Henry Herbert
Our Suppliers: Hobbs House Bakery
Name: Henry Herbert
Job Title: Sales Director
Nickname: Hen
Time in Role: 3 Years
Favourite part of the Job:
Working with a great bunch of people and getting overly excited about a new project.
Favourite Food:
Homemade curry with warm sourdough to mop.
Favourite Place:
My garden.
Why I like Veggies & More:
For selling our bread to all the lovely businesses in the southwest and reach the places that we could only dream of.
Tell us about your baking practices:
We still use the slow and traditional methods taught by our Grandparents; including our beloved Sherston loaf that is left to rise overnight, and our Organic Light Rye Sourdough with a fermentation time of 24 hours giving it its distinctive tangy taste. Many of our loaves have our heritage baked in when they use our 64 year old sourdough starter, this gives our bread a difference you can taste. As well as maintaining our history, we continue to be at the forefront of cutting edge product innovation and ensure that there is a solid future for real bread made by real bakers.
What makes Hobbs House products unique?
We are advocates for the nutritional benefits of bread, when our quality ingredients are baked with time and passion bread can be wholesome and natural. We first started on our organic journey 45 years ago, today many of our loaves are organic and we work alongside the Soil Association to ensure we meet their high standards. We believe that we created Bristol’s very first commercial organic loaf in 1974 after a local farmer who was interested in organic wheat growing, persuaded us to try some in our bakery. Ever since we have been advocates for the benefits of organic bread.
Tell us an interesting fact about Hobbs House Bakery
We are proud to be the first British bakery to become a certified B Corporation, a global movement driving change in society through ethical and sustainable business. We have joined the likes of over 3000 other companies across the globe, including The Body Shop, Ben and Jerrys and Pukka Herbs. We are incredibly excited to join this global community sharing our vision of using businesses as a force for good. To become a certified B Corp, we needed to pass rigorous testing to prove we meet the highest standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
Covid 19 specific question – what’s the most positive thing you will take away from this time?
2020 marks our 100th year of baking. Although a lot has changed over the last 100 years, our commitment to being the very best for our people, communities and the environment has not. 10 decades later and we are still a family business with five generations of baking experience, handmaking exceptional bread, cakes and pastries everyday using our classic recipes.
What's next for Hobbs House Bakery?
We always try to be the very best for our environment and use ethical and sustainable principles to make informed decisions, these include shunning plastic whenever possible in favour of compostable wax bags and efficiently recycling at least two thirds of our non-bread waste.
Whenever we have surplus bread waste, we support several initiatives that fight hunger and tackle food waste by repurposing it to local communities such as food banks and homelessness charities. We support the Ifakara Bakery in Tanzania with a ‘buy one give one’ initiative. For every one of our award-winning gluten free loaves sold we donate one to children in need in Tanzinia, so far we have donated over 91,000.
Handmade bread for everyone is our mantra, we strive for the business to be a great place to work where staff feel part of the family, joining B Corp felt like a natural step for us.