The enforced isolation of lockdown made those small moments of pleasure all the greater: that first sip of your morning latte, a mouthful of a ham sandwich in freshly baked bread, the friendly smile of another fellow human as you went about your single outing of the day. Unable to spend time with our loved ones and friends, our local community businesses became our sanctuaries away from home.
“Customers were really appreciative of us being open and trading through lockdown so they had access to fresh baked products,” says Jackie Mckinson, the owner and baker at Aries Bakehouse in Brixton, along with her partner, Les. “We even heard customers say that being able to have our produce during lockdown was something to look forward to and gave them joy in such strange times, which is incredible.
When lockdown hit, Jackie may have closed the front doors to the bakery - but she still stayed open every single day. She was able to serve the many queuing customers - there was a huge increase in weekday trading as everyone started working from home - from a distance through the bakery’s front window, as well as offering click and collect and delivery options through Square to those shielding at home.
From the start, the bakery was completely inundated - anything Jackie baked, shoppers bought. Customers purchased 300 sourdough breads in three days. Amazingly, only Jackie, Les and a local teenager were working at the time.
Jackie implemented a range of changes in her bakery during lockdown, in addition to enhanced sanitation measures. For starters, she built up her pantry items, sourcing eggs, flour, sugar and yeast to sell to customers. Jackie also started stocking beers from local breweries, which were snapped up by customers during pub and restaurant closures. Once demand at lunchtime grew, sandwiches also appeared on the menu.
Most significantly, Aries Bakehouse launched an online shop during this time, which allowed customers to pre-order goods, and minimised customer-staff contact as items were pre-bagged. The online shop has also been pivotal in helping to reduce food waste as Jackie can plan what she needs to bake each day.
Aries Bakehouse only celebrated its first anniversary in April 2020, so prior to the online shop’s launch, orders were taken via DM, on Instagram. Jackie was so busy baking she wasn’t seeing all of the messages to make the orders on time - and many items had sold out by the time she managed to click through them all. That’s when a loyal customer who spends most weekends at Aries Bakehouse, stepped in.
“It was her idea to use Square to do the online shop. She came in and used her evenings to get it up and running - I had my hands full with baking. She was here every Saturday bagging all the goods, too,” says Jackie.
Customer support became critical as they were quickly overwhelmed by demand, which is when other customers stepped in to help, packing bags, serving customers and jumping on bikes to deliver goods to people in isolation. At one point, Jackie had a team of eight people working flat out, made up of locals who had been furloughed and wanted to offer their help. Of those eight, four have stayed on to work at Aries permanently, including the barista, a former gym manager, and a baker who was on furlough.
Even customers who weren’t actively packing goods in the bakery helped by spreading the word about how much they loved Aries Bakehouse.
“Without their help, I don’t think I would have coped during lockdown. Customers started posting like crazy about what product they bought - they’d buy a croissant and do this amazing post with music about it and it grew from there. It was incredible. It made me so happy - their comments kept me going. That feeling and vibe that we had over lockdown - it’s still here. It’s a lovely place to come,” says Jackie.
Square technology was essential for organising the team’s time management, too: at one stage, Jackie and her colleagues were writing names on bags, which decorated every inch of the shop floor. Upgrading the card machine to a Square terminal with a printer was a huge help. Square’s card reader, placed outside the service window, helped ensure safe social distancing protocols were followed.
Since lockdown, Jackie has continued to diversify her offering, using pre-ordering online to run pizza nights and birthday and celebration cake pre-orders, which she notes is a “great additional revenue bump.” She’s also using the online shop for advertising purposes, using her popularity on Instagram to drive customers to the online shop and giving live updates on product availability and specials.
She’s also increased the provisions in the shop, and is now selling tea, peanut butter and even cured meats from local suppliers, Crown and Queue.
“I found that our customers are keen to shop in one place. They’ve gotten used to that now over lockdown,” she says.
The solidarity and community spirit that Jackie has experienced over lockdown is heartwarming, all the more so because Brixton’s Acre Lane is where she grew up - the site of the bakehouse is where her mother once ran a newsagent’s business. Jackie herself is a self-taught home baker-turned-entrepreneur who opened her first bakery in Northamptonshire in 2015 before moving back to London and starting Aries Bakehouse.
Supporting the local community is something that Jackie does in kind. She sources ingredients and produce like coffee from Perception Coffee Roasters, meat from William Rose Butcher in Dulwich, and beers from several Brixton and SW London breweries.
“We’re partnering with Ruben’s Rubens, a local food entrepreneur who launched a meat smoking business during lockdown (@rubenzreubenz). We supply our sourdough bread to Guzzle Club in Brixton Village,” she says.
Watch this space - and pop in for a doughnut when you’re next in town. As the customers will tell you, they can’t get enough of them.