Homebaked Bakery is more than just a place to buy pies in the shadow of Anfield Stadium.
Just over a decade ago, the former Mitchell's bakery on Oakfield Road was threatened with demolition. This came amid a wave of redevelopment plans that saw residents move from surrounding terraced houses, and their old homes left "tinned up".
Members of the local community fought back and reclaimed the bakery as a space of public value on a then-declining high street in the wake of the financial crash. Now Homebaked employs 20 people on the real living wage of £9.90, and it serves as both a bakery and a community hub where you can join a sketching club or get debt advice.
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You can get a cup of tea for £1.20 or a sandwich from £2.50 and sit in the bakery's snug, garden room or garden, which are used for meetings and activities by outside groups. The bakery's operations manager Angela McKay, who started here as a volunteer in 2012, said: "If someone else can use the space when we're not using it, that's a benefit for the community."
Having successfully made the bakery a community asset, the community land trust is also looking to transform the adjacent terrace into affordable homes at a time when younger people are being priced out of the area. Luke Hargreaves, a 24-year-old market apprentice at Homebaked, said: "This became a bit of a shining light and beacon. It's evidence that, as a community, you can do stuff and be proud. You don't need to be marginalised."
He added: "A lot of people in the area do struggle, but they want to get through it, and I think this place is a good thing. You can come down and there are opportunities. It isn't all just doom and gloom."
The bakery today is very much intertwined with the football legacy of the area and building, home to The Pie Shop for more than 100 years. Angela said: "What we make on a match day underpins us to be a community business, because we couldn't survive on Monday to Friday or Monday to Saturday takings."
Looking to support the community and the bakery's mission, Spirit of Shankly, the Liverpool FC supporters group, launched a free debt advice service last year, just as the cost of living crisis started to bite. People in need of help can visit Homebaked every Monday from 10am to 12.30pm, where they will be given a tea or coffee while waiting to be seen by Sarah Pollard from Vauxhall Law Centre.
Sarah said: "Working in these communities of depravations, it's really important that you have a conversation face to face. There's lots of debt advice on the phone, but you don't build a rapport with people in deprived areas if it's the debt that's broken the camel's back because there's lots of other things going on.
"You get to speak to the client and they'll open up about their mental health problems, or their physical health problems, or sometimes domestic abuse that's been going on. You don't get that with a phone conversation. Homebaked is a nice environment for people because it's not austere, it's not an office, you're not sitting across the table with a computer in front of you. You're sitting in a room in a café where there's hubbub and stuff going on."
She added: "People walk away from us and say, 'I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders', because the biggest step is for them to come into the room to say, 'I'm frightened and this is what's happening'."
The space for this to happen might not be here now if people hadn't come together to save the building 12 years ago. Angela said: "I feel proud. It's a team effort, it isn't just one person. Hopefully we'll be passing the baton on to the next generation of people coming through to carry it on. It's got to be sustainable."
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