A new bakery is opening its doors in Clifton this week. Catley's in Clifton will be opening officially on Wednesday for takeaway only at first as it awaits a licensing change-over. Once this comes through, customers can enjoy a beautiful dine-in mezzanine space where they can tuck into a range of delicious baked goods.
Catley's, located on King's Road, is the sister bakery to owner Hannah Catley's first bakery site, Lockdown Loaves, in Winterbourne. Hannah, 27, spent 10 years as a pastry chef in some of London's best restaurants and came back to her hometown of Bristol because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
During that time, she started baking from home for the local community throughout the subsequent Covid lockdowns and within three weeks she had accumulated some 150 returning customers. Because of this, she decided to "take the leap" and open Lockdown Loaves, which she says is something she's "super proud of".
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Hannah told Bristol Live: "Catley's is very much a dream for me and there have been moments over the past few weeks that I wasn't sure we were going to pull it off, so this is an absolute whirlwind and I cannot wait for everyone to be able to enjoy it!"
Hannah describes Catley's as being sustainability driven and focused on using as many local independent suppliers as possible, while trying to keep the price point at a level that is accessible for everyone. Saturday (July 8) saw the bakery's soft launch, which featured an array of pastry and baked goods, including homemade scotch eggs, lemon meringue pie, chocolate chip cookies, sausage rolls, doughnuts, salted caramel tarts, croissants and more.
Catley's has a new chef due to come on board at the end of August, who has been heading up some of Bristol's best Michelin restaurants for several years. Hannah says that he will be taking the wheel on the savoury development of the bakery, with talks of even putting on a supper club once a month and inviting more top chefs to join the team in order to create "something very special".
Hannah went on to say: "The space is very much not perfect or finished but we wanted to get open as quickly as possible. We want customers to see us slowly growing and progressing as we feel that will also make them feel very much a part of what we are doing.
"The long-term plan is to have a savoury prep kitchen in the lower ground floor where all our lunch items will be prepared and then our sweet and bread items will be made and baked at the Winterbourne site. Every morning we will have a little trade off so both sites have all the goods.
"Our main focus is to make people happy and to showcase as much of Bristol's fantastic hospitality as possible."
While you're visiting Catley's in Clifton, why not speak to Hannah about her fundraising efforts, too. She is one of a group of some 20 Bristolians climbing Kilimanjaro in October to raise money for Caring in Bristol, a homeless charity she helped cook for over Christmas last year.
Each participant has an individual target of £6,000 and are urging people to donate to JustGiving pages - like Hannah's here - if they are able to.
