Why we're asking you to buy direct

Over the last couple of years, Black Cat has changed in ways we never really planned.

What started as a bakery serving customers directly has gradually become a wholesale bakery too. Today, you'll find our bread, pastries and doughnuts in some fantastic independent shops and cafés across Essex and Suffolk, and we're incredibly proud of that.

Working with these businesses has allowed more people to discover Black Cat than ever before. We love seeing our products on the shelves of businesses we admire.

But there's another side to that story.

Wholesale and direct sales are very different businesses. When you buy a loaf of bread or a box of doughnuts directly from us, almost all of that income comes back into the bakery. It pays our staff, buys flour and butter, keeps the ovens running, and allows us to invest in new equipment, better systems and new ideas.

When we sell wholesale, we're selling at a reduced price so that another independent business can make their margin too. That's exactly how wholesale should work—but it does mean there's much less left for us.

On top of that, wholesale payments often arrive weeks after we've baked, delivered and paid for all of the ingredients and wages. In practice, that means we're carrying the cost of producing hundreds of products long before the money comes back into the business.

It's a challenge that many small food producers face.

None of this means we're moving away from wholesale. Quite the opposite. We're incredibly grateful to every stockist who chooses to sell Black Cat products, and we hope those partnerships continue to grow.

What it does mean is that we need to rebuild our direct relationship with you. If you've ever wondered why we encourage pre-orders, why we've started a newsletter, or why we're asking customers to complete surveys, this is why.

Direct orders give us healthier margins, more predictable production and cash flow, and allow us to make decisions based on growing the bakery rather than simply keeping up.

Whether that's investing in a better website, introducing new products, creating more collection points, or one day opening a permanent retail space, those decisions become much more achievable when more customers choose to buy directly from us.

If you already order from our website—thank you.

If you usually buy Black Cat through one of our brilliant stockists, we're grateful for that too.

But if you're able to order directly every now and then, it genuinely makes a bigger difference to the bakery than you might realise.

Every loaf. Every doughnut. Every order.

Small choices like that help keep independent bakeries independent.

Thank you for being part of our journey.

— The Black Cat team 🖤