The Glasgow businessman who is part of the investor group which helped to save the iconic Mortons Roll bakery has called for customers old and new to get in touch about stocking the famous crispy morning roll.
"We appreciate our customer's patience during this time, but if they haven't heard from us yet, we want them to get in touch," stated John McIlvogue, who represents the consortium PVL. "We want to supply everyone, old and new again with these iconic crispy rolls."
Speaking about their plans for the firm to Glasgow Live, John opened up on everything from what is happening with the staff, reducing their range to focus on quality and introducing a new Mortons Roll finder on their website.
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For starters, he confirmed they want to remove the power from the bigger retailers and put it back into the hands of local shops.
John said: "Transparency is key for us, going forward we want people to be able to see what we are doing. The thing about this business from here onwards is that it will be an independent business supplying independent businesses and that's it. The only place you'll be able to get a Morton's Roll is your local shop.
"We want to differentiate ourselves from our competitors by moving away from the supermarkets, we want people to shop local and support our customers by getting people through their doors."
John confirmed they will be creating window stickers and point of sale for counters, for local shops and cafés to display that they sell Morton's Rolls.
He added: "We want to be in every cafe in the west of Scotland, we want people to go into these places and ask for a Mortons Roll, we are really pushing to support independent businesses like shops and cafes."
The next step for them will be to create a Mortons Roll finder for their website, which will see people able to look over an interactive map that will tell them exactly who stocks the iconic crispy morning roll.
And the businessman confirmed that though around half the staff have already been brought back on board, they hope that with Scottish Government support, they will be able to bring the other half too.
"We've received a lot of questions about the staff, and what we can say is that the workforce that has come back, have come back on better terms than they left, they are now receiving the Glasgow living wage, and we want to give them a voice too.
"There are people who have been here for a long time and part of our plans is to be transparent and open and listen to what these staff members have to say."
And when it comes to future plans, John confirmed they are focussing on first and foremost, "getting the company back on its feet" and getting these rolls back into the shops where people can buy them.
"It's been a two-week delay, and obviously in that period of time, we've lost ground. We are now only concentrating on three products (down from over 20) – the crispy roll, the soft roll and the potato scones – and by cutting back and concentrating on them, we believe this is the best these three products have been in decades. The quality really is amazing."
John confirmed that they are already back producing at about 60 or 70% of production capacity now with plans in the short term to get around one million rolls out a week – at their peak, John reckons the old owners were doing around 1.5 million but that was back when they were producing for the supermarkets.
"Going forward this will be a business for the people of Drumchapel, independents and we will be focussing on producing handmade artisan bread rolls for the masses."
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