Freshly baked bread, tempting pastries and mouth-watering doughnuts have kept customers coming back for more over the past year at what has to be one of Nottinghamshire's cutest foodie haunts. But now the Little Brunette Bakery has even more to offer with the launch of an ever-changing brunch menu.
The bakery is also home to a 15-seater cafe which, since opening, has fed and watered Southwell residents with pastries, cakes, heart-topped lattes and tea served in pastel-coloured pots. But now a new menu will be serving up tasty hot food brunches such as hearty bagels with bacon, egg and sausage, pesto baked eggs on sourdough, Seoul eggs with kimchi and chilli oil, and homemade baked beans on sourdough with spinach and chorizo.
The menu will change every month, rather than seasonally, so there's no chance of regulars getting bored. Locals pop in two or three times a week to enjoy the food and drink and charming surroundings of leafy wallpaper, pink lampshades and quirky sayings on the walls such as 'Today is a good mood - sponsored by coffee'.
The bakery is owned by sisters, Jessica and Amelia Wells, with mum Kay playing a major role in the day-to-day running of the cafe. With all three having brown locks, the name needs no explanation. "I suggested it and we completely went with it," said Jessica.
Amelia, 24, trained as a baker at the School of Artisan School in Welbeck, and is proficient when it comes to bread, patisserie and viennoiserie, such as croissants and pain au chocolat. Everything is baked fresh ready for the 8am opening (or 9am on Saturdays).
Sourdough is speciality, while malthouse, white, rye and baguettes are also sold depending on the day of the week. Friday is dedicated to different flavoured doughnuts. Sausage rolls, cruffins, custard tarts, and cheese straws fill the counter display but quickly sell out thanks to the constant stream of customers.
Since January they've taken on chef and baker Georgina Mak, who has worked in Nottingham at the Pudding Pantry, the Larder and the Bakehouse in Sherwood, which has allowed them to expand the menu. Jessica, 27, who previous job was in retail management in Manchester, said: "It's been really great to have her join the team because before that, although we had kitchen assistants Lucy and Tom, who come in and help with traybakes, we didn't have anyone supporting the core of the kitchen so my sister was working overtime to get out the products we needed to sustain the business every day.
"Everything's so much more exciting because, between the two of them, there's more time for them both to be creative as well as getting the core menu done. As we turned a year old, we expanded into the brunch menu and finding new ways to keep the business exciting, so we decided every month we would change the menu as opposed to seasonally."
Completing the bakery and cafe is a deli section where the shelves are filled with pasta, chutneys, salad dressings and granola to take home.
The sisters had always wanted to run a business together, inspired by their dad Andrew being part of his family firm, started by his parents 50 years ago, selling car parts. With Jessica returning home to Southwell during the pandemic, she began an Instagram account for her sister doing bread drops during lockdown for those who couldn't get out to shops, and baking birthday cakes which led to the idea of opening a bakery.
It seemed serendipity when a former beauty salon in Westgate went on the market in December 2020, the ideal spot to make their dream a reality. They bought the property in March 2021 but it took a stressful 11 months before they were finally able to welcome customers.
When they put in for a change of use they were told in a telephone call it was already in the right planning class and that they would have an environmental health officer inspection in September just before opening day. But it wasn't until February 2022 that all the wrangles were ironed out.
Jessica said: "We got everything sorted, ripped the building apart, the basement was in about 2ft of water so we had to have so many damp procedures put in. Me and Amelia took out a loan to get all the kitchens fitted and got everything done ready for opening on what we thought would be September 4.
"Everything was in place for us to open and we had someone come out from the EHO for a preliminary look at the building and from that we got a call from the council saying that it doesn't have the planning you want. Because it was all through phone calls they'd told us it was fine we had no proof so we had to go along with it. We had both quit our jobs and had no income - I have a mortgage so it was quite a tough time.
"We got told it would take about a month, they would speed it through, so we'd should be open in October. We were then told they'd made a mistake and it needed to go in the Newark Advertiser for a print month to have any comments on the application so we did that and waited until November, then we had numerous meetings with the town council."
Two complaints about noise and smell led to a further £4,000 being spent on tests, taking them to January 2022. Eventually planning was granted but with restricted opening hours from 8am to 5pm. And should they ever want to open on a Sunday or Bank Holiday Monday, it would be 10am to 2pm.
Jessica said: "It has affected our business going forward as we had planned to do evening pop-ups. It's just something we've had to deal with and run our business around. Maybe one day, when the timing's right, we can look into seeing if any provisions can be lifted now that people have lived with us and know that we don't impact the area because we've got such a great community here.
"I'd say 85 per cent are customers that come twice if not three times a week. I do think to a certain extent we are bringing customers into the town. We've had customers coming in in the past few weeks from Beeston, Worksop and Grantham who have never been to Southwell before. I feel like we're having a good impact on the town.
"The last year has been amazing, better than we could have ever imagined. We've looked at the books and are doing OK but next year is going to be the big year for us to really gauge where we are and how we can improve.
"Fingers crossed we can have a second location in 2024. We are deciding whether we want to do more of an off-site bakehouse so we can wholesale and have a frontage on that and be slightly more rural or whether we want to open a brunch restaurant in a town." Another idea is to run sourdough classes by turning one of the upper floors into a classroom.
Customers Polly and John McGettrick are fans of the Little Brunette Bakery especially as the cafe is dog-friendly. Their cockapoo puppy Brandy attracts plenty of fuss from customers. Polly said: "We come in very regularly, two or three times a week. My husband comes in for his morning coffee because our daughter goes to school just across the road, so it's really good for us on the school run.
"We absolutely love it here, they're really friendly, really welcoming, and it's always a nice atmosphere, it's great."
A spokesperson from Newark and Sherwood District Council said: “An application was submitted for prior approval, which would allow planning permission to turn the premise from a shop into a restaurant or café. However, during the application’s consideration, it was found the existing use of the unit was mixed, as it had not solely been a shop but had been used as a beauty salon as well.
"This meant that it could not benefit from the prior approval process. The applicant therefore withdrew the application and submitted a full planning application, which was assessed and found to be acceptable.”
The Little Brunette Bakery is open Wednesday (8am to 3.30pm) to Saturday (9am to 2pm).
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