Member of the Month
Congratulations to Lovingly Artisan, August member of the month, who have demonstrated their exceptional commitment to the craft baking industry, the CBA and to the wider community.
“Lovingly Artisan is a small creative sourdough bakery based near Kendal on the edge of the Lake District. We are based in Lakeland Food Park, a hub of delicious activity, with fellow foodie neighbours including Ginger Bakers, Rinaldos Coffee Roasters and Wagtail Pies.
Our aim was to create a Neighbourhood Bakery for all, bringing nutritional, delicious, loaves with moreish eating experiences to a diverse audience of bread lovers. Our bread stores, Florence and online shop have allowed us to distribute our delicious products across the North West. “
Owner, Aiden Monks
Lovingly Artisan employs 36 individuals, with 19 of these full-time employees. Our team comprises of males and females, a great mixture of ages, the youngest being 15 to the oldest aged 72. We have a fantastic team here at Lovingly Artisan, the nurturing, training, and development of our staff is a key element of our day-to-day life.
Lakeland Food Park houses our sourdough bakery and main bread store, we then have two stores in the fantastic Altrincham Market. All our delicious products are made on-site and distributed daily to our bread stores, wholesale suppliers and online customers. Alongside the stores we have our mobile bread truck, Florence, (recently named by our lovely customers) who travels weekly to Kirkby Lonsdale market and every other week to Kendal Farmers Market. Florence travels across the North West throughout the year attending multiple events, expanding our loyal customer base.
We are developing a new bakery and retail space in nearby Burneside, with plans to open this October.
Aidan has spent his life as a baker learning continuously about every aspect of real breadmaking, from the health of the soil to the cultivation of the cereal, the grinding of the grain to the mixing of the dough.
Early on in his career Aidan was inspired by his time spent in Paris and whilst at college in Boston visiting the artisan bakeries and seeing how this style of baking produced nutritious and delicious sourdough loaves. Studying the traditional viennoiseries out in Paris inspired Aidan to produce his own croissants, pain au chocolat and cinnamon swirls among many other yummy products.
Born from a need to eat and enjoy real bread, Lovingly Artisan uses natural ingredients to make and bake true bread – the best it can be for people who share our love of real food. We stand by our three commitments; natural ingredients, made with love, and shared with folk who care. We want to put the loaf back at the centre of the family table, making bread a significant part of a healthy family life.
Aidan started Lovingly Artisan at home, selling from a shop on the platform at Oxenholme Train Station before opening today’s purpose-built bakery at Lakeland food park in 2010.
In his time Aidan has won many prestigious awards including Baker of the Year at the BIA Awards, for which he is a finalist once again this year. The business has gained recognition on both the local and national scale winning Local Food Producer of year multiple times and National Bakery of the Year in 2019. Most recently Lovingly Artisan was named the top artisan bakery in Britain for the second year in a row, as part of the 2024 Bakers Dozen, which lists the best artisan bakeries in Britain, as voted for by over 200 specialists from artisan bakers, suppliers, consultants, and lecturers. Earlier this year Lovingly Artisan was honoured to be named ‘Retailer of the year’ for the whole of the UK at the Farm Shop & Deli Awards.
Lovingly Artisan produces over 10,000 loaves every week providing delicious sourdoughs to multiple suppliers such as Caterite, L’Enlcume and Booths. We produce a diverse range of products from our bread store, baking daily, nineteen styles of thirteen sourdoughs are our speciality, with a reputation for rye sourdoughs and ancient wholegrain recipes, blended with nutritional value in mind. We have multiple sourdough flavours on offer. These vary from our traditional whites to our heritage grains such as Einkorn, Emmer & Kombucha, alongside our flavoured sourdoughs, Cheese & Marmite, Spiced Apple & Cinnamon, or our award-winning Chocolate Orange Malt Loaf. We also produce our own granola, flapjacks, and a fantastic range of viennoiseries. Our most popular loaf is our lovely five grain, which is sold as a tin loaf or a bloomer, and our delicious Einkorn loaf with all it’s good for your gut qualities.
Our biggest ambition is the next phase of growth, a dedicated yeasted bakery for wholesale and pastries. Liberating production space and pace at our Lakeland Food Park location. This will allow us to double our current capacity and meet increasing demands. We have taken on three units in nearby Burneside to house our new bakery, bread store and in 2025 we will be opening a new flour mill, with our equipment already on route from Denmark, exciting times ahead for Lovingly Artisan!”
Outside Lovingly Artisan, with beautiful views beyond.