazil. In 2004, Mr McLintic decided to close the business down rather than see it die a slow death.

“We couldn’t make any money so we quit while we were ahead,” he said.

“It was a sad time. We closed the factories, made everyone redundant, paid everyone off.

“Then we thought ‘what do we do now?’ We knew we didn’t want to retire.”

Instead, the couple sought a business to buy, and eventually they found Mellors.

Mellors was originally founded in 1840 by Elizabeth Dean. In 1872, she retired and handed the business to their long-serving employee, Amelia Jane Mellor.

The business was renamed and began its growth into a Southport institution, opening a chain of bakery shops and tea rooms.

But, in 2003, it sold its bakery site for housing and put its bakery arm up for sale. It would, said McLintic, have had to close unless it was sold and moved to a new site.

In 2004, it was bought by the McLintics.

“Originally, we wanted to move the business to one of our existing factories,” said Mr McLintic.

“The original premises had already been sold for redevelopment. We could only buy the business if we found somewhere to move it to.

“We found we could move it here and built a state-of-the-art bakery – it was just an empty warehouse before. We moved everybody and all the equipment here, lock, stock and barrel, while trying to keep all the customers.

“We were working from both premises at one point. It was frantic – nearly drove us both around the bend. But we needed to make the move, and it’s gone from strength to strength.”

The former site of Mellors’s bakery is now commemorated by the street, Mellors Close. The McLintics’ business has no connection with other Mellors businesses in Southport.

The couple, who had no experience in the baking trade, also decided to stay in Southport to keep hold of the bakery’s skilled workforce. It employs 90 people, all bar a small handful of whom work in the bakery itself.

“I wouldn’t class myself as a baker,” said Mr McLintic. “We employ a lot of bakers.”

Some of Mellors’s recipes “date back to the original books written by Amelia Jane Mellor,” according to the company’s own history.

But, impressive as that may be, the McLintics say the company’s proud Merseyside heritage cuts no ice with customers. Mellors may be a craft bakery, but it sells in bulk – and supermarkets and food service giants need to know about quality and cost, not about the age of the business.

Despite his years in the food industry, Mr McLintic had never dealt directly with supermarkets before, but he says dealing with the big beasts of the retail sector is not as intimidating as feared.

“As long as you’re on the same wavelength, it’s relatively straightforward,” he said.

“They’re not there to make life difficult. They know what they want. They need to know we can supply them with exactly what they want at the right time. They need 100% availability. They can’t have empty shelves.”

Each weekend, the McLintics return to their home on the Norfolk Broads, to which Mr McLintic says he hopes to retire.

But, for now, the McLintics are determined to continue their company’s recent growth. Mellors has just shipped this year’s frozen Halloween cakes, is already making this year’s Christmas collection, and is getting ready for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day next year.

Despite the economic downturn, the McLintics are predicting Mellors’s turnover will grow. And they say that, whatever pressures they face, they will not stray from their focus on sticky buns.

McLintic said: “Times are hard, not just for us or for bakers, but for all manufacturers. It’s a struggle making ends meet. But we forecast a turnover of £4m at the end of this financial year.

“As for the future, we want more of the same. We’re not suddenly going to divert our efforts to start making bread, or high-risk products like pies or pasties.

“We have to understand our customers, sell more to our existing customers and expand our customer base.”

alistairhoughton